Posted on 11/27/2012 6:07:41 AM PST by MichCapCon
When Flint Community Schools Superintendent Linda Thompson made news that she was going to retire, what was missed was the fiscal impact of her leaving the school system.
Thompson worked 36 years for the Flint school district and will be 57 when she retires. A public school employee who worked 36 years for Flint schools and made Thompson's average salary of $175,649 the past three years would earn a pension of $94,850 a year.
If that 57-year-old retiree received a pension for the 26 years of his or her life expectancy with a 3 percent cost of living annual increase, it would grow to $204,552 a year.
"They are getting lavish benefits from an underfunded pension system,” said James Hohman, a fiscal policy analyst with the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. "But the terms are the terms. The problem with the pension system is the politicians don’t put enough money aside for it. It's not her fault that politicians can't be trusted to manage a pension."
Thompson's benefits are part of the guarantees written into the contracts she worked under in her time in the district. The generous terms highlight the need for serious reform of the taxpayer-funded teacher pensions systems.
The Michigan Public School Employees' Retirement System’s unfunded liability has reached $22.4 billion. One reason is the state tacks on a 3-percent annual cost of living adjustment to many of the pensions of public school retirees.
The state law was changed in 2010 so that public school employees hired from July 1, 2010 and after do not get the 3 percent cost of living adjustment.
A 2010 study done by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy found that only 6 of 24 major private companies in Michigan had a defined benefit pension plan similar to what teachers are offered. And none of the 24 private companies offered cost-of-living increases.
A contract is a contract - if you don't want to honor it, you shouldn't have entered into it. If you let people purchase your businesses' services/goods on credit, you have every right to expect them to pay you. Unless you think that if times get tough, their responsibility to pay you should be put on the table...
Yup, and this is precisely why companies that offer retirement plans favor DC over DB. DB plans are relics of days gone by, but public sector DB plans will haunt taxpayers for generations to come.
” Not making millions that is for sure like CEOs do. “
No making millions like the CEOs who generate hundreds of millions. ahh I cee
Except this “contract” was negotiated by & between two union entities. Making your comparison invalid.
And when those contracts break the backs of taxpayers, should the suffering be one sided all the time?
Not so much invalid when put in context - you seem to assume she decided to become a teacher specifically for the union support. Many union members are just working schmucks who wanted a job and had little or nothing to do with what deals the union management made. Who do you know, that when told that someone was "fighting for their benefit" would tell them to just stay out of it and leave me with lower wages and benefits? I get ragged all the time because I'm a retired AF DOD employee and that means I'm a drag on the country - some of us have solid work ethics and provide a service just as cheaply or cheaper than most contractors could (since the hourly rate that contractors get is much higher than the actual wage due to them being the "provider of benefits") and the money comes out of the same tax pot - lumping us altogether is naive and simplistic. Unions need to go, but it's not the fault of all the workers that they have busted so many banks. I will concede that those who decide to organize and protest, like the Chicago teachers, are a big part of the problem because they don't care if it busts the bank - they'd rather be put on welfare than save their jobs by allowing common sense into the mix - the only time most of them even care about the unions is when the unions tell them that the other guy is screwing them.
Face it financial reality has changed.
No making millions like the CEOs who generate hundreds of millions. ahh I cee
Who do you think she hired to ensure those CEOs were ready to hire people? Her has the CEO of the School District had to be methodical in hiring great teachers in order to educate future CEOs who in turn hire more people. It starts with this little underpaid individual!!!
I don’t care if she gets 3 million a year. If that’s what she contracted for, then every penny of it is due her. She completed her end of the contract and now it’s time for the state to complete its end of the contract.
I know a young woman who became a teacher just this year. She did 2 years of college while she was in highschool which turned out to be a farce. The credits didn’t transfer and she had to RE-DO those two years and then add the remaining two for her bachelors in education degree.
One week before graduation, they decided she needed yet another year of school. Why? For the extra tuition they’d receive. She’s no dummy and she addressed the issue, she won. That’s how the scam was discovered. She wasn’t the only one, and it’s been successfully done to several students over the last 10 years.
She gets her first teaching job and in order to receive the college tuition assistance she contracted for, she has to work in low grade education systems for the next several years. Her starting salary is $30 grand per year. From that salary, she has to pay union dues, medical insurance, retirement, and taxes which are higher for her because she’s single. Additionally, she does have to return some of the monies used for acquiring her education.
That all comes out even before her rent on her house, utilities, car payment, insurance, groceries, gasoline.. can be paid.
