By David Stanczak
Three questions for you: First, how much salary would you pay an employee who works for you 5 months out of the year? Second, how much would you pay that employee in fringe benefits? Third, what kind of a pension program would you set up for him or her? Finally, how much job security would you give this employee if he or she did a crummy job?
My guess is that your answers to those questions are not much, none, none, and none.
We ARE paying part-time employees more than competitive salaries, with generous benefits, and a lavish pension program, and, even though collectively they are doing a documentably awful job, we can’t fire most of them. Our state legislators work annually between January and May. For that work, they receive a base salary of $67,836, which compares very favorably with legislators’ salaries in surrounding states: Wisconsin $51,000, Missouri $36,000, Iowa $25,000 and Indiana $24,000.
There are also health care benefits available, for which taxpayers pay $7,300 for each legislator. Then there are the per diems and mileage reimbursements which add up to $7,700 per lawmaker.
Pensions are the piece de resistance. Their pension plan allows retirement at 55 with 8 years of service, increased annually at 3% compounded. The cost of this plan, just for current obligations is $14,600 each. But since the plan is underfunded, catching up costs an additional $123,000 each, bringing the total cost of each legislator to about $167,500. But they’re worth it, right? You be the judge: they haven’t balanced a budget since 2001, they put the state’s credit in the toilet, amassed a growing pile of unpaid bills, and failed to reform the pension system which is gobbling up an ever increasing portion of the revenue available to the state.
And we can’t vote them out because with the present gerrymandered districts, 60% of them are unopposed.
David Stanczak, a Forum commentator since 1995, came to Bloomington in 1971. He served as the City of Bloomington’s first full-time legal counsel for over 18 years, before entering private practice. He is currently employed by the Snyder Companies and continues to reside in Bloomington with his family.
The opinions expressed within WJBC’s Forum are solely those of the Forum’s author, and are not necessarily those of WJBC or Cumulus Media Inc.
