Editor’s note: Another excellent press release from National Taxpayers United of Illinois reporting the research of state pension expert Bill Zettler.
Top 50 General Assembly Pensions Reveal Million Dollar Payouts as Tax Increase Looms
CHICAGO–Jim Tobin, President of National Taxpayers United of Illinois (NTUI), today released the latest pension study of pension researcher Bill Zettler: the Top Fifty pensions received by former members of the Illinois General Assembly.
“Governor Quinn and the lame duck General Assembly are desperate to increase tax revenues any way they can to ensure that these outrageous, lavish pensions are available to themselves when they retire. Under the current pension program, General Assembly members are guaranteed to be millionaires if they can collect for only eight to ten years. Protecting this rite of passage has become their highest priority, despite the terrible financial situation in which most Illinoisans find themselves. Under the guise of securing the financial future of the Illinois general fund, Quinn and his conspirators are trying to push any tax increases that they can.”
“If Quinn can’t get HB 174with the 67% income tax increase through the house, he will push to get a 33% income tax increase passed. At the same time, there are efforts to increase the gasoline tax by an unknown amount, the cigarette tax by $1 per pack, and a new 7-10% sales tax on 39 services. The primary objective is to pump 15 billion taxpayer dollars out of taxpayer pockets and into the pension and payroll funds of the robber barons that are bankrupting the great state of Illinois, not to secure the financial future as they would have us believe.”
Do you recognize any of these pension millionaires? Figures are as of 10/1/2010. A complete list can be viewed at www.ntui.org.
Mo. Pension Yearly Pension Total Pension
Paid So Far
Arthur Berman $16,459 $197,503 $1,449,640
Judy Barr Topinka $12,144 $145,727 $402,229
Jim Edgar $10,910 $130,925 $1,106,372
James R. Thompson $10,601 $127,215 $1,547,836
James “Pate” Philip $10,551 $126,615 $713,029
Dawn Clark Netsch $10,143 $121,720 $1,476,711
Walter Dudycz $7,661 $91,937 $449,128
“Jim Edgar and James R. Thompson engineered the largest tax increases ever passed in Illinois. Arthur Berman was the author of the Berman Tax Increase Amendment. Dawn Clark Netsch never met a tax she didn’t like.”
“I urge members of the Illinois General Assembly to vote in the interest of the constituents they serve and not their own best interest.”
Click here to view the top 50 General Assembly Pensions
Founded in 1976, NTUI is the largest taxpayer organization in Illinois with 30,000 members and supporters and affiliation with more than 250 local taxpayer groups.
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