Pension abuses continue in District 200

Today's (July 27) Daily Herald had a front page article by Jake Griffin highlighting pension abuses by school administrators, including in our own Wheaton-Warrenville School District 200.  Former superintendent Dr. Gary Catalani is already receiving an annual pension of $234,803 a year, but that will soon increase to almost $272,000 a year and grow by 3% every year after that.  Board President Rosemary Swanson is quoted as saying "you might [MIGHT??] not do that sort of thing in the future."  Yet according to the article, "she doesn't regret she didn’t regret giving Catalani the kind of deal he wanted to keep him in place at the district, but does regret the subsequent cost to taxpayers."  That's like being sorry you got caught.  [Full disclosure:  I am the unnamed "resident" mentioned in the article.]

But the problem is not limited to administrators, nor did it end with Catalani's departure.  Union boss Ken Swanson (no relation to Rosemary as far as I know) tries to blame a few "bad apples" (so to speak) and says "classroom teachers have not been abusive of the system and are not the reason the systems are in financial distress."  Not true.

According to a recent study by Bill Zettler, Illinois is currently paying pensions based on a staggering 157,700 YEARS of time teachers and other employees did not work, but for which they still received pension credit. 

District 200 is no exception.  The district's current teacher contract - signed when the country was in the midst of a financial crisis and the state's pension insolvency was apparent to all - perpetuates this abuse.  Section 10.1 gives average teachers - not just the "fat cat" administrators the union wants to blame - 15 days of sick leave a year (and bear in mind that the year is only about 180 working days, so this is effectively a day off for every 12 days work).  Who's sick that much?  Not most people, and in fact this is not a sick day plan but a supplemental retirement plan.  Teachers can accumulate these days without limit (they don't have to be used for maternity leave either) and get paid in a lump sum at retirement, at their highest rate of pay and not the rate of pay when the leave was actually earned.  If a teacher uses no sick time, he or she would accrue roughly 1 year of additional salary for every 12 years worked.  Of course, the teacher contribution rate for pensions doesn't take these abuses into account, and Illinois taxpayers are making up the difference.

Section 12.16A of the current contract also continues guaranteed 6% annual preretirement raises, another pension spiking device.

The IEA union and others are running misleading radio ads claiming teachers pay for the benefits they receive.  But they're not telling the whole story.  Teacher contributions don't cover nearly the cost of running the system.  If we are going to justify defined benefit pension plans, they must be actuarially sound and based on reality, not gaming the system.  In this case, it's about the children - the next generation who'll be paying the bill for these excesses.