TUA’s government pension study on Adams County, Illinois, was featured in the Quincy Journal.
Quincy—Taxpayers United of America (TUA) today released the results of a new pension study for the Quincy municipal government employees, Adams County government employees and Adams County government teachers.
“Illinois lawmakers have only flirted with reforms of the government pension system,” stated Jim Tobin, president of TUA. “Illinois is in just about the worst financial shape and yet taxpayers are still expected to pour their hard earned money into a failed system.”
“While residents across Adams County face crushing tax increases, falling home values, rising unemployment, and a painfully slow economic recovery, government employees continue to receive stunning pensions largely funded by taxpayers who will never collect more than about $22,000 a year from Social Security.”
“The purpose of our study is to put some perspective around individual pensions, to put them in terms to which the average taxpayer can relate. Area taxpayers, whose average income is $39,000, need to know how much Quincy’s government retirees are being paid not to work and the astronomical accumulation of those payments over an average lifetime.”
“For example, Nicholas N. Schildt, retired from government school district 172 and collected a 2012 pension of $194,663,” Tobin said. “His starting pension, when he retired, was $153,532. He has received more than the average annual wage for this area in cost of living adjustments alone. His estimated lifetime pension payout is stunning $6.9 million, of which he only contributed 2.4%.*”
View pension amounts below:

“Illinois’ government pensions are in serious trouble with no end in sight. Government employees should be paid a fair wage for the work they do today so they can save for their own retirement. Replacing defined benefit pensions for all new government hires with social security and 401(k)s would eventually eliminate unfunded government pensions.”
“The only way taxpayers will get relief from the tax-raisers who ‘temporarily’ increased our income tax by 67% is to throw all the Democrats out of Springfield and make Madigan the house minority leader,” added Tobin. “If we don’t, taxes will go even higher and the pension system will collapse anyway. It’s mathematically impossible to tax your way out of this problem. Illinois has more than 6,700 retirees collecting more than $100,000; in about 8 years, that will be over 25,000 six figure pensioners.”
*Lifetime estimated pension payout assumes life expectancy of 85 (IRS Form 590).
Jim Tobin was a guest on WTAD’s Mary Griffith Show today. www.wtad.com.
To learn more, visit  www.taxpayersunited.org.
Click to read the Quincy School District’s resolution ending pension sweetners.

By on November 1, 2012   /   Illinois Press, Press