CHICAGO—3,597 retired Illinois government employees received over $100,000 in pension benefits for fiscal year 2009, which ended June 30, according to pension researcher, Bill Zettler. This was the 8th annual report by Zettler on the top 100 government pension recipients in Illinois.
“The number of retired government employees receiving more than $100,000 a year in retirement pensions rose 12% from fiscal year 2008,” said Zettler. “These pension millionaires are quickly draining the state’s pension funds, which already are substantially underfunded. The financial burden is clearly unsustainable. The retirement system must be extensively reformed for Illinois to maintain fiscal solvency.”
“Almost all of these multi-millionaire government retirees are educators,” said Zettler. “The top recipient is Tapas K. Das Gupta, whose annual pension for FY2009 was $390,716. That works out to $32,560 a month. And he’s not alone. Sixty-three Illinois government retirees have pensions larger than US President Bill Clinton.”
Zettler asks “Why do most taxpayers pay 15.3% (12.4% Social Security + 2.9% Medicare) for pension and health care at age 65 while government employees pay an average of only 8.8% for vastly superior pension and health care at age 55?”
“The huge financial gap in the state pension funds is the real reason Gov. Pat Quinn wants to raise the state personal income tax up to 67% and the corporate income tax 33%,” said Jim Tobin, NTUI President.
“The Illinois constitution requires us to provide the retirement benefits promised to the 946,000 people already in the system. However, all new state hires should be placed in Social Security and Medicare with the rest of us.”
“Next, existing government employee pension contributions should be increased by 5%, reducing the unfunded taxpayer liability by $20 billion. Requiring government employees to pay 3% of their payroll for retirement health benefits and $250 per month after retirement would save taxpayers another $30 billion. They pay nothing for their healthcare today. Steps such as these will close the pension gap without a tax increase.”
Download the PDF of this release.
Download the 2009 Top 100 Illinois Government Pensions.

By on October 22, 2009   /   News Releases, Reports  
4 Comments
  1. Jonas Jantzen
    12:21 pm on December 28, 2010

    Time to change the constitution. If we don’t, these government retiree slugs are going to bleed us to death.

  2. William A. Schroeder
    8:44 am on January 16, 2011

    The entire Illinois state government needs an overhaul.

  3. Arthur C. Nicholas
    12:02 pm on April 26, 2011

    Why not cap ALL Government pension pay at $65K?

  4. gary kolbe
    3:00 pm on February 15, 2012

    They all scream they paid in and they are entitled. So, convert their paid in money to a 401K type plan, with some guaranteed increase like midway between safe return levels and stock market returns & let them manage it. They would quickly understand what they paid in and what is there. This would not be so far different from what SS pays out (better however).
    Even factor in something like a 4-6% state match and I think the taxpayer would be happy with that. But this 75% of final earnings like teachers, firemen & police get is crazy. It is more that 100% higher than they would have earned if their 9% plus, an additional 6% were put into a 401k type fund with withdrawal rate of 4%..