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The office of Ill. Attorney General Lisa Madigan (D) again is asking Judge Rita M. Novak of the Circuit Court of Cook County to grant Madigan’s motion to dismiss a lawsuit that would roll back the toll-tax increase that went in to effect on January 1st.
The suit, brought by Jim Tobin, President of Taxpayers United of America (TUA), one of the largest taxpayer organizations in America, also asked the court to declare that the Tollway Authority is required by law to convert all toll highways to freeways and to dissolve itself. Madigan is opposing that also, even though that’s what it states in the Ill. statute.
“The Tollway likes to brag about how efficient it is on a cost per mile basis,” said Tobin. “But if you calculate the true cost – by including Tollway payroll – it comes to $397,003 per tollway mile, and this doesn’t even include the gold-plated pensions of the employees and bureaucrats. Instead of paying-off the original Tollway bonds, the greedy politicians at the Tollway keep issuing more bonds. This process will not stop until the people say NO!”
“The original bonds, in the amount of $400 million, were paid-off years ago,” said Tobin. “Yet as of December 31, 2010, the Tollway had over FOUR BILLION DOLLARS ($4,066,675,000) in Illinois State Toll Highway Revenue Bonds outstanding. Furthermore, on August 25, 2011, the Tollway adopted a 15 year $12 Billion Capital Plan, thereby assuring its continued existence until at least 2026. What happened to ‘Toll Free in 73’?”
“Can Lisa Madigan in good faith claim that any of the $4 billion in outstanding bonds is being used to build the Tri-State Tollway (I-294), the Northwest Tollway (I-90), or the East-West Tollway (I-88)? These were the first three tollways and each of them should now be freeways.”
“The next court date, June 19, 2012, would be the time for Madigan to tell Judge Novak that she is withdrawing her motion to dismiss. The case is set for a status hearing at 10:00a.m. in Room 2402 of the Richard J. Daley Center. Will Lisa Madigan do the right thing? Don’t bet the farm on that.”
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“How much pension should be paid to part-time employees with partial careers?” asks pension analyst Bill Zettler in his book Illinois Pension Scam, published on April 1, 2012.
Illinois government-employee pensions and the amount of “work” performed to earn these pensions is explored by Zettler, and the results of his research raise many questions, especially when comparing salaries and pension benefits of Illinois government employees with workers in the private sector.
And according to Greg Hinz writing in Crain’s Chicago Business, the percentage of workers in the private sector who are covered by a defined-benefit plan has shrunk to a miniscule three percent, down from 28 percent from 20 years ago.
Using Illinois government-school teachers as an example, Zettler makes these points:
- The average retired government-school teacher was a part-time employee with a part-time career.
- Teachers work 170 days or 34 weeks a year or less (182 workdays minus 12 sick days or personal days, per the standard teachers’ contract). Teacher pensions that teachers describe as “modest” are four to seven times larger than Social Security.
- The average pension in the Teachers Retirement System (TRS) is $46,000. Average age of retirement is 58, and the average years worked is 25.
- For private-sector employees with college degrees, a career typically begins at age 22 and ends at its earliest after 40 years at age 62 or more likely after 44 years at age 66. For government-school teachers, on the other hand, less than one percent work 40 years or more before they retire, and the average teacher works only 25 years.
The Illinois Education Association (IEA) and other public unions, in their members’ letters to the media, claim that that the average pensions of government state employees are “modest” and “reasonable.” Concludes Zettler: “Twenty-five years is not a full career nor are 170 days a full-time job. So the IEA’s ‘average’ is not the same thing that we private sector workers consider ‘average’.”
Click here to view the top 100 Illinois teacher pensions as of April 1, 2012
This release is the first in a series. Stayed tuned for subsequent releases at: www.taxpayersunited.org.
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On June 5, 2012, plaintiffs Taxpayers United of America (TUA) and Noel Kuriakos filed a “Petition for Leave to Appeal” with the Illinois Supreme Court regarding its lawsuit against Oak Park Dist. 97, which places the petition in the Court’s hamper of cases, whereby the Court will decide whether or not to hear the plaintiffs’ petition.
If the Court decides to accept the Petition for Leave to Appeal, it will then decide whether or not to hear plaintiffs’ appeal regarding the lawsuit.
The question presented to the Supreme Court is whether the state legislature intended to allow school districts to understate the amount of proposed real estate tax increases by three times when they put referenda on the ballot seeking voter approval of those increases.
In the Oak Park case, District 97 claimed in its property tax increase referendum that their proposed real estate tax increase would be just $37.40 on a home with a fair market value at the time of the April 5, 2011 election of $100,000. The true increase was in fact $126.04.
The difference between those two figures was due to the state equalization factor, which was 3.3701 for the tax period in question. Oak Park District 97 claimed it did not have to use the state equalization factor, which was how it was able to understate the real estate tax increase by over three times the actual amount.
Now it is up to the Illinois Supreme Court to decide whether it will accept this case for its decision on the matter.
