The deadline set by Jack Franks for university presidents to reply to his letter is July 31st.
As the time for passing petitions for the 2014 primary elections approaches, politicians try to raise their name identification.
Those wanting to move up from legislative posts to higher office–usually statewide office–seek publicity in the Chicago media.
Since getting home from vacation, I have seen State Rep. Jack Franks doing what he does best–getting publicity.
He has expressed outrage at the outrageous going away present to Metra’s Executive Director.
Franks is good at expressing outrage.
And, having finished reading almost all of the Chicago Tribune and Sun-Times papers, I found a Friday, June 23rd column by Sun-Times columnist Michael Sneed.
It’s entitled,
POL ON PERK PARTOL
It seems that the Marengo Democrat read a New York Times story about “lavish loans and university compensation given to star professors.”
“That better not be happening [here],” Franks told Franks.
Of course, he has no reason to think it is happening in Illinois.
One could tell from reading Jim Tobin’s list of lavish state pensions that some university professors have earned lavish salaries.
Perhaps Franks will investigate that, too.
Oh, I forgot.
That headline about a potential Illinois scandal has been taken by someone else.
“That better not be happening here.”
Franks knows it is happening here.
Big compensation leads to big pensions.
That along with jacking (no pun intended) up pensions by passing legislation to increase pension benefits.
Which Franks has been part of.
Franks is part of the problem because Franks is not doing enough to bring the problem to the attention of the public.
Is Franks the sponsor of any bills to reform pensions and retiree healthcare benefits?
Franks will someday enjoy a fat juicy pension.
University Professors and Public PreK – 12 School Superintendents top the list of highest pensions.
But its not only them.
Everyone with a state pension enjoys very good pension benefits thanks to benefit hiking legislation that’s occurred the last 40 years.
Anyone that has worked a “full” career paying into one of the five state pension funds has seen their pension benefits jacked up through the years courtesy of state legislators passing benefit hiking legislation.
That should be the real fireworks this 4th of July.
But most people haven’t a clue.
Bill Zettler’s book will shed some light on it.
But even after 300 pages of Zettler’s book, there’s still more to learn, as incredible as that may seem.
Illinois is Government Gone Wild.
Completely Dysfunctional.
$100 Billion or so in unfunded pension liabilities.
$50 Billion or so in unfunded healthcare liabilities, much of it for early retirement insurance because the recipients can retire before they are eligible for Medicaire and most do.
Most people don’t know what an unfunded liability is.
So how can they be upset about it.
An unfunded liability is an IOU.
Taxpayers pay that IOU in the form of taxes.
Money which could be used to fund your 401k, instead goes to fund state pensions which have been jacked up due to pension benefit hiking legislation.
Less money for your 401k, more money for their pensions.
Well that’s if you pay taxes to the State of Illinois.
If you don’t pay taxes to the State of Illinois, you should still worry, because your benefits and services will decrease because one way to fund pensions is to reallocate money from services such as the poor, elderly, prisoners, etc.
Each of those 5 pension programs have their own unique juicy perks.
Let’s look at a few perks legislators just can’t seem to reform.
By golly those hard working public servants deserve these perks.
Recipients will tell you it’s the law and they earned all these perks.
University Civilian Service Staff Vacation Leave Payout.
“Employees are paid for any vacation leave accumulated and not used as of the employee’s last scheduled workday.”
University Civilian Service Staff Sick Leave payout.
“At the time of termination, employees with unused accumulated sick leave that was earned between January 1, 1984 and December 31, 1997, may elect to be compensated for up to one-half of the amount.
Employees with unused accumulated sick leave earned prior to January 1, 1984 and on or after January 1, 1998, and/or accumulated while ineligible for compensation under the State Finance Act, are not eligible for any payment or payout.”
Now isn’t that interesting, because Public School PreK-12 Teachers and Administrators can accumulate up to 2 years (about 360 days) of sick leave.
