* My Crain’s Chicago Business column…

Ever since former Illinois Republican Gov. Jim Edgar started publicly criticizing current Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner, Edgar has been subjected to a steady drumbeat of criticism from the far right.

The focus of most of that criticism is what’s come to be known as the “Edgar ramp.” The phrase describes the ramping up of state pension payments to the current point, where pension expenses are consuming about a quarter of the state’s budget.

There is no doubt the Edgar ramp was flawed, as all compromises are. The annual pension payment increases were too gradual at the beginning, which made them steeper than they should have been years later.

But we don’t live in an ideal world, nor do we live in a dictatorship. You pass the legislation you can pass. And passing a bill that immediately required huge pension payments just wasn’t possible. After decades of not making adequate pension payments, the General Assembly wasn’t going to start doing the right thing right away.

But subsequent governors and General Assemblies could have fixed that problem. Instead, they did nothing. Worse yet, they didn’t prepare for the ramp’s higher payments by narrowing the state’s spending base and expanding its tax base. And even worse, they deliberately exacerbated the problem.