* Press release…
The Campaign for Comptroller Leslie Geissler Munger on Wednesday called on Chicago City Clerk Susana Mendoza to pass on one of her two public pensions to make up for her ten years of simultaneously taking in two government paychecks.
The campaign noted that Mendoza raked in two salaries – one from the city of Chicago and the other from the state – during her ten years of “service” in Springfield. The paydays coincided with government contributions to her two public pensions.
“Susana Mendoza voted for the unbalanced budgets, tax increases and pension holidays that put Illinois in fiscal crisis,” Munger Campaign Manager Phil Rodriguez said. “At the same time, she picked up two paychecks and sweetened her two pensions. It embodies all the problems that have led us to this place.”
Mendoza started working for the City of Chicago in 1998 as a Project Coordinator. In 2000, she won a Party Primary for State Representative and received a 33 percent raise for her city job a month later. She then served ten years in the General Assembly, all the while remaining on the city and state payrolls.
The salaries coincided with contributions to two public pensions.
“It’s time for a change,” Rodriguez said. “Leslie Munger spent her career balancing budgets and meeting financial expectations. She has dedicated nearly two decades to serving developmentally disabled adults. She doesn’t accept a public pension or state health care benefits. The contrast could not be clearer.”
You’d think that info about Munger’s “two decades” of dedication to “serving developmentally disabled adults” would be on her campaign bio page. It ain’t.
Other than that, what do you think of the release?
…Adding… Her explanation is in her official bio…
She is an active community leader and volunteer, and was honored as Lincolnshire’s Citizen of the Year in 2004. She is a long time volunteer and former Board member at the Riverside Foundation, a not-for-profit residential facility for developmentally disabled adults in Lincolnshire where she was the Volunteer of the Year in 2013 and the Distinguished Service Award Honoree in 2016.
*** UPDATE *** From Susana Mendoza…
“Like Rod Blagojevich, a pathological liar who attacked Susana on this same false charge years ago, Leslie Munger isn’t telling the truth. When Susana retires, she will have only one pension. What’s true is Leslie Munger flat out lied at the Chicago Tribune last week when she denied that her campaign chair is Elizabeth Brandt when official documents signed by Munger herself show Brandt, the leader of the movement to slash the paychecks of thousands of Illinois private sector workers, is in fact her campaign chair. Leslie Munger is very wealthy and doesn’t have to worry about a safety net when she retires unlike 99% of other Americans. We need a truth-telling independent comptroller, not a Rod Blagojevich quoting, factually challenged lap dog for Bruce Rauner.”
Yikes.
