During the first decade of the Twenty-First Century, the Village of Huntley worked its pension funding level for policemen from nothing to 45%.
45% one should note is the same funding percentage as the State of Illinois pension funds have.
Huntley taxpayers are on the hook for the $4.2 million in unfunded liability.
Please join us tomorrow…in Huntley, Illinois for a Tea Party Rally!
On June 30th, Saturday we will hold a rally at 1:00 PM, rain or shine, at the Culver’s site on route 47. ~OTramacare update~
The Supreme Court has rendered its decision. Let’s get to work on repealing OTramacare! WE NEED TO BE HEARD!
Let’s celebrate our country, our freedoms and our determination to protect the future of America.
The price of Apathy towards Public Affairs is to be ruled by evil men ~ Plato~
See you there!
I wish you could get Mitt Romney to attend- as a major creator of the bill I’d love to see him get more of the credit! We’re SO lucky that the Republican Party chose such a moderate and sensible candidate to run this year! They MIGHT have chosen some tea party goofball like Bachmann or Palin- but no, they chose a man who, in his own words, is “More liberal than Ted Kennedy!” And thank goodness for it!
This is a very good reason not to buy property in Illinois.
Underfunded pensions.
It’s sickening how many pensions are underfunded.
Teachers, State Workers, State University, Judges, General Assembly (State Reps and Senators), police, fire, municipal, park district, county, township, etc.
Much easier to bail to another state if you only rent.
Here are some questions to ask Huntley.
1. If you can’t afford the proper pension contribution now, how are you going to afford the proper pension contribution in the future?
2. Where is the money being spent that should be going towards the pension contribution? How about freezing salaries until pensions are fully funded? Because higher salaries mean higher pensions which mean higher pension contributions which means higher taxes which means taxpayers have less money to contribute to their own retirement plans.
3. Why do you want to tax FUTURE taxpayers for contribution taxes that TODAY’s taxpayers should be making?
4. A July 12th, 2012 article in the Northwest Herald by Stephen Di Benedetto stated, “But village officials point to other factors, primarily age, as proof that Huntley will not have a pension funding crisis anytime soon.” First of all, I’m pretty sure disability payments come out of the pension fund, and police officers can get injured at any age. Second, when defined benefit pensions are underfunded, they have less money to invest, so they earn less investment income, so taxpayers are simply taxed the amount the pension fund should be earning in investment income.
A lot of people don’t know that in Illinois, police and fire pensions are part of State Law. Same old story. Illinois legislators and governors provide generous benefits to public sector unions and employees in exchange for campaign contributions and votes.
The Police Pension Fund rules applying to municipalities outside Chicago is statutorily set by State law in Article 3 of the Illinois Pension Code (40 ILCS 5/Art. 3).
The Firefighters’ Pension rules applying to municipalities outside Chicago is also set by State law and can be found in Article 4 of the Illinois Pension Code (40 ILCS 5/Art. 4).
Incidentally the Chicago Police Pension Fund is Article 5 and the Chicago Fire Pension Fund is Article 6, but I’m just discussing the “downstate” pensions.
Any municipality with full-time police officers or firefighters is required by the State to have such a fund.
Most municipalities have their own funds, one for police, one for fire.
Each fund has a Board of Trustees (2 people appointed by the Mayor, 2 active members, and 1 retired member) which hires people to manage the fund (advisors, constultants, accountant, actuary, investment fund manager, etc.).
The HUGE problem with these pensions is they are unsustainable.
The people in power are hoping to cash out with their juicy pensions while future retirees will get much less.
The union is mostly concerned about union dues since that is their revenue stream.
The solution is to switch to defined contribution pensions because the future taxpayers shouldn’t be on the hook for contributions current taxpayers are not making.
No taxpayer should be on the hook for poor investment, high salary increases, high end or career salary increases, etc.
Instead what the State continues to do is tinker around the fringe.
For example, the State created “Tier 1″ for employees prior to 2011 and Tier 2” for employees hired in 2011 or after.
The different tiers receive different benefits.
While helpful that doesn’t come close to solving the total problem.
Because Tier 1 was “promised” a certain level of benefits, Tier 1 is benefiting at the expense of taxpayer retirement accounts.
Because taxes used for overly generous public sector pensions is money that cannot be used for taxpayer retirement accounts (yes I know public sector employees pay taxes too).
Many in Tier 1 are receiving and will receive MUCH larger pensions than those in Tier 2.
Instead Tier 1 should be reduced also.
You can look at police and fire salary and pensions in Openthebooks.com
More specifically, the pensions are unsustainable because of Actuary Games.
There are many different actuarial methodologies.
Not one.
It may not surprise you that overall the State of IL chose methods that does not benefit the taxpayer and does not make fiscal sense.
What do you expect from a State that can’t pay it’s vendors and writes laws into pension code that benefit INDIVIDUAL employees.
Unbelievable.
Or rather believable in this State.
What’s unbelievable in other states is just routine business in Illinois.
By now you might be asking yourself, what end of career salary increases have occurred and are occurring in the taxing districts on my property tax bill (police, fire, school, park district, etc.). The only way you will probably find out is through FOIA. Or Openthebooks.com and familytaxpayers.org has the salaries for a lot of the taxing districts. But what about the benefit levels and increases? For that you typically need FOIA, although collective bargaining agreements and the Administrator Compensation Report is required by law to be on school district websites.