It is a frequent source of amazement to me that Illinoisans refuse to do anything about the abuses of their state and local governments but choose to vote with their feet. At RealClearPolitics Steve Cortes cites some examples:
Recently, Fox affiliate Channel 32 and Open the Books detailed the exorbitant pay package for part-time interim school Superintendent Joyce Carmine. She retired in 2017 making $398,000 annually, the highest-paid superintendent in Illinois, in a community where the median household income is $44,000. She will receive, courtesy of taxpayers, a pension of just under $300,000 for the rest of her life. Adding insult to injury, the school district hired this retiree back as a consultant at the rate of $1,200 per day for a total of 100 days, bringing her pay this year to $419,000 total for part-time work. Given the modest $75,000 median home price in Park Forest, her salary equates to 5.5 home purchases…per year.
Is Carmine somehow producing educational miracles to justify such munificence? The answer is no — testing reveals that only 26 percent of her district’s elementary school students meet state standards for their grade level, and a paltry 2 percent exceed those standards. By the time those students matriculate to the local Rich East public high school, only 16 percent meet expectations and a truly shocking 0 percent exceed them.
I wish that this Park Forest absurdity could be chalked up as exceptional profligacy. But here’s the reality: While Carmine’s pay package and benefits are particularly offensive, especially compared to the modest economic means of those she serves, similar stories abound. For example, in nearby impoverished Ford Heights, school Superintendent Gregory Jackson earned $340,000 for leading a tiny district of only 437 total students, 97 percent of whom live in low-income households.
That should help to explain what I’m complaining about.
Why shouldn’t people leave? What’s the solution? The residents of IL keep electing the officials who make these obscenities possible. What else can be done?
Based on the comments of the board president and others, they don’t seem to believe this is a problem. That’s a government, especially single party rule, mentality.
I suspect the answer to your question is the nexus of residents’ disengagement (governance is subcontracted), recognition of the enormity of the problem, as it exists at all levels of government, and a sense by some that someone else is paying the bill. In addition, WFLD will probably run this story once, and then all will be forgotten.
Look on the bright side. Ms Carmine and others are making out like bandits without medical degrees or Wharton MBAs.
News Item: (from a Florida newspaper).
“When Snipes walks away from her $178,865-a-year job, she’ll be eligible to collect almost $130,000 a year in state pensions.â€
Apparently GPD, government pensions disease, reaches Florida as well. How many here can count on those numbers? Someone was saying something about “public service?â€