Althoff, Franks Subject to Hit Piece

Yesterday, McHenry County Blog showed the negative mailing directed at State Senator Karen McConnaughay and State Rep. Mike Tryon.

Today, take a look at the version sent to criticize State Senator Pam Althoff and State Rep. Jack Franks.

Same design with different names inserted.

Local 150 Road Mailer front 4-15 franks +  AlthoffLocal 150 Road Mailer back 4-15 franks +  Althoff


Comments

Althoff, Franks Subject to Hit Piece — 10 Comments

  1. The public sector pensions are more lucrative than private sector construction pensions, so the IUOE can advocate for. reduction in public sector pension benefits going forward, with saved contributions going to road construction.

  2. You may remember Chernobyl, Jack and Pam have never voted to protect our nuclear plants.

    How many must die before they do?!

    You may remember 9/11, Jack and Pam didn’t vote to protect our country from unsafe box cutters.

    How many more must die?!

    You may remember Bill Prim hired a lawbreaker in the MCSO and Jack and Pam did nothing to stop it.

    HOW MANY WOMEN MUST BE BEATEN?!

    It’s not even an election season and some goons are putting his crap in out mailboxes.

    How many more of these pieces must we endure?!

  3. No matter what Althoff believes that the money taken from road funds will have no effects and she hopes Rauner will add money in the new budget have you driven on roads in McHenry County?

    A lot of them have big potholes and citizens have to pay for damages done to their vehicles.

    There is no reason to use money from one fund for another one and that is how the pensions got into trouble.

  4. What a worthless mailing.

    Is this a union thing?

    McHenry county has a .04 a gallon gasoline tax, yes?

    Here is a suggestion that will help this area, complete route 53, and ignore the royalty of Long Grove.

  5. The road toads spent a year on the 31/176 intersection.

    Now, six months after completion, they are tearing out concrete on 176 to pour it again.

    Quality work!

  6. That bridge that fell in MN was an absolute disgrace.

    I am not sure it was because of a lack of funds though.

    As I recall, a design flaw got blamed for the unexpected failure of that bridge.

    However, it is absolutely true that infrastructure is crumbling in this country.

    By western European standards things are not pretty here.

    The weather is usually blamed for the potholes and the general poor quality of the roads, but somehow this is less of a problem in the similarly cold northern European countries.

    I blame short-termism for the bad roads.

    Americans pinch pennies when they build the road, and then pay more over the years for repairs, not taking into account traffic congestion from road work.

    I am not sure that hiring the same old guys to do the same old thing is the way to go forward.

    Building a road today and rebuilding it in 2 years is not a good long term strategy.

    In enlightened countries, say Germany, a company must guarantee the quality of a road for 10 years.

    So they end up spending more building that road, performing a high quality initial job, and they make it up on the upkeep.

    Americans have lost that wisdom.

  7. The pensions did partially get into trouble by switching funding from one fund to another (from pension funding to funding which hikes salaries for example).

    That occurred while pensions were underfunded.

    Let’s call that pension problem #1.

    Next, pension problem #2.

    Legislators passed pension hiking legislation to UNDERFUNDED pensions, and Governors signed that legislation into law as public acts.

    So instead of fully funding pensions, they increased benefits, which worsened the underfunding.

    The unions and politicians knew pensions were underfunded at they time they passed the pension benefit hikes.

    This happened repeatedly, year after year, escalating after 1 sentence was added to the Illinois State constitution in 1970, which protected pensioners but not taxpayers, let’s call that problem #3.

    Here is the sentence.

    “Membership in any pension or retirement system of the State, any unit of local government or school district, or any agency or instrumentality thereof, shall be an enforceable contractual relationship, the benefits of which shall not be diminished or impaired.”

    Let’s recap.

    1. While pensions were already underfunded, pension funding was diverted to hiking current salary, which worsens the underfunding.

    2. While pensions where underfunded, legislators and Governors passed pension hiking legislation, without raising proper revenue to pay for the benefit hikes, which worsened the underfunding.

    There are other reasons, but let’s concentrate on those two.

    So the next time you hear the problem is due to the state or employer not making their required contribution, whereas the employees did everything they were asked, now you know the answer.

    Instead of fully funding pensions, the unions and special interests conspired with politicians to:
    1. divert pension funding to hike salaries (which hikes pensions); and
    2. hike pension benefits via the legislative process in Springfield.

    Compare 1970 pension benefits to 2015 pension benefits in each of the 19 pension funds in the Illinois Pension Code.

    It’s important to start in 1970, because the pension sentence was added to the Illinois State Constitution in 1970.

    Various studies have gone back to the mid 90’s.

    Only Bill Zettler went back to 1970.

    1970 is the key year to start looking at pension benefits.

    That’s when legislators and Governors and unions thought the Goose layed the Golden Egg in the form of a constitutional guarantee that pensions cannot be diminished or impaired; and just as importantly there was no limit to the number or value of benefit hikes that could be enacted, each one which could not be diminished or impaired; and there was no funding requirement so legislators could be like Santa Claus and hand out pension benefit legislation for no cost to the budget.

    So the completely dysfunctional legislators played Santa Claus handing out pension benefit pensions just about every year, and the equally dysfunctional unions advocating for pension benefit hikes; neither of them putting a priority on funding the pensions.

    So there’s the story, the taxpayers have been putting more and more money towards pension funding, but the funding could never catch up, because the legislators kept passing pension hiking legislation which was the unions advocated.

    The unions participated in the mess, they were far from living up to their end of the bargain, they were part of the crime (well it’s not technically a crime because if you make it a law it’s not a crime).

  8. A reader writes,

    “Palatine got the same hit piece attacking IL House Rep.

    “Tom Morrison and Il Senator Matt Murphy, both Republicans.”

  9. The public sector workers are not telling the full story.

    Their story is we lived up to our end of the bargain, however the state (or county or local government) did not live up to its end of the bargain.

    The public sector workers made their full contributions to the pension fund, but the state (or county or local government) did not make their full contributions to the pension fund.

    That’s a partial story.

    Here’s the rest of the story.

    1. The public sector workers and their lobbyists advocated for hiking pension benefits, while pensions were already underfunded.

    2. The public sector workers and their lobbyists advocated to divert pension funding to hiking salaries, while pensions were already underfunded.

    Both worsen the underfunding, while pensions were already underfunded.

    The legislators wanted votes, campaign contributions, and electioneering assistance, and public sector workers wanted hiked pension benefits and salaries.

    The public sector workers are not telling the full story.

  10. It’s a misleading marketing program.

    The National Transportation Safety Board did not conclude that a lack of funding contributed to the Minnesota Bridget Collapse.

    Here’s a snippet, there’s plenty more on the NTSB website.

    “The National Transportation Safety Board determines that the probable cause of the collapse of the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis, Minnesota, was the inadequate load capacity, due to a design error by Sverdrup & Parcel and Associates, Inc., of the gusset plates at the U10 nodes, which failed under a combination of (1) substantial increases in the weight of the bridge, which resulted from previous bridge modifications, and (2) the traffic and concentrated construction loads on the bridge on the day of the collapse.

    Contributing to the design error was the failure of Sverdrup & Parcel’s quality control procedures to ensure that the appropriate main truss gusset plate calculations were performed for the I-35W bridge and the inadequate design review by Federal and State transportation officials.

    Contributing to the accident was the generally accepted practice among Federal and State transportation officials of giving inadequate attention to gusset plates during inspections for conditions of distortion, such as bowing, and of excluding gusset plates in load rating analyses.”

    http://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Pages/HAR0803.aspx

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