What exactly DOES she have left to live on to pay those basic living expenses? Pretty darn little. She ALMOST qualifies for food stamps.
Furthermore, she doesn’t work her 40 hours, go home and her time is her own. She’s also a sports coach (primary coach) plus she has meetings upon meetings, PLUS she has to take work home with her..several hours worth a night which means even her weekends aren’t her own! And all for $30K/yr.
The system gets TWO positions filled for the price of one, and she had to contract that way to even get a teaching job.
Does she HAVE to pay union dues? Yes. Because the political structure of education is demanding performance from teachers which can cost you YOUR job if someone before you didn’t do theirs. And she’s a first year teacher with several students from seriously troubled homes who didn’t even get to go to school, but because of their ages, had to be placed in her class.
Their lack of education means they have to be brought up to grade level. It takes more than one year of school to make up the difference in 8 years of no education, but their low scores WILL impact her grade as a teacher. Somebody has to cover her butt and the only one to do that is a union.
I am a homeschool supporter over public education. It’s what I prefer, but I’m not without empathy for the bureaucratic BS that educators must contend with. There really ARE natural teachers out there such as this young woman I’m using as a real life example, but I also know that if I were in HER shoes? I’d burn out PDQ. I’m sure many have.
The political pressure takes time and energy from a teacher, and leaves little for the students to thrive on.
“Poor teachers” indeed...
But what’s REALLY creepy and I do believe Americans in general with Freepers in particular need to guard against is the hint of perversion that comes with the mention of a decent salary.
Watch out for that folks!! I’m seeing a LOT of it in a lot of places right now.
Life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, includes the right to make money AND get rich if that’s what you so desire.
And now we have a wind of disdain for those who’ve busted rump and are now living decently in their old age? While in the same breath denouncing those who need to collect public assistance???? You can’t burn this candle on both ends and come up with a good result..
Beware!!
Yes I’m sure dozens of CEO’s come out of the Flint Michigan school district. Hundreds even
LOL @ School superintendent = CEO
I don’t know how 36 years in counts as early retirement. If you get into a system early and stay long you get to retire at a young age. You can do the same thing in the private sector without a union, but you have to put in the time in the same company and pay into retirement system.
She did 36 years in and retired with a little over half her salary. What part of that is so wrong? The fact that she’s “only” 57?
You can do the same thing working in a lot of different places. I have a number of relatives who put together similar deals by lifing in the military. Join when you’re 18, retire at 43 with 25 years in with a significant percentage of your ending salary and COLA adjustments. My father-in-law retired as a Lt Colonel in his 40s then jumped from the military to Hugh’s, put in 15 years there and got another solid retirement plan.
It’s really about buying into a retirement plan and STAYING. If you make the right choice as a young adult you can retire young with good money. But you need to make that choice young. To retire at 57 with 36 years in means she started at 21 and worked up the food chain.
Of course I don’t blame individual union members. Much less so military pensioners, who rendered as far more important service to ths country, IMO. But the facts are facts - generous union contracts are breaking us.
She supported her union in their “negotiations”...parasite, yes. Posing as if having no responsibility...yes.
Judges have consistently ruled that municipalities have to live up to their end of the contract.
Please don't misunderstand - I agree it's a dirty deal and both the unions and the officials they support need to go. Most of the workers are just there and had a choice of joining the union or not getting a job. While many come to love the "perks" there are many who just stay quiet and go along for the ride - I don't fault them for having chose a career path that gave them expectations that they used to plan for their retirements. My wife doesn't belong to a union but her retirement perks are pretty good due to other union folks negotiating deals that have become "standards". She had no idea of how plush the deal was until she started looking into her retirement.
I agree - unions have destroyed more than than just companies - they have taken whole States and much of the country for a ride. The only way to fix it is for companies to go into bankruptcy to renegotiate deals (if the Feds will let them) or for the People to start electing officials/reps who understand what a cancer unions have become. They also need to approach it like some of the Social Security reform plans that have been offered; grandfather those of a certain age group and decrease the perks for the younger folks who have time to make long-term plans, else, a lot of people who aren't at fault will end up on the dole. The continuance of what has gone on is very persistent and hard to break and it's also to overcome people's fears when they will be affected - it's like trying to pour only a little out of a spittoon; it all comes out in one strand.
It's like this, in our system people are paid different salaries, and if a retirement system is based on that salary, then that's what some get ~ not everyone ~ but some.
She's getting much more than Jesse Jackson Jr.
Of course they have. And this is the best definition of a 'conflict of interests' I can imagine.
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