I’m always drawn to stories that explore Illinois’s lousy fiscal situation, so I found this piece at Forbes very interesting indeed. See here for an interactive map illustrating the highest-paid public employees in the state. The top payouts are illustrated in the graphic at the top of this post.
From the article:
Here are a few examples of what you’ll uncover by zip code:
- 18,900 teachers and school administrators – including $503,200 for Mohsin Dada, an administrator at North Shore School District 112 who earned $248,510 salary, plus a teacher’s retirement pension of $254,700 (ZIP – 60035).
- 9,000 college and university employees – including Dr. Fady Toufic Charbel at the University of Illinois at Chicago who earned $1.38 million (ZIP – 60601).
- 8,838 State of Illinois employees – including Steven Valasek, a $218,519 ‘contractual worker’ employed by Illinois Comptroller Leslie Munger (R) (ZIP – 62704).
- 5,122 small-town city and village employees – including 72 municipal managers who out-earn every governor of the 50 states at $180,000 per year.
- 5,007 City of Chicago rank-and-file managers and workers – including $216,000 for embattled Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel (D).
In total, there’s roughly $9.3 billion in total compensation flowing to highly-compensated government workers when counting 7,637 federal employees based in Illinois with six-figure salaries.
Actually, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Cost of living increases built into Dr. Charbel’s pension mean that it will increase by more than 3% per year, i.e. about $40,000 more next year, about $45,000 the next year, and onwards, compounding every year until Dr. Charbel dies.
I’m sure that someone will retort that’s what you need to pay to hire and retain quality public employees. Leaving alone the question of whether there is in fact a market in public employees, the problems facing Illinois are that businesses and people are leaving Illinois (which means that the pie is smaller and growing more slowly than it would otherwise) and Illinois GDP isn’t growing as fast as public employee compensation is (which means that public employees are claiming a bigger slice of the pie every year). How long can Illinois go on like this?
There are some obvious reforms that are necessary. Double-dipping should be prohibited. The maximum pension paid by the state should be capped. Public employees should pay more for their own pensions and healthcare (in some districts teachers neither pay Social Security nor contribute to their own pensions). Cost of living adjustments should be closer to the actual increases in the cost of living. Just for reference median household income in Illinois is around $57,000 per year and increasing at the rate of .5% per year.
Just about any reform will require an amendment to the state constitution.
Update
I have been informed that Dr. Charbel’s annual increment may be either a cost of living adjustment or a contractual annual pension increment. Without knowing the details of what contract he’s working under, it’s really not possible to tell. The point remains that there will be an annual increment.
Odd for the writer to blend “contractual workers” in to a list of public employees, because they are usually being hired in lieu of hiring public employees, either because they are seen as cheaper (no pension or medical benefits) or provide flexibility (hired for specific project). And if you’re going include “contractual workers” you may want to note that the highest paid makes $301,248 and lives out-of-state. Methodological failure from looking at Illinois zip codes.
I don’t honestly know what the phrase “contractual workers” means in this context. It may mean workers hired by the state on personal services contracts. If it means workers working under contracts with companies with the state, I know for a fact that there are at least some who are billing more than $301,248 per year.
I think it has to be an individual personal service contract; the state wouldn’t know what compensation was paid to individuals working for a company that was awarded the bid for a piece of work. Under a personal service contract, the worker might have an office in the state building and you wouldn’t know they weren’t a regular employee most of the time.
For lawyers, this usually means a part-time gig, where for example, they are expected to work 20 hours a week, at something like $20 per hour. The attraction is that its security for a base level of pay, while leaving time for more lucrative work. Or its a way to get your foot in the door for when a job opening occurs.