See what I mean about each plan has it’s own perks.
University Academic Staff Vacation Leave Payout.
“Accumulated, unused vacation time, up to a maximum of 48 days, is paid out at the time of retirement. If the employee leaves before the termination of his/her contract, the vacation payout will be prorated for the portion of the year worked.”
University Academic Staff Sick Leave Payout.
One-half of all unused, accumulated compensable sick leave earned between January 1, 1984, and December 31, 1997 is paid out at the time of retirement. The remainder is utilized for establishing service credit in SURS. If employees prefer, they may elect to have all of the post-January 1, 1984 unused sick leave days applied toward service credit in the retirement system.”
Now that requires some explanation.
Service Credit is used to calculate pensions instead of years worked, because one can exchange unused sick days for service credit.
So for instance it’s common for public school teachers and administrators to exchange two years of accumulated sick leave for 2 years of service credit, allowing them to retire 2 years early.
But for some reason Jack Franks can’t find a way to sponsor legislation to reform that.
But you are supposed to vote him back into office.
Well you know who’s voting him back into office.
Those people getting those juicy perks.
Did you ever try calling Social Security and asking them if you can exchange 2 years of accumulated sick leave to retire 2 years early?
Now you know why teachers don’t receive Social Security, at least for the years they worked as a teacher.
Because they don’t pay into Social Security.
And they don’t pay into Social Security because they get better benefits than Social Security provides.
Well there’s today’s lesson in state pensions.
One could write a lesson a day for a whole year and you still wouldn’t know all the tricks and treats in state pensions.
Now let’s take a look at the top University pensions.
Legislators passed laws to provide these pensions.
Want a pile of money, just get an Illinois legislator to pass a bill and convince the Governor to sign it.
Then repeat that process for 40 years, because with five state pension plans, plus police and fire (state law determines those pension benefits too) there’s always a new perk that you can create in exchange for votes and contributions.
That’s really how Illinois State government works.
Don’t worry, the unions will convince the public those benefits were earned.
The public sector unions could sell ice to Eskimos and sand to Saudi Oil barons.
With that said Public School Superintendents are not in a union, U of I Urbana Champaign Professors don’t collectively bargain, although UIC professors are, it’s called UIC United Faculty Local 6456, AFT-IFT, AAUP.
To get a better picture of how “fair” these pensions are, you would want to know the years worked and amount the recipient paid into the pension fund, which would require further digging or maybe even a FOIA.
Note the University Professors retire at an older age than Pre-K – 12 Public School Superintendents.
Their list stated, “There are more than 9,900 Illinois annual
government pensions over $100,000 as of April 1, 2013. There
will be 25,000 before 2020.”
Some or many or all of the high paid University Professors are in the medical profession, again, more research would be required to reveal that information.
It’s not that we don’t respect these people.
It’s that their retirement benefits are out of line.
And it’s the politicians that created the retirement benefits and public Boards that approved their salaries.
This list was published by Taxpayers United of America in 2013 and is their pension for one year, probably 2012 or 2011.
The pensions increase 3% annually in what’s known as a Cost of Living Allowance (COLA) increase.
Tapas Das Gupta, University of Illinois - Chicago $439,672, age 72 at retirement.
Edward Abraham, University of Illinois - Chicago $427,150, age 66 at retirement.
Riad Barmada, University of Illinois - Chicago $409,852, age 68 at retirement.
Beverly Lopatka, Superintendent at DuPage High School District 88, $399,652, age 56 at retirement. The two schools in that district are Addison Trail High School in Addison and Willowbrook High School in Villa Park.
Mahmood Mafee, University of Illinois - Chicago, $381,245, age 64 at retirement.
Herand Abcarian, University of Illinois - Chicago, $348,893, age 67 at retirement.
Ronald Albrecht, University of Illinois – Chicago, $347,575, age 70 at retirement.
James Ausman, University of Illinois - Chicago, $319,191, age 70 at retirement.
