36 Comments - Jim - Wednesday, Jul 21, 10 @ 12:47 pm: We also gt 24 furlough days and were assured that it would not reduce our pension, which I am grateful for. But if I am contributing less towards my pension and my employer is matching a smaller amount but I am still getting the same pension, then who is making up the difference. Hello taxpayer. - Desert Dweller - Wednesday, Jul 21, 10 @ 12:57 pm: Interest on the furlough days is nothing new, but the cost is a wee bit excessive when you’re a 35 year employee trying to buy back 5 days you were forced to take while union employees got raises and bonuses. - Ghost - Wednesday, Jul 21, 10 @ 1:02 pm: The pension remimbursement requires the employees to submit fomal requests in writting; and then they are charged the EMPLOYER and employee portion plus the interest. if they are running a new bill, how about allow people to submit requests online, have the State pick up the employer contribution amount and then drop the interest. Of course the gov could drop the furlough program all together and just cut the money from the agnecies peronnel budgets. - the Patriot - Wednesday, Jul 21, 10 @ 1:08 pm: NO personal disrespect to the above posters, but all I hear from state employees is how bad they have it. Well folks, you endorsed Rod once, and stayed on the sideline the second time. I had a conversation last week with a goup moaning about how bad it is, but they just don’t know about Brady. I don’t know if Brady is the answer, but I know that after 8 years in Office Quinn and his parter mixed with the Madigans are proven incompetent. The 2 or third time I slam my hand in the car door I realize it hurts, and I stop. Vote republican and try something knew, knowing it has a 50-50 shot to change, or keep engaging in the same painful conduct expecting a different result. - Fed up - Wednesday, Jul 21, 10 @ 1:15 pm: So David Vaught issues his first Administrative Order under his new powers and he is factually wrong, his numbers don’t add up, and he is clueless about what the law says. Lets see he is an attorney and financial wizard who has trouble with math and the law. Why didn’t he get more than a 20% raise? - Pat Robertson - Wednesday, Jul 21, 10 @ 1:24 pm: ==Poe and Bomke said they only recently learned that SERS is also charging employees interest on the amount, 8.5 percent calculated from the time they joined the system.== That doesn’t sound right. It should be interest from the time the contribution originally should have been made. That is how contributions are determined — whoever is contributing puts in $X today, which will earn 8.5%, so that the contribution plus earnings will be enough to pay the related pension amounts. If the contribution was supposed to be made last year, an employee buying in today would have to pay the contribution plus interest that a timely contribution would have earned in the meantime in order to make the computations work right. BTW, since HB 4644 allows buy-ins only for furloughs taken “as a means of addressing a state fiscal emergency,” does it even apply to the merit comp furlough days that are being imposed for the sole purpose of covering the Guv’s political rear end? - cassandra - Wednesday, Jul 21, 10 @ 1:25 pm: I saw Hogan on Chicago Tonight and he certainly talks persuasively. We need to give him a chance. I did note that some of the commentary on his Connecticut tenure suggested he was somewhat imperial in his approach. I guess the luxurious assistant salary fits in the imperial category. - Irish - Wednesday, Jul 21, 10 @ 1:29 pm: Fozsoy Boy strikes again. Let’s give my staff people a big raise and then let’s ask all other employees to give up money to pay for it. Let’s cut funding for the most at risk and then give $2 million to a company who has as a lobbyist a former Blago appointee to expand their buildings, which they were going to do anyway. So they can fulfill a contract they signed even before it was official that they got the $2 million. Let’s not fully fund most of our current programs but let’s sign a whole bunch more bills that require more enforcement and monitoring that we aren’t providing now. Let’s have a paddlin’ czar at $90,000.00. ETC. ETC. I guess I have risen to the level at which I do not have the intelligence to operate. FSB - Sick of it! - Wednesday, Jul 21, 10 @ 1:29 pm: Wonder if we will see a rash of retirements of people who don’t want a pay cut as well as possible reduction in retirement checks. I know the guv didn’t think that dedicated state workers would leave because of this…..though he did have to give big raises to get his staff to come work for him! - Ghost - Wednesday, Jul 21, 10 @ 1:29 pm: The Patriot a big chunk of the money owed is from the GOP raiding the pension system, and concotting a scheme to pay it back with escalated payments decades later. we are paying several billion a year extra pension pick up to cover GOP borowwoing from when they had control. Plus the GOPraised taxes twice to deal with their prior bdget holes of 1 billion or less. I know the GOP raided money to put us in this mess, so I pass and letting them do even more damage while we are still trying to fix budgets holes they created decades ago. - Another one bites the dust - Wednesday, Jul 21, 10 @ 1:38 pm: Quinn has a lot of very young staffers that can step into the shoes of the state employees that retire. Quinn would consider that to be a cost-cutting move and would get new blood into the agencies. This is a sad semi-snark. - DuPage Dave - Wednesday, Jul 21, 10 @ 1:39 pm: The interest provision is in the bill. The bill was introduced by Poe. If he didn’t know the interest provision was there, he did not do the job he’s being paid to do. - wordslinger - Wednesday, Jul 21, 10 @ 1:50 pm: That U of I salary is the wrong place at the wrong time. Is there some Public Administration course out there on Bad PR? - DuPage Dave - Wednesday, Jul 21, 10 @ 1:53 pm: This is the language from Poe’s bill PA96-0961 (HB4644): A member may establish creditable service and earnings credit for a period of voluntary or involuntary furlough, not exceeding 24 days, beginning on or after July 1, 2009 and ending on or before June 30, 2011, that is utilized as a means of addressing a State fiscal emergency. To receive this credit, the member must, before December 31, 2011, (i) apply in writing to the System and (ii) make the contributions required under this Section, plus an amount determined by the Board to be equal to the employer’s normal cost of the benefit, plus interest at the actuarially assumed rate. - DuPage Dave - Wednesday, Jul 21, 10 @ 1:58 pm: re: Poe did not know that there was an interest provision in the pension bill? This is what was filed October 13, 2009 by Rep. Poe: Synopsis As Introduced Amends the State Employee Article of the Illinois Pension Code. Allows a member to establish service credit for up to 12 days of voluntary or involuntary furlough used to address a State fiscal emergency. Requires employee contributions, plus an amount determined by the Board to be equal to the employer’s normal cost of the benefit, plus interest at the actuarially assumed rate. Effective immediately. The only change when passed in May was that the 12 days was extended to 24 days. Quinn signed this on July 2, 2010 then two weeks later extended the number of furlough days to 36 (12 in FY2010 and 24 in FY2011), but the pension bill amendment only provides for a “buy back” of 24 of the 36 days. - What planet is he from again? - Wednesday, Jul 21, 10 @ 1:59 pm: The U of I also recently hired a Tight Ends coach for the football team. Gotta get those priorities right! - Rambler - Wednesday, Jul 21, 10 @ 2:14 pm: ====from last Friday: Secret Square ==“If someone making $45K can’t afford the furlough days, how can a minimum-wage checkout lady afford a tax hike?”== If the income tax were raised all the way to 5 percent, her total tax goes up to $732 per year. The difference: $293, or slightly less than one week’s pay. Now granted, for someone just scraping by on minimum wage that’s nothing to sneeze at. But if you’re looking strictly at the financial effect on the individual… well, losing a month’s pay to furlough days is way worse than losing a week’s pay to taxes, wouldn’t you think?==== I think that people are tired of the government telling them to pony up to fund people who are far better off than they will ever be. We’ve seen it with the Wall Street bailout and now we’re seeing it with the resistance to an income-tax hike in Illinois. Dan Hynes summed it up well during the primary campaign: Raising taxes on the middle class during a recession doesn’t make sense. That’s doubly true of the poor. Of course Hynes didn’t mention the poor. It’s a rare politician who does. And Montrose, a single, full-time minimum-wage checkout lady makes too much money to qualify for the Earned Income Tax Credit. Check the table in the 1040 booklet. - Montrose - Wednesday, Jul 21, 10 @ 2:20 pm: *That U of I salary is the wrong place at the wrong time. Is there some Public Administration course out there on Bad PR?* Exactly. Didn’t at least someone say that maybe she should have a better title than Executive Assistant with that salary? - dave - Wednesday, Jul 21, 10 @ 2:20 pm: If the income tax were raised all the way to 5 percent, her total tax goes up to $732 per year. The difference: $293, or slightly less than one week’s pay. Not quite… unless they have zero exemptions, it wouldn’t go up $293. - zatoichi - Wednesday, Jul 21, 10 @ 2:30 pm: Do state employees qualify for unemployment after some specific number of days on furlough? - Vole - Wednesday, Jul 21, 10 @ 2:31 pm: “It’s really tough to swallow the University of Illinois’ constant poverty cries when they do stuff like this…” That is called executive privilege justified by all the other cuts and tuition hikes they will be making on the less privileged. Them with the gold make the rules. - Secret Square - Wednesday, Jul 21, 10 @ 2:37 pm: “Unless they have zero exemptions it wouldn’t go up $293.” I realize that; the exercise I posted was merely a rough estimate in order to gauge the MAXIMUM possible impact, in terms of lost pay, that an income tax hike of 2 percentage points would have on a full time minimum wage earner, vs. that of 24 furlough days (one month’s pay) on a state employee. Needless to say, your mileage may vary. Also, the comparision was solely for purposes of comparing the financial impact on the affected individuals, NOT for purposes of deciding which is better public policy. - Excessively Rabid - Wednesday, Jul 21, 10 @ 2:44 pm: Didn’t at least someone say that maybe she should have a better title than Executive Assistant with that salary? Deputy President. - Jake from Elwood - Wednesday, Jul 21, 10 @ 2:51 pm: Dr. Hogan comes from U.Conn, as does Ms. Troyer. Both of them started out together at the University of Iowa. Maybe it was a condition of Hogan taking the U of I job. Perhaps her pay raise is just meant to cover the cost of living increase to move to Urbana from you know, err, Connecticut. Never mind. - Anonymous - Wednesday, Jul 21, 10 @ 2:56 pm: “Maybe it was a condition of Hogan taking the U of I job.” No, Hogan made the hire after he got the job…among other things. He has no clue and has already dug a big hole to climb out of. - VanillaMan - Wednesday, Jul 21, 10 @ 2:58 pm: As a sociologist, what would Professor Troyer have thought of this situation? We’re talking about a salary which puts the person in that salary range into a group most sociologists are professionally suspicious of. What does Professor Troyer think of an assistant to an executive at a public institution being able to rake in that kind of dough at public expense? During an economic state funding debacle? When our public universities are filled with specialists in every field of study, how is it they can’t figure out how to make our public universities a better value to citizens? They can’t even figure out how to cut a budget in a way that could help guide other public officials. How many sociologists and political scientists does it take to make a university operate better? There really is a problem here. If the experts can’t figure out how to run a university, what kind of education are students getting from these universities? - Cincinnatus - Wednesday, Jul 21, 10 @ 3:03 pm: VanillaMan, “As a sociologist, what would Professor Troyer have thought of this situation?” As a sociologist, he probably would think people would squawk, as an elite, he probably wouldn’t care… - What planet is he from again? - Wednesday, Jul 21, 10 @ 3:06 pm: Zatoichi: “Do state employees qualify for unemployment after some specific number of days on furlough?” I’ve heard one of the gambits is to take all the furlough days all at once and file for unemployment (i.e., the answer to your question is ‘yes’). To prevent this, (as I understand it) they also have rules on when you can take those days , how many in a row/week/month you can take, whether you can take them on Fridays and/or Mondays, whether you can take one before/after a vacation day, etc. - Golden - Wednesday, Jul 21, 10 @ 3:07 pm: Talk about “F*%#$@ golden!” The US Attorney is looking in the wrong place. - Bill - Wednesday, Jul 21, 10 @ 3:30 pm: ==a big chunk of the money owed is from the GOP raiding the pension system, and concotting a scheme to pay it back with escalated payments decades later== Up here we call that the “Edgar Shuffle”. Somehwere, Little Jim and Big Steve are having a big laugh on all of us. - whatever - Wednesday, Jul 21, 10 @ 3:40 pm: Let’s talk about who makes more than the governor. I’ll start with district superindentants. Do some really need to make over 400k? Where’s the shared sacrfice there? - Retired State Employee - Wednesday, Jul 21, 10 @ 8:37 pm: Public Act 096-0961 ” make employee contributions required under Section 15-157 based on the rate of basic compensation during the periods of furlough, plus an amount determined by the Board to be equal to the employer’s normal cost of the benefit, plus compounded interest at the actuarially assumed rate from the date of voluntary or involuntary furlough to the date of payment. ” Apparently, nobody knows what is in the law. It was not hard to find. - AgreeItsSad - Wednesday, Jul 21, 10 @ 9:30 pm: I think both Quinn and the leadership of the U of I are a bunch of narcissist pre-Madonna’s that have rules for themselves and then rules for the rest of the state and the state employees. When questioned they are above that and can’t believe anyone could even try. Too bad they are taking the state down with them, oh and you can add Cellini and the rest to the list we can’t afford them anymore either. - Norseman - Wednesday, Jul 21, 10 @ 9:51 pm: Synopsis, DD? You’re analysis of the furlough bill consisted of reading the synopsis. Try opening up the full text of the bill and then read it. - Bookworm - Thursday, Jul 22, 10 @ 7:44 am: “bunch of narcissist pre-Madonna’s” I agree with the sentiment there, but I think you meant to say “prima donna”. Although there certainly were plenty of them around pre-Madonna as well - Beyond Frustrated - Thursday, Jul 22, 10 @ 9:12 am: How the Governor and his staff can say the furlough program this year is the same as last year is another show of total disconnect. Unless I’ve missed something, 24 is not the same as 12. And I love that we should feel comforted that pensions won’t be affected. Thank you so much for cutting pay by 9% and then requiring us to buy back those days (with interest) that you are forcing MC employees to take. Shared sacrifice my behind. This was a poorly executed attempt at face saving after giving multiple employees outrageous raises. Roll back the raises, drop the furlough days, and have the guts to do something constructive to fix the budget. Don’t hurt your own employees for good press (which you aren’t even getting!). Sorry, comments for this post are now closed.