Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel is seeking higher utility taxes to keep the city’s largest pension fund from running out of money and set all four retirement plans on a path to solvency.

The city wants to raise the levies on water and sewer bills to shore up the Municipal Employees’ Annuity and Benefit Fund of Chicago, the most underfunded of the four pensions, Emanuel said Wednesday at an investor conference in Chicago. Without changes, the pension that serves more than 70,000 workers and retirees is on track to run out of money within a decade.

Swansea residents recently got an involuntary lesson in how the State of Illinois mismanaged its way into a $111 billion pension deficit, or more specifically, how the all-knowing financial wizards of Springfield have regulated local government pensions into a no-win situation.

The village’s newsletter noted that their firefighters’ pension fund cost went from $71,000 last year to $208,325 next year. They only have two full-time firefighters.

It gets worse: An actuary they hired found that state investment rules and the poor markets pushed the firefighter pension fund from being 90 percent funded to only 48 percent funded. In real dollars, they would need to dump just more than $1 million into the fund.

How did things get so out of whack?

Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner’s administration suspended Wednesday its no-overtime policy for workers caring for disabled residents in their homes, just hours before the workers’ union planned to file a lawsuit challenging the plan’s legality.

Secretary of Human Services James Dimas said the agency would seek permission to bar overtime hours through an administrative rule with the consent of the Illinois Legislature.

Human Services prohibited overtime earlier this year after the federal government decided home care workers deserved time-and-a-half pay for work over 40 hours a week. Dimas said the policy — not fully enforced until May — has saved $5 million and provides a break for some caregivers who routinely worked double-digit hours.

“Previously, we had people working 17 or 20 hours in a day,” Dimas said. “I don’t think people are very fresh and responsive if they put in that kind of schedule.”

The administration of Gov. Bruce Rauner alleges that the union representing some 38,000 state workers is threatening to fine them if they cross a picket line in the event of a strike.

A spokesman for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees on Tuesday called the memo “another groundless attack from the Rauner administration.”

The allegation is contained in a memo prepared by John Terranova, deputy director of labor relations for the Department of Central Management Services. CMS is the agency in charge of negotiating contracts with state employee unions.

Soon after passing a massive property-tax hike, City Hall sources told theChicago Sun-Times that Mayor Rahm Emanuel plans to hike utility taxes on city residents.

The proceeds of the hike will not go to improve schools, services or roads. The tax revenues will bypass residents and be dumped directly into the city’s largest pension fund, which is effectively bankrupt. The municipal workers’ pension fund is set to run out of money within the next decade.

But the Illinois Supreme Court has ruled that taxpayers are on the hook for the full amount of all pension promises granted to government employees, no matter how outlandish or impossible those promises may be.