More than six years after the economic expansion began, 93% of counties in the U.S. have failed to fully recover from the blow they suffered during the recession.

Nationwide, 214 counties, or 7% of 3,069, had recovered last year to prerecession levels on four indicators: total employment, the unemployment rate, size of the economy and home values, a study from the National Association of Counties released Tuesday found.

With much attention being paid statewide on public employees’ salaries, layoffs and sweeping cuts to higher education and services, at least one group is suggesting another approach: pension reform.

Taxpayers United of America recently put out figures based on state records illustrating the pensions for retirees from Macomb School District, Western Illinois University and the City of Macomb. TUA President Jim Tobin first took on WIU President Emeritus Alvin Goldfarb by stating that Goldfarb “enjoys an annual taxpayer funded pension of $187,541.” Tobin further said, “Over a normal lifetime, he will get about $6 million in pension payments. His personal investment in this rich payout is about 5.3 percent or $321,260.”

The list also highlights Francis A. Kranovich as a Macomb School District retiree as having an annual pension of $149,363 payout and City of Macomb retiree Danny W. Brown as having a $61,969 annual pension. Tobin pointed out Brown’s retirement age of 56 and projected his lifetime payout as being about $2 million.

The yearlong delay before the release of a video showing a white Chicago police officer fatally shooting a black teenager has Illinois lawmakers facing the same question before many states: As officers’ dashboards and body cameras capture more police encounters with the public, how much access to the videos should there be under open records laws?

It’s a challenge for government officials who have to weigh the public’s increasing appetite to monitor how police officers do their job with law enforcement’s desire to protect the privacy of victims shown in videos and the integrity of pending investigations.

In Illinois, some legislators want a judge to be the first stop in determining whether a video involving police use of force should be released to the public, removing the power from law-enforcement agencies to make that determination on their own.

George Bauer of Troy and Bill Randolph of Collinsville both worked at the old Pevely Dairy processing plant in South St. Louis. After long, rewarding careers at the plant, they retired expecting to receive a Teamsters pension check each month for the rest of their lives.

But now the two longtime friends and former classmates at Collinsville High are fighting to keep those checks from being sharply reduced on July 1.

“We’re sick about this whole deal,” said Randolph, whose pension may be slashed 37 percent to about $1,100 a month. “The country is going haywire. If they do it to us, they’ll do it to everybody’s pension,” said Randolph, who worked 28 ½ years at the dairy plant operated by Pevely and then later bought by Prairie Farms.