Las Vegas Hides Staggering Government Pension Payments From Taxpayers

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LAS VEGAS—Taxpayers United of America (TUA) released estimated pension payouts for Las Vegas, North Las Vegas, Henderson and Clark County government employees. Nevada refuses to release actual government pensions, ignoring citizens’ right to review all payments funded by taxes. TUA calculated estimated pensions for government employees based on actual salaries of current government employees to shed light on the largess of the tightly guarded secret payouts.
“Nevada lawmakers and administrators are complicit in the corrupt system that allows money to be forced from the rank and file and given to politicians in the form of campaign contributions,” stated Rae Ann McNeilly, Director of Outreach for TUA.
“But it seems that some government officials are willing to protect the system by keeping it hidden from review. The costs of shielding the system from review, and ultimately, reform, are devastatingly high as cities around the country are buckling under the weight of their unfunded liabilities. Pension funds are the number one budgetary problem in the country.”
“While residents across Nevada face crushing taxes, falling home values, and double digit unemployment, and, at least according to some, another recession, government employees continue to receive lavish pensions funded by taxpayers who will never collect more than about $22,000 a year from Social Security.”
“Nevada has the highest pensions of the 14 states in which we have completed our pension studies, and yet it also suffers the highest unemployment rates and has been hardest hit by the housing crisis which is now facing a second round of foreclosures.”
McNeilly continued, “For example, Ricardo A. Bonvicin, North Las Vegas Corrections Lieutenant, will collect an estimated annual pension of $335,456* based on his actual annual gross of $435,658. His estimated lifetime pension payout is a staggering $15,961,017*.”
Dwight D. Jones, a Clark County government school superintendent, has an estimated annual pension of $247,574*, based on his actual annual gross of $321,525, with an estimated lifetime payout of $11,779,583*.
View pension amounts below:

“Nevada’s government pension systems are crushing middle class Nevadans. Replacing defined benefit pensions for all new government hires with social security and 401(k)s would eventually eliminate unfunded government pensions. Current government employees must increase their pension contributions to preserve their pension benefits. Additionally, all members should pay for 50% of their healthcare premiums. We need a stable system that is fair to both taxpayers and beneficiaries or pension checks will stop coming,” added McNeilly.
*TUA submits FOIA requests for current employee salaries and estimates pensions based on the current pension laws. COLA 2.5% per year worked, after 2001 2.67%. New employees after 2010 only 2.5%. Assumptions: 30 years age 55 (age 60 for University Employees), 77% payout, COLA avg 3%. COLA is officially none for 3 years, 2% 4,5,6 then3% 7,8,9 then 3.5% 10,11,12 then 4% 13,14 then 5% after. However there is an adjustment made if the retirement at any given year exceeds what the accumulated CPI would be for the years retired so 3% as an average has been used. Maximum 90% if they started before 1985, 75% after 1985.

Examiner.com | Book calls Illinois teachers underworked, overpaid

TUA’s release on Bill Zettler’s book, Illinois Pension Scam, was featured in the following article at examiner.com.
June 15, 2012. Springfield. While many states across the nation are having difficulty paying for government employee pensions, Illinois is widely considered to be in the worst shape in the country. You know it’s bad when authors start writing books about it. And according to the most recent book written on the subject, Illinois’ government employee pension system isn’t just 50th in the nation, it’s a scam.
The book is titled, ‘Ilinois Pension Scam’ by Bill Zettler. The work’s own description begins with an excerpt from Webster’s Dictionary, ‘Scam: a fraudulent or deceptive act.’
The author quotes surveys and other data to support his condemning conclusions. One statistic comes from Pew Research which found that, ‘Illinois ranks dead last with only 51% of its pension obligations funded.’ The book suggests that dilemma isn’t the result of poor financial planning alone, as the state’s public sector unions continue to insist. Along with it, the author suggests that a mutually beneficial alliance has been in control of Illinois’ pension system for nearly a half century. That alliance includes, ‘collusion between public sector unions and the politicians they have funded with member dues.’
According to the data provided, Illinois public sector unions have seen 130 benefit increases since 1970. That amounts to an average of 3 benefit hikes per year for the last 42 years. One specific result of those benefit increases is the number of 6-digit pensions among state retirees. Creating millionaires among simple municipal employees, the state’s pension system currently awards $100,000 annual payments to over 6,700 retirees. According to author Bill Zettler, that number is increasing by a staggering 20 percent per year. In less than 8 years, Illinois taxpayers will be forced to fund more than 25,000 6-digit pensions.
Taxpayer watchdog speaks-out

