* Reporters (as well as several commenters) have asked what impact this appointment of Jerry Stermer to comptroller will have on Stermer’s pension. His pay will go up about ten grand a year and he could be eligible to move over to the General Assembly Retirement System, which has a better benefit package than his current SERS deal.

Well, Stermer has always been a class act, and he demonstrated it again this afternoon.

Stermer will not pay into SERS during his three weeks as comptroller and will not seek to move over to GARS.

Good for him.

The haters are gonna have to find something else to complain about.

…Adding… As a commenter pointed out earlier, moving into GARS wouldn’t have meant much anyway…

If Mr. Stermer would qualify for a GARS pension (see 40 ILCS 5/2-105 for service requirements), for the first four years of GARS-eligible service, the pension is set at 3% of the office holder’s final salary for each year of service (https://www.srs.illinois.gov/GARS/retireben_gars.htm). With 24 days of service as Comptroller, his total benefit would be 24/365ths of 3% or 0.1973% of his final salary. Assuming that Mr. Stermer receives the same salary as the late Comptroller Topinka ($135,669.70), the most that this service could increase his pension (and it is not completely clear that it would) is $267.62 per year.

With that extra $21 per month, Mr. Stermer will finally be able to upgrade from basic cable.

* Also, I talked to Speaker Michael Madigan’s spokesman Steve Brown today about the Stermer appointment. The Speaker had asked for a bipartisan agreement with the “executive department.” Bruce Rauner’s statement about Stermer’s new job surely qualified as such…

“Appointing a temporary placeholder and keeping Judy Baar Topinka’s staff in place is an appropriate decision and will ensure continuity of services for the people of Illinois – for that I thank the governor. I know Jerry Stermer will be well served by Nancy Kimme and the team in the comptroller’s office.”

In light of that “executive department” agreement, I asked, does the Speaker have any new thoughts about a special session for a special election? Brown said his previous answer would be the same unless he hears otherwise and didn’t hold out much hope for that, claiming that a special session could possibly be dealt with in the spring session.