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 dont 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 Systems 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.
Unions don't do that!
Which raises a good question ~ how many folks on this thread have the slightest understanding of how management deferred payment plans and retirements work and why?
I’ve long argued that many of our problems lie at the most local level, with school boards, citizens associations, etc.
I had served on several boards in our county and noticed I was heavily outnumbered by liberal Dems. One thing I’ll give them credit for is putting in their time to go to those board meetings and become involved in the decision-making process.
In the meanwhile, Republicans are at home, working with their own kids and doing their own jobs, running their own businesses. But they are not out in the community, taking part in how their assets are being spent.
I doubt there are more than about 5,000 school superintendents.
“Most of them lose money had over fist. “
Most companies make money or they cease to exist, unless you are talking about the Post Office of course. Now they take losing money to a whole new level.
So the fewer number of school supers makes them rare and apparently worth more because they can’t get anyone else to take a gravy govt job for less than $175k/yr with a $100k retirement plan.
yeah boyyy!
Point taken - the story didn't make it clear (at least to me), but the salary itself should have raised a flag. Are you saying that this employee wasn't union-related or that it didn't really matter due to the difference in how the different retirement plans are negotiated/handled? This curious mind really wants to know and the Enquirer is fresh out of stories about the topic.
This is about union retirees getting lavish benefits from an underfunded pension system.
Personally, I think the question of management/mismanagement of the plans is a union red herring.
Did someone put a gun to her head...and force her to become a “teacher”?
ROFLOL!!!!
Bewahahaha....The joke is on the private sector...They're 100 percent screwed by government at all levels.
Bewaahahahaha...She nothing but a tax paid school administrator...lol
This site is teaming with big gov hacks who try to rationalize this out of control corrupt government insanity.
Just don’t pay her. Let her sue. To hell with the “contract”...libs don’t believe in laws anyway.
You realize that USPS has a financing mechanism, and a special law, that if followed as designed would result in them not losing any money at all.
Olympia Snowe came up with the current modification to that process and it will bankrupt USPS ~ and she's gone now. Time to give all her cr*p up and get back to the basics and follow the law.
Now, what are you going to do about turning Department of Defense into a profit center?
About the 7 million CEOs, most of them have not been making profits the last few years and it's actually getting worse. That's one of the big reasons they aren't hiring people. In theory they should go out of business, but that usually doesn't happen instantly ~ I'd imagine that as Obamugabe raises taxes on them they will, in fact, go out of business, go on food stamps, and get in touch with their inner winos and street bums eh.
If they'd hired her properly, and signed onto the right competitive contract, she'd make several times that ~
“This site is teaming with big gov hacks who try to rationalize this out of control corrupt government insanity. “
This crossed my mind as well.
They are for small govt as long as its not their cush job.
Take your marxist nonsense somewhere else!
lol you are funny mail man
Do you even know what Marxism is? Your blind support of bigger govt is far closer to it than anything I’ve ever supported.
Your use of the big Lie technique is also similiar to their tactics.
Your typical communist government in the period where there were such critters simply didn't allow private contracts at all ~
So, yeah, you suggest ignoring contracts you're a commie ~ a marxist ~
Big government doesn't want you to respect private contracts between individuals, nor between you and anyone else.
BIg government thinks it can just issue an edict to hand over your stuff and you hand it over.
Sorry, I do not support big government ~ but the people who think the right to contract can be abrogated at will do believe in big government.
Thank God for Smith, and for Wesson ~ they come into play when some goober, in or out of government, thinks he can just break a contract.
Marxists use unions to gain contracts which take control over businesses. It is the contracts which are putting the education system and the post office out of business financially.
Only the govt could take an organization which has a virtual monopoly (100% market share) and bankrupt it.
Face it, you are a mailman and are counting on those cushy retirement plans that the rest of the company pays for.
You sure do protest a lot for a union hack, you must have a cush job pushing junk mail around.
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