Back to Top

Government Pensions Gobbling Up Tax Dollars in Henry County

By on July 12, 2016   /   Illinois, Latest, Pension Reform  

View as PDF Geneseo, IL – Taxpayers United of America (TUA) has released its most recent government pension study exposing individual pensions for Henry County government retirees, as well as Geneseo and Kewanee municipal, local school, and police retirees.
“There are more than 240 retired government teachers in Henry County collecting pensions that will accrue to seven-figure estimated lifetime payouts. Unlike the private sector, these government school retirees will become multimillionaires by not working and retiring on average at 57,” said Jim Tobin, President of Taxpayers United of America (TUA).
Across the five state pension funds and the Illinois Municipal Retirement Fund (IMRF), there are more than 15,661 government pensioners collecting six-figure annual pensions and more than 92,386 retirees collecting over $50,000 annually.
The median household income across Henry County is only $52,518 and the poverty rate is 11.3%.
“On average, these government pensioners will have contributed only about 9.8% to their own lifetime retirement payout. Taxpayers are on the hook for every penny of any shortfall in pension funding, whether funding the system through state income taxes or property taxes for IMRF, and the last decade has been disastrous. Forcing taxpayers to pay such a heavy portion of someone else’s retirement is criminal,” said Tobin.
“In the private sector, employees are forced to pay into Social Security for every dollar they earn, receiving an average annual pension of only $16,000 from Uncle Sam! That total pales in comparison to the amount of tax dollars siphoned away by government retirees every year.”
“More than five hundred Henry County government retirees are former IMRF employees in a county of barely fifty thousand residents. This should serve as a warning to taxpayers who are concerned about their rising property taxes, as cities like Geneseo and Kewanee in Henry County are forced by law to raise property taxes without a referendum to fund IMRF pensions,” said Tobin. “It’s legal plunder of hardworking taxpayers for the benefit of the political class.”
“Jack B. Schlindwein, who retired in 2013 at age 54 from Geneseo CUSD 228, is set to receive the highest estimated lifetime pension payout in this study. His current annual pension is $116,882, and he contributed a total of $168,380 to his own pension, easily recouping his total contributions within two years of retirement. He has already collected $302,595. His taxpayer-funded pension payout will accumulate to more than $5.3 million! And his personal investment in that payout is a mere 3.2%.”
“Harold E. Ford also retired from Geneseo CUSD 228, but in 2003, and at the age of 55. He currently receives the largest annual pension in the study, collecting $140,577 a year in retirement. The total contributions made to his own pension while employed, $138,952, were less than what he collects during a single year of retirement. His annual pension payments, with compounded annual cost of living adjustments, will accumulate to more than $4.4 million! His personal investment was only about 3.1%.”
Click to view the complete list of the following:

“The financial situation in Illinois is dire. Concerned residents and taxpayers must demand reforms from their local politicians and state legislators. Resolving the crisis is possible, but it won’t be an easy road, considering how many current and former government employees are entrenched in the system,” said Tobin.
“Transitioning new hires to 401(k)-style defined contribution pension plans would be a good start to halting the growth of the problem. As for the current unfunded liabilities, allowing municipalities, school districts, and other taxing districts to reorganize through Chapter 9 bankruptcy, or pursuing federal legislation to preempt the Illinois Constitution’s pension-protection clause, are both becoming very real possibilities if systemic reforms aren’t pursued soon,” said Tobin.
TUA’s most recent 10th Annual Illinois State Pensions Report contains additional data concerning the state’s government pension crisis and elaborates on further solutions to this long-term problem.

Back to Top

Former Gov. Jim Edgar Thrives While Taxpayers Toil

By on July 7, 2016   /   Latest  

View as PDF “Jim Edgar is probably the most respected Illinois governor in recent memory. Of course, since three of the past six (and four of the last nine) have gone to jail, that’s admittedly not a very high bar to clear. Somewhat like being the tallest midget in the circus.”
– Eric Kohn, Editor-in-Chief, Illinois Mirror
Chicago — Former Gov. Jim Edgar (R), with the complicity of local media, cultivated a “Mr. Clean” image as he raked in huge amounts of cash with his state pension, as University professor, as insurance company director, and affiliation with a company that preys on Illinois’ catastrophic financial condition.
“As Governor, Edgar raised the state income tax in 1991 and 1993,” said Jim Tobin, President of Taxpayers United of America (TUA). “He later ‘ran against’ the proposed 1994 income tax hike endorsed by notorious tax-raiser, State Senator Dawn Clark Netsch (D), but in 1996 he endorsed this income tax-hike proposal, which was approved by the state House. I was the only person to testify against this twenty-five percent personal income tax hike, and fortunately, the legislation was killed in the State Revenue Committee on May 30, 1997.”
Edgar has a long history of fleecing taxpayers while maintaining a favorable public image.
Edgar, for 20 years of government employment, collected an annual pension of $156,331 as of 2016. He began collecting his pension in 2001 at age 55. He also was paid, in 2015, $71,760 to be “Distinguished Fellow” at the University of Illinois’ Institute of Government & Public Affairs.
The Chicago Sun-Times also reported last week that “Edgar is chairman of the board of Illinois Financing Partners, which on Wednesday won the Rauner administration’s OK to advance money to vendors that have been forced to wait months to get paid by the state. The payoff for the Edgar company? It gets to keep the late-payment fees when the state finally pays up.”
The Sun-Times noted that the “company’s vice chairman is another former politician — ex-U.S. Rep. Jerry Costello, a downstate Democrat who’s now a lobbyist in Springfield and Washington. Edgar says he gets an undisclosed monthly stipend from the company. He and Costello also each have a 1 percent stake in it, records show.”
Brittany Clingen, Senior Correspondent for Illinois Mirror, followed up this week by highlighting Edgar’s enduring cronyism.
“After vacating the governor’s mansion in January 1999, he became a board member of Kemper Insurance Company in February of the same year. His four-year tenure on the board paid off, literally; reports put his compensation at no less than $83,000 in 2000 and as high as $142,702 in 2002, $16,000 more than the $126,590 he made his final year as governor. According to an article by Crain’s Chicago Business, Edgar said his compensation was ‘about $65,000 a year, with another $30,000 in profit-sharing paid most years.’ Edgar started in his position as a board member of Kemper Insurance less than two months after signing a bill sought by the company. The bill permitted mutual insurance companies in Illinois to convert to mutual insurance holding companies (MIHC) and issue stock.”
“As we have noted previously, Edgar is constantly trotted out as a veteran statesman, however, he serves the interests of political bosses and government cronies while bilking the taxpayers of Illinois,” said Tobin. “His advice is toxic and should be avoided as such.”
Concludes Kohn, “So, when it comes to what Illinois should do going forward, perhaps it’s time to stop looking to Jim Edgar for his thoughts. He should be taken as seriously as Scientology. He wasn’t that great, and it’s high time that a state mired in the mistakes of the past stopped caring about what he says, thinks, and does.”
 

Back to Top