-- Connecting the dots between our economy, government and business --
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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30,000 Six-Figure Illinois Educators Cost Taxpayers $3.7 Billionhttps://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2018/06/04/the-exclusive-100000-club-meet-30000-members-at-the-illinois-teachers-retirement-system-trs/#646fbefc6129
Pappas has run, as far as I can tell, an honest and efficient operation for her 22 years as Treasurer. An argument against term limits.
With the lockdown to ‘flatten the curve’, nearly everyone in the economy (privately employed) have taken pay cuts (I 15%, and my wife 10%). People are using their kids college and their retirement savings to make up the difference and pay the bills. And yet the Governor and lawmakers in Illinois want to make things harder on families with much higher taxes to continue their unwarranted spending spree. It is tyranny.
Most of my acquaintances lost their employer 401k match, at the very least.
That’s why its time to leave Illinois & join the exodus to Indiana.
As my retired 53 year old neighbor (Teacher) said, you are lucky to have a job at age 62 just shut up and pay your taxes.
Her raise every year is 3% or about $4,000 per year and increasing. She just bought a new Lexus SUV, nice to have money to burn. She vacations in Florida 5 to 6 months a year at her condo, nice to have money to burn.
I can’t say anything about the rest of your story, but if you are portraying a former IL teacher some of it is pure B. S. At the age of 53 no former public teacher is yet able to draw a retirement annuity. So, she may well have been a former IL teacher, but she’s either simply not “retired” in the sense you imply here or she’s at least age 55. Consequently if your premise as to her age is true it’s irrelevant here in that she’s not costing IL taxpayers a dime! If she’s living a luxurious life at… Read more »
Wow- “at least age 55.” What an eye-opener. No way teachers could possibly work to 66 like those paying the bills.
And just how is this statement relevant to the comment made by Poor Taxpayer and the response I made to it?
They can and that’s why they changed the pension plan for teachers. Anyone hired in the last 10 years is a tier 2 member who does not reach full retirement age until 67. Just like SS they can retire at 62 but would receive 30% less than their full retirement. PT lying about his “neighbor teacher” retiring at 53 with a salary of 133k is stupid. It doesn’t serve any purpose other than make people think others could be lying about the pension situation as well. Sure the people who were hired before 2010 can retire as early as 55… Read more »
Actually age 67 to 70 is what the poor honest hard working taxpayer does.
And by they way that is 240 days a year not as teachers do 180 days a year.
Apparently you should have been a teacher, PT. Isn’t that the real story behind all your countless gripes—simple envy?
Wrong again PT. You can start taking SS at 62.
She Retired at age 53 she is now 56.
So like she said, Shut up and pay your taxes sucker.
There are other problems with your story as you originally posted it. For instance, you said she was a teacher. If that were the case there’s probably a 1% chance she’s drawing a pension large enough to get a $4,000 AAI (aka COLA) adjustment to her prior year’s pension. Think about what has to be true for your story to be believed. First, assuming she was an IL public school teacher with 35 years of combined service and unused sick days credit her starting annuity as based upon 75% the average of her highest four years of retirement-eligible earnings. For… Read more »
Of course he’s lying. Something else to consider. Since there is no way a 53 year old has 35 years of experience as a teacher we also know that said pension would be reduced by 6% for each before the age of 60. Even at 55 that’s a 30% reduction. The final average 4 year salary would need to be close to 250k per year to arrive at PT’s numbers. What’s the point of lying in this scenario? One can easily look up people that retired and view that no such teacher with that level of pay, experience, and age… Read more »
It’s just now occurred to me that I don’t think people retired teachers in IL even begin to draw their first AAI until reaching age 60. If that’s the case your whole story is B. S. in spades since she’s only age 56.
Poor Taxpayer might be right. Up until 2016, there was an Early Retirement Option available for teachers. Remember when teachers contributed 9.4% of their salaries to their pensions? Well, the 0.4% was for ERO. I don’t think there was an age limit but the calculation was based on how many years the retiring teacher was below a certain age. Don’t forget, teachers are also allowed to apply up to two years of unused sick days towards serviceable credit. Maybe that was leveraged as well. What makes the age suspicious is that 53 year-old would have had to start working for… Read more »
You’re twisting yourself into a pretzel trying to believe lying taxpayer. He changed the age of his neighbor from the original post from 53 to now she is 56. If this was 3 years ago that would have been in 2017 after the ERO ended. Even if it was 4 years ago then the ERO option would only eliminate the 6% per year reduction. That would still mean the retired teacher’s last 4 year salary average was in the 175k range. That would be an easy person to find. Just look in the database for a woman with a starting… Read more »
She bought a bunch of years of work. They were able to do it for a while.
So she is credited with an extra 8 years she never worked.
Taxpayers pick up the tab as usual.
So she worked 27 years and had an average salary of 175k per year for her last 4 years? That’s the only way she could get 4k per year in AAI. Also AAI doesn’t start until age 60 so how did she receive a 4k per year raise at age 56? You’re not very good at lying. That’s ok but probably should stop doubling down on your lies.
IL has never had a law permitting a public school teacher to buy such lengthy service unless it’s taken as a reduction from those same number of years of service from another public pension system. Even so, its something more than a 99% certainty that no I’ll public school teacher has the ability to draw a pension large enough to have a $4,000 AAI. Also, if she’s under age 60 she’s likely not yet eligible for even her first AAI.
My lifelong friend is 60. She retired as a teacher three years ago at about 90k a year – with 18 months sick leave banked and a hard to believe but approved workers comp adjudication for senstivity to cleaning chemicals at the school (workers comp experts tell me such claims are difficult to prove a requisite connection to work, but this is Illinois with one of the most generous workers comp systems around). In any event, she started her teaching career at age 22 and worked in the same suburban school system. She is by all accounts an excellent teacher… Read more »
I have no disagreement with anything you’ve said. Neither you nor I decided or were even consulted as to how such things were to be financed. We simply have to live with the decisions of those in power. Has it ever been otherwise? But, its important to remember that public employee pensions and Social Security pensons are totally different things in that the former was designed to be a retiree’s major funding source while Social Security was designed even at its inception as a supplement to one’s retirement income with the major source being one’s own assets and/or a company… Read more »
I did a little checking. Maybe she is a transplant from California. Members under calSTRS 2% at 60 can retire at 50 with 30 years of service credit but most must be 55. Illinois is at 55 for Tier 1.
Other states have different laws pertaining to public employee retirement, and you’ve mentioned one. Perhaps you are right, but Poor Taxpayer posted it on this particular website dealing with Illinois’ governmental financing as its raison d’être. His frequent, repeated comments relate solely to that idea and in ways that always denigrate the public employee retirees of IL. Consequently, readers here might reasonably assume that his example was again referring to a retired IL public school teacher or surely he would have said otherwise as any honest person would, don’t you think? Surely, Poor Taxpayer wouldn’t say anything to lead us… Read more »
Poor taxpayer is right. Teachers make more in retirement in one year than they made in the first ten years or more of working. Total nonsense.
oh poor taxpayer ENVY is a deadly sin so REPENT