Posted on 09/01/2011 3:18:44 PM PDT by ADSUM
Mark Belling Conservative Radio Talk Host (Also Guest Host for Rush Limbaugh) on WISN Radio 1130 in Milwaukee exposes a Wisconsin union scam.
Teachers retired and started collecting pension and health benefits have been rehired again as teachers for this year in same school district.
This is double dipping and certainly is costing the taxpayers and also new teacher applicants that didn't get hired at a lower new teacher salary.
That’s always a possibility. Nonetheless, the school boards do the hiring, the bond issue deciding, and the spending.
School board elections are probably those that most directly impact the taxes of property owners around the nation and most of us don’t even know their names and backgrounds.
Pension gap divides public and private workers (2007 article but timely)
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-02-20-pensions-cover_x.htm
Paying retirees a pension and a paycheck doesn’t hurt just taxpayers. It also strains already-underfunded government pension systems and robs them of young workers who would contribute to the fund more than they take out. Astonishingly, at least 26 states pay the rehired retirees a new pension — a third dip — and in some cases don’t require that they contribute anything.
Beyond tightening the rules, the best way to end the abuses is to change the pension structure: More states could follow the lead of Michigan, Alaska, Florida and others in moving toward 401(k)-style pensions for new hires. Then, a government worker’s second career
wouldn’t be bankrolled twice by the neighbors. Failing that, state pension systems should at least raise retirement
ages for able-bodied workers toward the traditional 65, when the most people’s desire for fulltime work begins retreating faster than their hairlines.
Let me get this straight...These teachers were protesting because taxpayers covered them with 100% medical insurance and superb benefits and it was changed because WI was broke that they still got good pay but they’re health coverage was what everyday people have to pay with 80/20? And now they pulled a fast one and re hired with all of they’re 100% paid benefits?They cooked the books and used a trick to deceive?This is in direct violation of state and most likely federal law. We have the justice dept. that will look the other way and Obama desperately wanting they’re votes. So they will get away with it while people lose jobs much less have benefits and they want a bankers salary and benefits?
OMG. He is so right. Seriously, it's past time to get everything out of Washington and back into the hands of the states. Locally, they'd never get away with this type of thievery. Taxpayers would actually see the bills piling up.
“Exactly.
Not only that, they likely enter medical bills on both policies and get double payments.
I’ve been involved in School Board elections (usually as an opposition campaigner) in every community where I have ever lived for the past 50 years. Have you ever tried to bump someone off a school board? It is nearly impossible.
In the first place, the positions are never representational (in my experience). It’s always the top 3 vote getters, or top 2. IOW, they don’t represent neighborhoods, or voting districts. Name recognition means everything. So the same old people get elelcted. Even if someone does not want to continue to serve, they seldom say that. The get themselves re-elelcted and then they resign so that their successor is appointed by their friends on the board.
I have known of only one school board member to ever have been re-called and that involved misappropriation of funds involving the hiring of an unpopular Superintendent. And then she went on to be re-hired by her friends on the school board and was given a very cushy position as an administrator.
School board elections have more impact on property owner taxes than most any other election that gets held, and most of us don’t know the names of our school board members and what they stand for.
Yes indeed. We tried to elect 3 new board members by write in a couple of years ago and almost suceeded. It was a last minute effort after we had defeated a huge bond issue that the school board put up for election at an odd time of year, thus infuriating the taxpayers. We defeated the bond issue, but were unsuccesful at changing the board. We came very close, however. It is just about impossible to make the majority pay attention to the importance of these elections.
Furthermore, here the populace votes on the budget every year at a special meeting. It is usually done by voice vote (sometimes a show of hands) by those attending the meeting. Generally there is little publicity.
The votes that I have attended I’ve noticed board members and their minions stall the meeting until they are sure they have a majority. You see teachers and staff members scurrying around behinds the scenes and counting heads — then going outside and hitting the phones.
At the meetings I have attended (and it’s like pulling teeth to get anyone to come) they don’t even ask for ID to vote. I have no idea whether the people voting even live in the district. Nobody checks.
I don't believe there has EVER been a Pulitzer won by a journalist who exposed a left wing scam.
That’s just about the strangest budget voting process I’ve ever heard of. I have a lot to learn.
I'll bet that if you went down to the town coffee joint, only 1 out of 10 livivg here would know about it. And nobody would question why they are not taking names, or checking residence requirements.
They may not do that in the big cities (Milwaukee/Madison), but that is how all the suburbs are managed.
A deal is a deal.
I don’t have a problem with this; mind you, I have a problem with the idiot who made the deal in the first place.
But they are owed retirement.
If they work, they are owed a salary.
That’s not “double dipping” — that’s good planning on the part of the employees.
“same positions with their same seniority wages”
Ah, there’s the rub.
They should be re-hired and paid as 1st year teachers.
I don't think you quite understand the Wisconsin Public Employees pension system. Commencing a pension, then suspending it has no effect on other contractual benefits, like medical insurance. The insurance plans are a contractual benefit, the pension is administered by the Wisconsin Retirement System which is a state agency and it's rules are not determined by union contract or school board policy. In a way it's like Social Security except that it is funded by an actual trust fund with no "monkey business" IOU's. The only way to "double dip" would be to retire, start receiving you pension, then hire into an out of state position. If you rehire into a Wisconsin teaching position, the pension stops regardless of where in the state you find employment. School district doesn't matter as pension is a state wide benefit, administered by a state agency.
As long as this thread is pointing out who is "double dipping", military pensions are generous and allow you to work a civilian job after retiring from service. What do people think about that?
Regards,
GtG
PS I think you could also take a teaching position with an "in state" private/religious school and continue to receive a pension.
Don’t public employees retire on a regular basis and then get re-employed in another area of government - receiving both a pension and salary? There has got to be some advantage to retiring and returning to work for the same government employer or why would anyone do it?
GIG ... no, I think I have it right. The issue isn’t their back-to-work pay and benefits. In that they have no choice and will pay the necessary contribs, etc. I think it is a game for the long haul when they retire for real and “unsuspend” the pension started under the old rules, with free healthcare for life, etc. Unless they’re double dipping now, it is the only explanation that makes sense
Who is the “FAT GUY” next to the “GAY SKINNY ZERO?”
They are owed a pension upon retirement. They really didn’t retire. They scammed the system. They may not have broken the law, but it is not morally right, and they don’t care.
They are entitled to a salary if they continue working, but not both from the same employer. Some are making as much as $ 140,000 plus benefits for this double dipping.
I agree that government negotiator allowed early retirement for employees in their 50’s. This was giving away the store and allowing taxpayers to foot the bill.
They also scammed society by not allowing younger workers to get a teaching job at a less expensive wage. I agree that the Liberal schools boards are at fault for allowing this scam to continue. Hopefully the (Republican) legislature will correct this problem.
And as the evidence mounts about how bad the public school system is...and the majority of teachers in it...why are any Christian or conservative parents still sending their children into these schools to be taught by these teachers?
Are we really willing to hand the enemy the next generation of our children?
Pray that American parents will wake up...
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