Teacher Unions Dump $1.4 Million into March 2012 IL Primary

The fight to maintain $100,000 salaries and multi-million dollar pensions is expensive and no one knows this better than the teachers.  When you have the highest teacher salaries and pensions in the country and you are taking in more than $135 million in dues each year, spending $1.4 million in a low turnout Spring primary is no big deal especially if there are big issues coming up in the legislature in the near future.  Issues such as pension reform, local school pension contributions and higher health insurance contributions for retired teachers.  Mitigating or eliminating such terrifying propositions is well worth a “measly” $1.4 million.

I decided to look into this issue after reading an article in Crain’s Chicago Business by journalist Greg Hinz.  Hinz is usually pretty good at getting his facts straight but as usual when dealing with the teacher unions, things are not what they seem.  His article dealt with political contributions for the recent March 20^th Primary and he wrote (referencing  Illinois Campaign for Political Reform) that late money included the Il. Education Association at $201,500 and the Chicago Teachers Union at $110,000. That seemed low to me.  So I went to the Illinois State Board of Elections’ web site  and looked up all the political contributions since Jan. 1, 2012. After a little work I came up with $1,475,749 contributed from 27 different education organizations in a brief 10-week period or about $20,000 per day.

Where did the money go?

The money, as usual, went mainly to Democrats but there are 6 Republicans on the list including the top two, Randy Ramey and conservative Charlie Meier, and the infamous Roger Eddy who left his jobs as school superintendent and politician to become the $200,000/yr. head of the Illinois Association of School Boards (IASB).  And, yes Eddy will be eligible for a big pension based upon his new $200,000/yr. job because IASB employees are part of the Teacher Retirement System.  No, they don’t work for the state but they get state pensions and if Eddy uses what is called ‘reciprocal pension” he will be eligible for a $170,000/yr. pension at age 55 based upon his legislative pension which is 85% of the final year’s salary ($200,000) after a mere 20 years of service.  He does this by transferring his TRS service to GARS (General Assembly Retirement System). Presto – an automatic $8 million dollar pension payout if he takes it at age 55 and lives his expected lifetime.

Ramey was defeated in spite of the teacher union largesse; Meier won and Eddy decided at the last minute not to run.  Maybe he gave the $35,000 back to the union.

Of the $1.4 million contributed, about $800,000 went directly to candidates and the balance to various teacher political action committees to do with what they wish.

Here’s the list of all those who received more than $10,000 from the teachers between January 1 and March 20, 2012. 

Where do the teacher unions get $135 million to spend?

From teacher union dues- where else?  Since there are 130,000 full-time teachers that’s about $1,000/yr. in dues per teacher on average.

The teacher unions have a very good system of hiding contributions by spreading them out over many different organizations, each with a different EIN (Employer Identification Number) used to report revenue and disbursements on IRS form 990 for non-profit organizations.  I have found 50 (see below) that have annual revenue (union dues) in excess of $100,000/yr. adding up to total annual revenue of $134,970,812.  And that does not include dozens more that have revenue of less than $100,000.