Union Lobbyists Substitute-Teach for One Day, Get $1 Million Pensions

From the Twitter feed of Michael
Hewlett comes this incredible tale of union flim-flamming of
Illinois taxpayers.

Writing at Forbes, OpentheBooks.com
founder Adam Andrzejewski explains that in 2012, Illinois reformed
its particularly loose public-pension rules specifically to squeeze
out a lot of recipients who shouldn’t really have qualified for
taxpayer-funded retirements. The new law specifically came about
after news leaked that two teachers-union lobbyists, Stephen
Preckwinkle and David Piccioli, had managed to get pensions worth
more than $1 million after substitute teaching for just one day
apiece.

A couple of weeks ago, we spotted Preckwinkle and Piccioli
within a
long list of 30 state retirees from the Illinois
Federation of Teachers (private sector teachers union).  Sure
enough, in 2014, Piccioli is receiving $30,564 and Preckwinkle
$37,416 pensions (click
here for their life expectancy pension payouts of nearly
$1 million each). The experience was a bit overwhelming, even for
our seasoned team of forensic investigators….

Sadly, these cases represent a systematic problem.
The Washington Times
recently ran a story based
on data collected at OpenTheBooks.com exposing 40 private sector
union leaders from the National Education Association,
Illinois Education Association and the Illinois Federation of
Teachers who cleaned out $5,000,000 a year in Illinois teacher
pensions.

Data at OpenTheBooks.com shows that twenty-four of those union
employees have already collected more than $1 million in retirement
pensions.  Because the union is a private sector employer,
taxpayers have no say in the active salaries awarded to the union
employees, but guarantee funding for the lifetime pension
payouts.

Such antics help explain why the five public pensions in
Illinois have a liability of $100 million and may run out of money
by 2029, says Andrzejewski.

Whole thing here.

Take it away, Lulu: