I've always believed that just because somebody claims to be a reformer, it doesn't mean the person has the right solutions.

Many years ago, an activist named Pat Quinn came up with an idea to change the Illinois Constitution. He used the petition process to get rid of a third of Illinois House members in one fell swoop. This, Quinn said, would save money and make legislators more responsive to their constituents.

In reality, all that did was allow a guy named Michael Madigan to more easily consolidate his power. And one way he consolidated that power was by spending lots more money. Quinn's plan backfired.

But even though this sort of thing has happened over and over again here, the media tends to give reformers a pass, almost no matter what.

So I guess I shouldn't have been too surprised when I read the major media's news reports of last week's Senate Executive Committee hearing. It wasn't at all like the meeting I attended.

Admittedly, I arrived a little late and had to leave for a meeting before it was over, but from what I saw, Illinois Gaming Board Chair Aaron Jaffe's years-old criticism of the General Assembly's gaming-expansion bills was exposed as hollow and not entirely fact-based. He badly stumbled through his testimony, couldn't directly answer questions, and - despite long-standing public criticisms, a notebook filled with thoughts, and a history as a state legislator himself - seemed woefully unprepared for the hearing.

As it turns out, Illinois House Democrats didn't need Republicans to put 30 votes on a significant pension-reform bill.

There's been worry for at least two years that the Democrats would have to rely heavily on Republicans to get anything out of the chamber and that maybe even 30 Republican votes - half the required 60-vote majority - wouldn't be enough to pass a pension-reform bill.

But 41 House Democrats voted for a bill this month that severely whacked retirees' annual cost-of-living increases. Just 25 Republicans voted for the bill - five votes fewer than they've repeatedly said they had for a significant pension-reform proposal.

The measure would cap annual cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs) at $750 or 3 percent, whichever is less. That change has the impact of limiting COLAs to only the first $25,000 of annual pension income. Anyone who makes less than $25,000 would continue to receive compounded increases until the cap is hit.

The proposal also forces retirees to wait until they either are 67 years old or have been retired at least five years to receive their annual COLAs.

"Pardon me," said Ty Fahner to a nearby microphone that he had accidentally bumped during testimony to the Illinois Senate Executive Committee last week.

Fahner could probably be excused for apologizing to an inanimate object. The president of the Chicago-based, business-backed Civic Committee and self-styled pension expert had been forced to sit in the hearing room and wait for hours before testifying against Senate President John Cullerton's omnibus pension-reform bill.

Cullerton was obviously furious with Fahner for helping organize the opposition to his bill, and he grilled former Illinois Attorney General Fahner mercilessly, tag-teaming with Senate President Pro Tempore Don Harmon, who picked apart the hostile witness piece by piece. Fahner tried to remain calm, but apologizing to the mic showed how much he was rattled.

Nobody ever really knows what's going through the head of Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan except for Madigan himself. So the actual purpose behind last week's highly choreographed gun-control and pension-reform debates - ordered up by Madigan - wasn't completely clear to anyone.

That's by design, of course. Madigan prefers to keep people in the dark until he's ready to make his final move.

But I did hear one theory from a Democrat that made quite a bit of sense - at least for a while.