Governor Jim Edgar

Jim Edgar, a Republican, served two-terms as Illinois governor from 1991 to 1999. He announced this year that he was being treated for pancreatic cancer.

The former Illinois governor has been undergoing chemotherapy after a diagnosis last month, he told the Sun-Times. “I’m hopeful that I’ll be around, but you just don’t know at this point. This, historically, has been an extremely deadly cancer.”

Obscured in the last three years of budget struggles in the state of Illinois is a remaining massive unfunded liability in state pension systems—$129…