WOODSTOCK, IL – The Woodstock City Council has approved a special census with an eye toward certifying that the city has grown to more than 25,000 residents. If this is true, this would make Woodstock a “Home Rule Unit” and would substantially change the rules for how the city creates or changes taxes and fees in the city.
Given that Woodstock residents pay among the highest taxes in the state, and perhaps the country, citizens were concerned and Voters In Action were engaged. Leadership from Voters In Action reached out to Jim Tobin of Taxpayers United of America and have joined forces to present “Home Rule is Home Ruin”. The presentation, given by Mr Tobin, will take a closer look at what changes Home Rule brings and how they will affect local taxpayers.
View as PDF Woodstock—Taxpayers United of America (TUA) today released the results of their updated analysis of salaries and pensions for Woodstock municipal government employees.
“Woodstock government bureaucrats are trying to seize the opportunity to steal even more of taxpayers’ hard-earned cash by adopting Home Rule for its greedy empire building,” stated Jim Tobin, TUA president.
“There are currently more than 300 full and part-time employees for a population of less 25,000! Fourteen of those employees make more than $100,000 a year and 157 of those jobs are pension eligible.”
“At least fourteen of the current Woodstock pensioners will collect more than $1 million in largely taxpayer-funded pensions, while the average Social Security (SS) beneficiary will be lucky to see about $400,000 in lifetime payments.”
“Home Rule will give the Woodstock bureaucrats the power to tax and regulate, virtually without limit, anything they want without the approval of voters through a referendum. If a measure is good for the constituents, it should stand up to a referendum. This is one of the most important controls that voters have over their local government and there is no good reason to give it up and hand that power over to bureaucrats,” urged Tobin.
“Never forget that 80% of municipal taxes, including property taxes, go to pay government employee salaries, pensions, and benefits and that number is climbing as the state continues to make necessary cuts.”
“Woodstock city officials state it would be ‘irresponsible of them to not take advantage of getting the extra $151 in shared state revenue per person’ for the city, and that the city has a history of keeping taxes low for residents by not taking the property tax extension limitation law. Just where do these officials think that ‘state revenue’ comes from? The sky? All revenue comes from us, the taxpayers.”
“To help the average taxpayer understand the problem, we list the names of the pensioners and the amounts they collect in retirement,” added Tobin. “It really hits home when people see the names of their local ‘civil servants’, people in their community that they know at least by name, and the stunning amounts they collect from taxpayers.”
“Timothy J. Clifton, retired from the Woodstock Municipal Government, tops our Woodstock list and ranks 230 in the state of Illinois with a very comfortable $112,998 annual pension! The accumulation of those payments, over a normal lifetime, will reach about $2.9 million. His contribution to that gold-plated pension was only $342,341.”
“Roscoe Stelford, III tops the list for our highest current Woodstock salary. This poor ‘civil servant’ takes in about $155,000 in salary alone! This doesn’t include the gold-plated pension and other benefits he gets!”
Click the links below to view the following data:
“We need constitutional reforms that change the Home Rule statute to leave taxing power with the taxpayers’ approval and reforms that eliminate the political pensioners as a protected, elite class,” said Tobin.
“The era of smoke and mirrors to siphon wealth from the hardest-working middle class is over. We need to send a loud and clear message that their pattern of reckless empire building is no longer acceptable. Illinois is in a financial meltdown and if we allow local officials to pick up where the state has left off, there will be few choices left for taxpayers but to revolt or vote with their feet,” concluded Tobin.
*Lifetime estimated pension payout includes 3% COLA (simple interest) and assumes life expectancy of 85 (IRS Form 590). Nearly all IMRF pensioners also receive Social Security benefits in addition to their IMRF pension. Any blank spaces in the data are intentional and due to government redactions or withheld data points in response to Freedom of Information Act requests.
Taxpayers United of America was quoted about the IMRF pensions by Wirepoints.
“Gall: Brazen boldness coupled with impudent assurance and insolence.”
– Merriam-Webster Dictionary
By: Mark Glennon*
IMRF, the Illinois Municipal Retirement Fund, went on a “statewide informational tour” last week. It was basically a brag fest. Illinois taxpayers should be appalled.
IMRF is the second largest pension fund in the state. It covers 100,000 employees and retirees of 3,000 Illinois municipalities who are not policemen, firefighters and those covered by state pensions. Among its boasts is that it will be reducing contributions made by municipal employers from 11.73% of payroll to 11.34%. Also, it’s “well funded,” in its words — about 87 % funded — far higher than most state and municipal pensions in Illinois.
Here’s why taxpayers should find IMRF’s grandstanding galling:
- If you’ve been wondering why Illinois has the highest property taxes in the nation, often exceeding a suicidal four percent, count IMRF as one reason. IMRF is unique among Illinois state and municipal pensions because it’s empowered to force municipalities to raise property taxes to keep its funding up. That crowds out money for libraries, roads, schools, you name it. Taxpayers pay $2.50 for every $1.00 that IMRF member pay into their pensions, far higher than is typical in the private sector. Most IMRF retirees get Social Security, too, into which both they and municipalities contribute. For IMRF, municipalities around the state don’t face the impossible choice of either underfunding or raising taxes to cover contributions — as they do with police and fire pensions. IMRF just sends a bill for whatever it takes, which goes into property taxes.
- Even with its comparatively high funding level, IMRF is still short about $5 billion, which taxpayers will be on the hook for. Dropping employer contribution rates means little with taxpayers in hock for that $5 billion plus whatever else accrues.
- IMRF offers its members, in addition to their pension, a “guarantied” 7.5% annual return savings account, effectively at taxpayer expense. As any saver today knows, guarantied long term rates are far lower than that (under 2.7%). Guess who guaranties the difference? Property tax payers. As with the pension obligations, IMRF can force automatic property tax increases as necessary to cover that savings account. We wrote in detail about those 7.5% accounts earlier.
- IMRF members also get a “13th payment,” notorious in the pension world. That’s a sort of bonus check once a year in addition to their monthly pension payments, paid entirely by taxpayers, according to IMRF’s site. It cost $42 million last year. A coalition of public unions gloated two years ago about killing a bill that might have ended it.• IMRF’s accrued pension benefits have been growing at the pace of 7.2 percent a year since 2000, according to the Illinois Policy Institute, far faster than the 2.3 percent rate of inflation and beyond what city taxpayers can afford.
- IMRF attributes its supposed success largely to the Tier 2 pension reforms, which it praises. They should be embarrassed if that’s what’s helping them look good. The Tier 2 pension reforms of 2010 are a disaster. They were “bulldozed through” the legislature by House Speaker Michael Madigan with no understanding of the consequences. Tier 2 employees — those hired after 2010 — pay in the same portion of their paychecks even though the cost of their benefits is 40% less than Tier 1 employees because Tier 2 benefits are far less than Tier 1’s. We’ve written in detail about the myriad problems in the Tier 2 “reforms,” linked here, here and here. The General Assembly has a legislative task force trying to figure out how to fix Tier 2 problems. We haven’t heard a peep on that, probably because they are stumped.
- IMRF continues to peddle numbers about its positive economic benefit, but it looks at only one side of the equation. Eighty-five percent of its retirees remain in Illinois after they retire, supporting the the creation of nearly 16,000 jobs and $600 million in additional salaries, it gloats. Yeah, well, 100% of that money would have been spent in Illinois had municipalities been able to spend it on other services and there’s no reason to think that any fewer jobs would have been supported had the money been left with taxpayers to spend as they choose. IMRF measures only one side of the issue.
- Why did IMRF, alone, get the right to force funding to keep it relatively healthy while cops and firefighters in many towns an cities face the certainty of having their pensions go broke? Who knows, but maybe it had something to do with mayors, county board members and other top brass politicos being in IMRF.
- “Spiking” — jacking up end-of-career pay in order to artificially jack up the pension — is a recurring problem with IMRF members. The General Assembly is now considering special legislation to try to control it.
- Members are supposed to work a minimum number of hours per year to get a pension, but questions persist about how well that’s enforced. As reported last week, some members of one county board weren’t even aware of that requirement.
The press is routinely suckered by IMRF’s propaganda. WTTW’s Chicago Tonight show has featured, at least twice, IMRF representatives showboating as a model as a successful pension, and they go unchallenged. The Rockford Register Star last week praised IMRF, saying it puts other pensions to shame. (They also repeated the absurd myth that 80% funding is healthy for a pension.)
IMRF is no model pension. It is, as Taxpayers United of America put it, “the gold standard in taxpayer abuse.”
*Mark Glennon is founder of WirePoints. Opinions expressed are his own.
