Government Employee Pensions/Pay

The 5% of Illinois workers who are in the state pension systems cannot have an unlimited claim on the 95% who are not. The one huge problem with the current pension system is the…

As I’ve mentioned the past few days, the more you learn about the Illinois pension systems the more you realize the time for compromise has past. The price for the willful ignorance on the…

Continuing this review of R. Eden Martin’s two-in-one-day essays about the public pension problem, this column turns to his piece published in the Wall Street Journal. Here is how R. Eden Martin begins his…

Let’s continue with R. Eden Martin’s two-in-one-day op eds. First, the Trib’s: “Pensions: All our problem.” As I said yesterday, it’s absolutely NOT all our problem. Here’s how he opens the piece: Leaders of…

I’m sure R. Eden Martin, the president of the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago, is a lovely man. And I hear that many people think his group is doing yeomen’s work…

By Bill Zettler Wisconsin: Top Teacher Salary $89K Less Than Illinois Top Teacher, Top Superintendent $170K Less. If Illinois wants a model of how to run a public school system for a reasonable cost…

(Originally posted 4-20-10.) Quinn: Pension Reform Will Save $400 Million in 2011. Zettler: Pension Deficit Will Increase More than $50 Billion by 2014. Governor Pat Quinn signed the pension reform bill and immediately claimed…

Why does Quinn want to raise taxes to make teachers millionaires? If we needed any more evidence that the Illinois public school system is of the teachers, by the teachers and for the teachers…

As Illinois taxpayers face the impossible task of how to pay at least $250 billion worth of pension taxes over the next 25 years, the question arises: how did we get to this point?…

How union bosses and politicians protected themselves at the expense of our children and grandchildren. When it comes to pensions, it is easy to manipulate public expectations, and therefore public beliefs, because the whole…

Why Illinois Pensions Are in Trouble: $29,238 Gets You $3.5 Million in Pension Payments. You don’t have to work long in the Illinois public schools to get multi-million dollar pensions. For example there is…

By Bill Zettler   Just because you read it in the papers doesn’t mean it’s true. Click to read the entire series. There are many supporters of the current pension system including union members,…

Let’s ask public employees to pay their fair share. According to the latest SBA (Small Business Administration) statistics there are over 1.1 million small businesses in Illinois. Their size ranges from one employee to…

By Bill Zettler Excess public salaries are the main driver of pension deficits. The dirty little secret of pension funding problems is the huge salaries public employees earn compared to their peers in the…