POWIP Piece of Work In Progress – Former Abode of Dan Collins

We Get Information (Sometimes)

Remember my post welcoming Hizzoner Emanuel to his new job?

Well, it seems I misunderstood something, and the Office of the Senate President put me some facts. I'll just post the full official statement from the office:

Statement and information from Senate President John Cullerton:

“When school districts in the suburbs and downstate negotiate contracts and salaries, they don’t have to worry about the pensions because they, as the employers, contribute almost nothing to the pension funds. I think we need to look at changing that and am studying how to best advance the issue.”

The TRS system is funded by a mix of contributions: Employees (teachers), employers (school districts), the state and investment income.

Teachers contribute 9.4 percent of their pay. In the FY 2010 budget, teacher contributions to the pension fund totaled $899 million.

School districts contribute very little: 0.58 percent. In that same budget, school district contributions totaled $171 million.

The state contribution in that budget was $2.081 billion.

Under Cullerton’s concept, the state would continue to pay down the unfunded liability in the system. School districts would be asked to help cover the costs of existing teachers’ future pensions.

“The suburban and downstate teachers already contribute substantially to their retirements, as do the taxpayers of Illinois. If the school boards that oversee school districts are going to effectively decide pensions by deciding salaries, then they too need to contribute substantially.”

Cullerton pointed out that this is already how the Chicago Public School system works. While that pension fund does receive a relatively small state subsidy, the local taxpayers and Chicago teachers cover the overwhelming majority of the pension costs. And Chicago taxpayers also support the downstate and suburban teacher pensions by paying state income and sales taxes.

So Chicago was already covering its teachers' pensions. This wouldn't be a new burden on Chicago taxpayers -- they already had this burden.

Honey <a href="http://powip.com/2011/02/twitter-wars/"badgers admit when they get something wrong.

And then they eat a cobra head.

Meep

Meep is a member of the Irish Catholic mafia, having a suspiciously high number of green-eyed, red-haired friends. While she doesn’t have red hair herself [except when she goes into the sun (rare for any vampire)], she does have green eyes. She’s a raving Papist and is a life actuary on the side [i.e., she counts dead people]. An amateur pain-in-the-ass [willing to go pro!], she likes covering retirement, mortality, math, and education issues.

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