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Summary and audio linked here.
Chicago’s political leadership is floating a pension buyout program as evidence it is seriously addressing the city’s thirty-six-billion-dollar unfunded pension liability, but Mark Glennon, founder of the Illinois policy research organization Wirepoints, said that the proposal moves debt from one column to another rather than reducing it, and that the broader fiscal picture facing the city continues to deteriorate across every measurable dimension. Audio here.
Expect no retraction or apology. This what they do.
The state’s existing buyout program for its own pensions is the precedent for Chicago, which should be a warning: Look out for similar exaggerated claims and shoddy analysis.
Full interview and summary linked here.
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This is ridiculous. There are people teaching children. There are no primary school teachers or middle school teachers that deserve 6 figure salaries. Moreover there is no reason to continue the teacher lead classroom paradigm in several areas, for example history. In this are, virtual delivery is clearly superior. And the collaborative environment it allows for is more in keeping with the skills valued by employers. We should be looking at ways to eliminate teacher lead classroom in as many subject matters as practical, leaving teacher lead classroom for the few areas where human instructors are a value add. The… Read more »
Virtual classrooms are an interesting possibility and would work well for motivated students. I would be concerned, however, about content issues which could involve political battles even more heated than those about textbooks. While some classroom teachers undoubtedly disperse debatable ideas, the potential for political and philosophical distortion multiply and a possible outcome is that controversial ideas get boiled down to pablum while students get no opportunity for classroom discussion. I fear we’d end up producing even more idiots than the current public school system does today.
I wouldn’t be as concerned about bloated teacher salaries if they didn’t convert to bloated pensions.
Also, for the commenter who compared teachers (most of whom are grammar school, middle school, and high school teachers) to employees at high-tech companies, that’s not a valid comparison. The latter employees work 12-month jobs, and many of them are highly-skilled engineers, programmers, tech managers, etc.
IT jobs are a high risk proposition. Technology changes fast, jobs get obsolete, employment prospects dim with age, and pressures from offshoring are immense, particularly as technology becomes a commodity. I cannot even think of a job less similar to a public school, union protected 9 month teaching job, than the typical private sector IT job. So I agree that there is no valid basis of comparison.
$100,000 per year is not as much as it used to be, and I think this article is much ado about nothing. According to TRS, there were over 133,000 full time or permanent part time active members in June 2016, so if 19,000 of them make over 100k that is roughly one in seven. I suspect that if you were to look at any major corporation – e.g. A tech company like Microsoft or Alphabet – where virtually all employees have at least bachelor’s degrees, the proportion of employees with salaries exceeding 100,000 would be at least as large.
Is a $100,000 salary much on its own? Maybe not. Is a $100,000 and a pension much? Most certainly. Because when 20-30 years of your retirement income is based on that 6-figure salary, $100,000 is as much as it used to be and then some. Don’t forget those $100,000 salaries increase significantly when you factor in 4 years of automatic 6% raises that all these teachers qualify for when they give their 4 year resignation notice. If you were to and ask a retiree from a major corporation who made over $100,000 if he planned to live on retirement income… Read more »
I was doing some scanning throughout the Northwest burbs and I’m shocked by some of these pensions, but what struck me is the current salaries and the impact that those are going to have on the system. Do we have an idea of when the pension system is going to start taking on more and more of those current salary? One assumes that a lot of the highly paid teachers/admin will be retiring soon and what will that impact look like once they begin drawing? Also is there a way to find out how much each pensioner (individual) actually contributed… Read more »
Also, keep in mind that every time one of these excessive teacher contracts is awarded, that fuels the fire. For example, the recent Palatine contract averages over three percent increases for each of 10 years. When you add the teachers’ step increases to the equation, these teachers will average around a five percent increase per year. Once again, that’s out of line with most workers in this country. Finally, when these overpaid teachers retire, they’ll get monstrous pensions on the backs of taxpayers. So, the taxpayer gets shafted twice: once to pay the inappropriately high salaries and once to pay… Read more »
So, the thrust of your argument seems to be that once a person is hired all they should ever get are annual COLA raises unless their job title changes, it would seem. Has your career or that of anyone your age whom you may know with a reasonable amount of advanced education, savvy and motivation lived under that sort of “rule”? If so, then by definition you/they have no more purchasing power than the day you were hired; you’ve merely been living the same with inflated dollars that produce no more purchasing power. Also, almost by defintion most people who… Read more »
In the “real” world, workers plateau unless they advance to jobs of greater responsibility. They hardly ever retire in their 50s unless their employers want them out. They certainly do not have lifetime COLA adjusted pensions (without actuarial reduction) together with lifetime health benefits. Pay increases based on seniority alone are an artifact of our industrial past where unions had the clout to negotiate such packages. The current environment of job insecurity, international competition and technological obsolescence no longer provides those opportunities. Many of us lament the passing of the old order, but those of us living in the “real”… Read more »
Agree. Also, to answer James, there may be a small percentage of workers in the private sector who average five percent raises, but they won’t get six-figure pensions when they retire. It’s that double screwing of the taxpayer I take exception to: paying for the high salaries and exorbitant pensions.
I don’t think your anger is rightly directed to the teachers and public servants in Illinois generally. They simply take advantage of rules given for their employment by their governmental leaders whenever its wise to do so for them personally. The problem you cite lies with the “rule makers” here. Why is it that at every governmental level in Illinois the policy decisions seem to be made by juveniles who simply don’t know how to say the word “no”? I fault the past legislatures, the governors and even local governmental boards who decide local contract clauses! If you have a… Read more »
We could debate whether the legislators are really free agents here. I would maintain that they have catered to public employee unions and have traded their independent judgment for re-election. I would also note that they have no personal liability for having made the mess and that (in fact) they have enriched themselves with similar lavish pay and benefits. Those observations aside, there remains a mess that needs to be addressed (fixed, even). CHANT: ADDRESS THE MESS! The current rule makers are aware of the mess and rather than tackling it they continue to postpone the day of reckoning. To… Read more »
Kvetch 22, I agree with much of what you’ve said here, but let me add yet another point. I think one of the predominant problems with the financial struggle of the IL state government finances has to do with not having term limits for legislators. We have far too many legislators that seem preoccupied with making a career in the IL legislature! That leads to thinking about what one needs to do to survive more than one term. That includes saying “yes” in so many cases to votes and projects that appease and advantage the voters of one’s district maybe… Read more »
James, I expect most observers without some degree of self-interest could agree on how we got here. However virtually all the players in Illinois are taxpayers and/or public employees and retirees. This makes the players “advocates” and no impartial arbiter has appeared. Judges and legislators all have their own dogs in the fight. A bankruptcy judge MIGHT be impartial (at least without a personal stake). Otherwise people of good will need to sit down and talk — bargain even. The IL Supreme Court has encouraged public employees to decline bargaining because their first step would have to be offering to… Read more »