McHenry County Blog

McHenry County Blog has surveyed school districts with major presences in McHenry County and discovered that union employees paid $3.8 million in dues during calendar year 2010.

The total amount was $3,825,572.

Contracts are typically for more than one year and most expenses would in contract negotiation year.

Most are from dues paid by teachers, but there are also office worker and school bus drivers.

Most go to the Illinois Education Association-National Education Association.

Part of the collective bargaining proposal made by Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is to end mandatory union membership.

Illinois, of course, has laws that force all employees of a bargaining unit to pay dues.

The legislation would require that teacher union officials collect their own dues, rather than having as a payroll deduction, as is the case in all of the districts below.

To no one’s surprise, employees of the largest district examined, Carpentersville Unit District 300, paid the most dues.  The total was over $1.1 million.

• Barrington Unit District 220 – $554,555
• Alden-Hebron Unit District 19 – $22,427
• Cary Grade School District 26 – $52,254
• Crystal Lake Grade School District 47 – 315,342
• Crystal Lake High School District 155 – $287,202
• Carpentersville Unit District 300 – $1,122,392
• Fox River Grove Grade School District 3 – $23,599
• Harvard Unit School District 50 – $96,745
• Huntley Unit School District 158 – $356,047
• Johnsburg Unit District 12 – $106,055
• Marengo-Union Grade School District 165 – $48,778
• Marengo High School District 154 – $30,005
• McHenry Grade School District 15 – $207,111
• McHenry High School District 156 – $109,331
• Prairie Grove Grade School District 46 – $10,863
• Richmond-Burton (Nippersink) Grade School District 2 – $59,429
• Richmond-Burton High School District 157 – $37,592
• Riley Grade School District 18 – $9,161
• Wonder Lake (Harrison) School District 36 – $13,249
• Woodstock Unit School District 200 – $372,595

Since McHenry High School District 156 has the hottest school board race in the county, I thought readers might like to know how much its employees spend in union dues.

And the envelope, please…

$109,331.

There are 158 teachers.

Operating expenses are reported as $12,330 per student by the 2009-10 School Report Card.

Both Democrats Melissa Bean and Bill Foster voted on Tuesday for a $10 billion giveaway to the teachers unions, along with a $16 billion bailout spending to the states.

The politics included cutting serious dollars from food stamps.

To show how the Democrats are into free spending now with “savings” much later you have to look at when the “savings” will happen.

The spending is immediate to maximize the political benefit, but the food stamp cuts won’t go into effect until 2014, well after the next presidential election in 2012. The food stamp program is officially called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

It’s a blatant political payoff to the unions.

This is Bean’s and Foster’s politics, which Republican challengers Joe Walsh and Randy Hultgren are working hard to point out to voters.

I pointed out Monday how the teachers unions alone will rake in at least $83 million in more teacher dues as a result of this giveaway.

You can expect any mainstream or local newspaper coverage to omit the $83 million union dues part that can fund Democrat campaigns for the November election.

The idea that enormous giveaways to the unions are going to create economic growth with taxpayer money giveaways to unions is absurd on face value and any serious, objective analysis.

Penalizing the poorest Americans to the tune of $57 per month for a family of four to pay for it is political arrogance.

Illegal immigration and not seriously enforcing immigration laws are favored as a practical matter by Bean and Foster.

What they won’t tell Democratic Party voters is how 11 million illegals have forced down wages for millions of working Americans.

An obvious example is one of restaurants able to hire cheap workers rather than hire legal ones who they may have to give higher wages and benefits to.

Here’s one way it’s done.

Small businesses can withhold federal taxes from illegal’s pay checks and never turn in the deducted money to the government. If you turnover the illegals so they don’t stay working there too long, an owner can use the excuse, if ever caught red-handed, that it was a bookkeeping error for that one person, for example.

Think of who now owns the typical convenience store, gas station or dry cleaning business.

Think these owners want the flood gates of illegal immigration to stay open and are willing to reward liberal Democrats with campaign contributions for doing so.

For some reason social justice for liberal Democrats like Bean and Foster means having American wage levels being suppressed in the real marketplace.

It’s supply and demand.

No wonder teens can no longer find summer jobs.

Certain job openings, when they occur, are being slotted for illegals.

When Democrats call for immigration enforcement, at the same time with both hands they are preventing the feds from actually doing so.

Illinois Dems, Bean and Foster, learned a lot from the Blago playbook of politics – you are for, whatever you say you are for.

For example, Blago will prove his innocence by testifying at his own trial.

It will happen, until it doesn’t.

Obviously the Dems are betting any poor people won’t believe Dems voted to cut food stamps because it won’t happen for a few years.