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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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So the Republicans were suspicious of the bill and raised objections to which the democrats turned their backs on and passed the legislation demanded by Madigan. Who does the CTU and various other state teacher organizations vote for? The same democrats that screwed them. Will this change their voting habits? No. You get what you vote for and who you vote for. Cry me a river, it was all Trump’s fault.
When the Soviet Union collapsed circa 1991, I remember reading an article about their professional class nomenklatura digging potatoes and harvesting cabbage just so they could eat. It’s my hope that Illinois public employee retirees will someday soon experience this happiness. PPF can be their union steward.
Tier 2 pensions sold out future teachers. Tier 1 pensions sold out future generations of taxpayers.
What a hoot! The public employee unions and their membership knew exactly what Tier II was intended to do when it passed. During my employment with the state, whenever a water-cooler conversation among bargaining unit employees drifted into retirement plans, pre-2010 folks would all be very careful about what they said around Tier II employees. They’d have entirely different conversations among themselves. I saw it time and again. They all knew that they and their unions had deliberately sold out Tier II employees to protect their own retirement deals. Same reason Madigan and the Dem’s and the public employee unions… Read more »
How exactly did their union accomplish this? These changes happened in the legislature and the union didn’t negotiate tier2 employees a lower rate. They were unable to stop it so they have been working for the last 12 years on getting them enhanced.
Hmmm.
So SEIU-n-AFSCME-n-CTU et al withheld their endorsements and campaign contributions and union organized get-out-the-vote resources from the Pol’s who put Tier II in place, did they?
PPF – your explication can’t be the whole picture. I worked during my first year of law school part time for extra money at the best union law firm in the country. I did so because a future NFL CEO and former Redskin was a law school friend (not many former athletes at my law school) and persuaded me to join for 10 hours a week. I had very good grades the first semester, and therefore was able to obtain this gig. I had Teamster and UFCW experience, and they hired me to dissect financial statements (I was happy to… Read more »
I believe it was Mike “Mish” Shedlock, who back during the GFE, would always say that senior union members will always do things to protect their own interests over the interests of junior members. This is exactly what you would describe.
“Mike Madigan was known as the ‘union guy’ who stopped Gov. Bruce Rauner’s attacks on unions when he wanted to turn Illinois into a Right to Work state with reduced pay and benefits for its public workers. The Chicago Teachers Union gave him tens of thousands of dollars so that he would sponsor pro-teacher legislation.”
Hilarious. We paid Madigan for these benefits fair and square! We was robbed!
Mark-Here’s some updated (2021) info on pensions from your older story years ago. Click on all $100K pensions and there are hundred upon hundreds of pages or any of the top 200 in each category.
https://www.taxpayersunitedofamerica.org/15th-annual-illinois-pension-report/
Thanks, Freddy. Are there searchable or sortable versions of these tables?
Never mind. There’s such a database on pensions.illinoisanswers.org.