Tobin Endorses Skillicorn

A press release from Allen Skillicorn, one of four candidates for the Republican nomination to replace State Rep. Mike Tryon:

TAX ACCOUNTABILITY’S JIM TOBIN ENDORSES SKILLICORN

East Dundee, IL – Tax Accountability, the political arm of Taxpayers United of America, endorses Republican candidate Allen Skillicorn for State Representative.

Jim Tobin

Jim Tobin

“Tax Accountability is pleased to endorse Allen Skillicorn for the Illinois General Assembly’s 66th State House District. He is a true champion for Illinois taxpayers.

“I urge voters to support Allen’s candidacy and help send a tax fighter to the Illinois General Assembly,” said Jim Tobin, president of Tax Accountability and Taxpayers United of America.

Taxpayers United of America, among the largest taxpayer groups in the country, was founded by Illinois activist Jim Tobin in 1976.

Tobin gained notoriety in 1977, after leading the first successful property tax strike in Illinois history.

The organization has saved Illinois taxpayers billions of dollars, and its influence and activities are now felt in other states as well as Washington, D.C.

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Attached to the press release email was the following post card. If any reader has gotten one, please let me know where you live.

Front of Allen Skillicorn Tax Accountability Endorsement mailing.

Front of Allen Skillicorn Tax Accountability Endorsement mailing.


Address side of Allen Skillicorn Tax Accountability Endorsement mailing.

Address side of Allen Skillicorn Tax Accountability Endorsement mailing.


Comments

Tobin Endorses Skillicorn — 4 Comments

  1. Just ruined my day.

    Clicked on Tobin’s site to read Allen’s endorsement and top article was ’50 Top Illinois Pensions’.

    Marvin Edwards, a retired District Super. pulling $238,185 per year, yet contributed $0.

    Are you kidding me?

    How is that amount with a zero contribution possible?

    You people better put this entire Illinois fiasco on 401 K’s and I do mean retroactively.

  2. Zero employee contributions are possible when the employer picks up 100% of the employee contribution.

    Pension pickups are permissible by state law in many public sector pension systems in Illinois.

    State law has changed over the years in the pension systems, including repeated benefit hikes.

    State law could be changed again of course by state legislators and the Governor, but the unions and pensioners and employees might sue depending on the details if the pension pick up perk was reigned in.

    In the majority of school districts in Illinois, teachers and especially administrators contribute little to nothing to their pension fund.

    Another pension perk for teachers and administrators is the early retirement option (ERO) in the Teachers Retirement System of the State of Illinois (TRS).

    ERO expires per legislative law in June 2016, as it has several times already, it comes up for renewal every 3 years or so since it as creatwd.

    Tell your state legislators to let ERO expire.

    Since teacher votes are valuable due to their numbers and public servant status, and since most legislators do not even know it is legal to let it expire, there is little to no talk of letting ERO expire.

    The teachers an administrators are experts at justifying ERO.

    Bottom line, there is no Social Security ERO.

    Time to eliminate ERO.

    It has not always been around, it was a legislative benefit hike added by state legislators and the Governor.

  3. Well for the benefit of anyone thar cares, here is basically the justication for ERO.

    The school district can replace a higher paid employee with a lower paid employee.

    So local school district costs go down (left unsaid is lost performance or productivity, but since pay has typically nothing to do with performance, there is sometimes productivity gain since some employees basically clocked out a decade ago and only stay to maximize their pension).

    However state pension costs go up.

    And overall local + state costs go up because taxpayers are now funding a pension + current pay wheras before there was only curren pay.

    This is the one reason so many employers with lucrative defined benefit pension benefits eventually run into financial difficulty.

    In fact, when employees retiree earlier, the employer (in the case of Illinois teachers that includes the state responsibility for pensions) can be paying a curren employee and one, two, three, or even four retirees for one job.

    The latter is most likely in the case of school district Superintendents, as many only work in that capacity for 6 years or so before retiring.

    So in summary ERO is in place because pay is too high, so school districts dump the underfunded pension payout on the state taxpayers, to save money in the school district budget.

    We could go on and on, but ERO exposes a monopoly out of control.

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