Jacob Wilensky, University of Illinois - Chicago, $297,530, age 62 at retirement.
Phillip Forman, University of Illinois - Chicago, $290,038, age 67 at retirement.
Joel Sugar, University of Illinois - Chicago, $282,319, age 59
at retirement.
Henry Bangser, Superintendent at New Trier Township High School District 203, $277,617, age 57 at retirement. There are two schools in New Trier Twp HSD 203, a Northfield Campus, and a Winnetka Campus, and last I heard Grade 9 was at Northfield and Grades 10-12 at Winnetka.
Gary Catalani, Superintendent at Community Unit School District 200, $276,382, age 56 at retirement. There are about 20 schools in CUSD 200 in Wheaton, Warrenville, and Winfield, with some students attending from Carol Stream and West Chicago.
The High Schools are Wheaton North and Warrenville South, both in Wheaton.
The Middle schools are Edison Middle School in Wheaton, Franklin Middle School in Wheaton, Hubble Middle School in Warrenville, and Monroe Middle School in Wheaton.
The Elementary schools are Bower Elementary in Warrenville, Carl Sandburg Elementary in Wheaton, Clifford Johnson Elementary in Warrenville, Emerson Elementary in Wheaton, Hawthorne Elementary in Wheaton, Jefferson Pre-School in Wheaton, Lincoln Elementary in Wheaton, Longfellow Elementary in Wheaton, Lowell Elementary in Wheaton, Madison Elementary in Wheaton, Pleasant Hill Elementary in Winfield, Washington Elementary in Wheaton, Whittier Elementary in Wheaton, and Wiesbrook Elementary in Wheaton.
Craig Bazzani, University of Illinois - Urbana, $273,560, age 55 at retirement.
Laura Murray, Superintendent at Homewood – Flossmoor Community High School District 233, $271,913 age 57 at retirement. There is one high school in that district, Homewood – Flossmoor High School in Flossmoor.
That’s the top 15.
http://www.taxpayersunited.org
What ever happened to Jack’s Local Government Consolidation Commission?
Time and money were spent getting the bill passed.
Tax dollars were allocated.
Promises of savings were made.
Did Jack’s Local Government Consolidation Commission address school district consolidation?
Because of the way the law is written, school district consolidations typically cost the taxpayers money.
Not save taxpayers money.
Here’s why.
The school district consolidation law states the higher pay scale must be used.
So teachers with the lower pay scale get an automatic pay raise.
That typically more than wipes out any savings due to administration and facilities consolidation, etc., because the highest cost in any school district is teacher pay and benefits.
Another law, or maybe the same law, was written to make school district consolidation INITIALLY seem more attractive. That law states the STATE OF ILLINOIS offers a 3 or 4 year financial INCENTIVE to the consolidated district, to offset the higher payroll cost.
The two main problems are immediately evident.
1. The State of Illinois obtains its money from taxpayers, so taxpayers in the entire state absorb the cost of the 3 to 4 year incentive. This is a similar scheme to the State of Illinois subsidizing all teacher pensions outside of Chicago.
On the surface it seems Chicago is receiving the short end of that stick
However, the State of Illinois in turn provides a variety of subsidies to Chicago Public Schools that schools outside of Chicago either don’t receive or don’t receive as proportionately as high a payment.
2. The subsidy ends after 3 or 4 years, leaving local property tax payers with higher pay and benefit costs.
There are cases where consolidations save the taxpayers as a whole money, but typically consolidations cost taxpayers money.
Once again, Illinois state law favors labor at a cost to taxpayers.
The special interest labor groups once again comes out on top.
Because the special interest labor group has lots of campaign contributions and votes which help election politicians who write the laws.
And no one bothers to clearly tell taxpayers what’s happening.
In the case of school district consolidation, it’s typically a scheme to increase teacher pay and benefits using the State of Illinois as Santa Claus.