Chicago Cops/Firemen Retire as Millionaires

Publius Forum ^ | December 3, 2010 | Warner Todd Huston

[shibumi]

-By Warner Todd Huston

There really is no excuse for any public servant to retire with a pension worth $1.3 million dollars of the people’s tax money. None. But that is precisely what happens in the City of Chicago according to Chicago’s Civic Committee.

Crain’s Greg Hinz reports that the Civic Commission sent an email blast out to its members late last week reporting that the typical Chicago Fireman who retires after 20 years of service will make $1.3 million in pension benefits. Cops make a bit less at $1.2 million.

These public servants can also retire at age 50, almost two decades earlier than the rest of us. This means that these retired city officers can potentially live one third of their lives or more on the public dime. After 20 measly years’ service.

Now, I certainly realize that cops have a high stress job. I also realize that both policemen and firemen can be called upon to put their personal safety, even their lives, on the line (though by no means do all of them do so). But these pensions are an impossible corruption of our system. No one deserves such luxury on the backs of the poor taxpayer.

Public employees unions have played their part in the suicide pact that our elected officials have initiated. This corrupt bargain was joined by our politicians in order to get handsome campaign contributions from the unions that dug deep into their pockets in order to get more favorable laws and regulations, ever richer benefits and pay scales, and permanent favored status from the pols. But the butcher’s bill is coming due, after all.

The public employee pension crisis is here. Will our elected officials have the guts to tackle it before there is utter collapse?

[Venturer]

As I stated in my post I have friends that have lived a long time and others who have not.

Mostly they died from black lung or lung cancer and from heart ailments. I admit some of them smoked.

You believe what you like it doesn’t matter to me. I hope to live long enough that when they half staff the flag for me that not one person left in the Department knows who I was.

[Leisler]

By and large, I’m imbecilicly positive.

[winodog]

It's a damn tough job. Injuries that you get early in life tend to come back and haunt you in later years.

So is construction and most blue collar jobs.. But firemen retire on money stolen by force from others. So its no problem getting a fat pension and great healthcare for the last twenty plus years of your life.

[winodog]

Firemen retire making double the money then most of us make during our best earning year.
Pensions for public service should be capped out at about 40,000 per year. make them pay for healthcare like the rest of us peons who are forced to pay for their grand lifestyle.

I am tired of paying for the public sector to crapp in high cotton, not to mention the other crap we pay for like bombing innocent men, women & children from 30,000 feet to appease muzzies or paying for the murder of children in mothers womb.

Our flag no longer has the same meaning. let alone our nation. The fedgov.con has morphed into a evil agent of Satan and they are just getting warmed up.

[dragnet2]

Fire all these city, county and state workers who are choking off the private sector tax payers...If they don’t like making 15 bucks an hour, or LESS, they can go find other work!!!

[dragnet2]

Those in the private sector have had enough of this city, county and state bull shit...We’re getting gang raped by these way over paid cops and fire department types... If they these people don’t like $15 bucks and hour, or less, tell these government employees to go get real jobs in the private sector...They’re crippling the private sector with their overpaid bull shit...We’ve had enough is this sh*t.

[shibumi]

First, I want to thank all of you who responded, regardless of whether we agree on the premise of this article or not..

In posting, I admit to having an emotional interest (and perhaps bias) on this issue. I have had several friends on CPD, including two close relatives.. Two of my friends (and one relative) worked on the Gang Crimes Unit. They are both dead now.

Trying to put emotions to the side as best I can, my original comment was made in an attempt to point out that there’s a big difference between having a pension that could ~potentially~ pay out $1.2MM and actually being a millionaire, as in having $1.2MM in a lump sum all at once.

I may also be evincing a tendency to prioritize based on my early education. I am always mindful of the fact that in Plato’s Republic, the key component class was that of the Guardians. Or, I may just be displaying the angst of a Firefighter’s father.

What or whichever, I thank you all for your input and as a parting thought, I think that the necessary trimming in state and municipal budgets (and federal, for that matter) could be better done among the ranks of the bloated leeches who infect the bureaucracies rather the providers of necessary services.

(For the record, my definition of what services are “necessary” is extremely narrow.)

[chrisser]

Fire all these city, county and state workers who are choking off the private sector tax payers...If they don’t like making 15 bucks an hour, or LESS, they can go find other work!!!

I've compared job-to-job public vs private sector in my industry.

Although public sector pays less initially (due to the union-sponsored priority of seniority over skills), if you take an average public sector worker with 10 years in that organization, and a private sector worker with 10 years experience, the pay will be about the same, but the public sector worker will be building a pension.

At 20 years, the public sector worker has a definite pay advantage.

At 30 years, the public sector worker will be paid far above the private sector average, and then shortly thereafter, the public sector worker retires with a very nice pension, usually based on the last 5 years of salary, which he is free to pad with overtime to maximize the return for the rest of his life.

And, if they haven't been sick, many public sector workers can accumulate sick and personal days over their entire career and take a year off with pay before they retire. Try that in the private sector.

[dragnet2]

That's why I keep telling people their being gang raped by government at all levels...

In addition, it's the government that caused this epic invasion of illegal aliens that is costing tax payers tens of hundreds of billions more, while choking off our entire health care justice and education systems, not to mention the governments destructive legal chain immigration policies, all while tens of millions of Americans are out of work..