Showing their outrage over the bloated state employee pension system in Illinois, the taxpayer advocacy group Taxpayers United of America has been speaking out and raising awareness. In the group’s latest release, they quote Zettler’s book ‘Illinois Pension Scam’ to illustrate their argument. ‘How much pension should be paid to part-time employees with partial careers?’ TUA quotes the book.
According to Taxpayer United’s Jim Tobin, the book’s shocking statistics, “raise many questions, especially when comparing salaries and pension benefits of Illinois government employees with workers in the private sector.” By contrast, Tobin quotes Crain’s Chicago Business in confirming that only 3% of private sector workers are covered by a ‘defined-benefit plan’ such as government employee unions are. Just 20 years ago, 28 percent of private sector employees had similar plans.
The numbers

TUA extracts a number of other statistics from Zettler’s book to illustrate their point. Those details include (from Taxpayers United of America):

  • The average retired government-school teacher was a part-time employee with a part-time career.
  • Teachers work 170 days or 34 weeks a year or less (182 workdays minus 12 sick days or personal days, per the standard teachers’ contract). Teacher pensions that teachers describe as “modest” are four to seven times larger than Social Security.
  • The average pension in the Teachers Retirement System is $46,000. Average age of retirement is 58, and the average years worked is 25.
  • For private-sector employees with college degrees, a career typically begins at age 22 and ends at its earliest after 40 years at age 62 or more likely after 44 years at age 66. For government-school teachers on the other hand, less than one percent work 40 years or more before they retire, and the average teacher works only 25 years.

The book’s author Bill Zettler concludes, “Twenty-five years is not a full career nor are 170 days a full-time job.”
Taxpayers United of America isn’t the only group shining a spotlight on Illinois’ pension “scam”. Local taxpayer watchdog group For the Good of Illinois has also been critical of the cushy state government pension plans. In just two instances uncovered by the organization, one retired union teacher is receiving over $100,000 per year while the other is receiving over $100,000 per month. Each worked only one day as a teacher in Illinois to qualify for those multi-million dollar benefit packages.
For additional information, read the April 5 edition of this column, ‘Secret Memo shows No Confidence in Illinois State Pensions’.
According to Jim Tobin and Taxpayers United, one of the reasons they are publicly raising a warning is to offset the self-interested and less than honest media campaign being waged by the state’s teachers unions. Tobin’s statement concludes, ‘The Illinois Education Association (IEA) and other public unions, in their members’ letters to the media, claim that the average pensions of government state employees are “modest” and “reasonable”. TUA concludes that million dollar pensions for part-time work over a part-time career are neither “modest” nor “reasonable”.

Lisa Madigan Again Opposes Toll-Tax Rollback

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The office of Ill. Attorney General Lisa Madigan (D) again is asking Judge Rita M. Novak of the Circuit Court of Cook County to grant Madigan’s motion to dismiss a lawsuit that would roll back the toll-tax increase that went in to effect on January 1st.
The suit, brought by Jim Tobin, President of Taxpayers United of America (TUA), one of the largest taxpayer organizations in America, also asked the court to declare that the Tollway Authority is required by law to convert all toll highways to freeways and to dissolve itself. Madigan is opposing that also, even though that’s what it states in the Ill. statute.
“The Tollway likes to brag about how efficient it is on a cost per mile basis,” said Tobin. “But if you calculate the true cost – by including Tollway payroll – it comes to $397,003 per tollway mile, and this doesn’t even include the gold-plated pensions of the employees and bureaucrats. Instead of paying-off the original Tollway bonds, the greedy politicians at the Tollway keep issuing more bonds. This process will not stop until the people say NO!”
“The original bonds, in the amount of $400 million, were paid-off years ago,” said Tobin. “Yet as of December 31, 2010, the Tollway had over FOUR BILLION DOLLARS ($4,066,675,000) in Illinois State Toll Highway Revenue Bonds outstanding. Furthermore, on August 25, 2011, the Tollway adopted a 15 year $12 Billion Capital Plan, thereby assuring its continued existence until at least 2026. What happened to ‘Toll Free in 73’?”
“Can Lisa Madigan in good faith claim that any of the $4 billion in outstanding bonds is being used to build the Tri-State Tollway (I-294), the Northwest Tollway (I-90), or the East-West Tollway (I-88)?  These were the first three tollways and each of them should now be freeways.”
“The next court date, June 19, 2012, would be the time for Madigan to tell Judge Novak that she is withdrawing her motion to dismiss. The case is set for a status hearing at 10:00a.m. in Room 2402 of the Richard J. Daley Center. Will Lisa Madigan do the right thing?  Don’t bet the farm on that.”