By Allen Skillicorn -
Jim Edgar has been getting a lot press lately for pushing Speaker Mike Madigan's $7,000,000,000 out of balance spending spree. What Edgar isn't talking about is why Illinois' finances are in such shambles.
Notice that the former governor doesn't talk about a quarter of our budget going to fund pensions. He doesn't talk about the pension debt that crowds out spending on the mentally handicapped or educating our children. No talk about the fact that Jim Edgar mortgaged our pensions through his infamous "Edgar Pension Ramp"!
As of Jan 2016, Jim Edgar’s GARS pension info:
Twenty-two years ago, both Jim Edgar and Mike Madigan colluded on a plan to allow them both to spend more money than they had. They knew that fully funding pensions was expensive and the legislature, like a pay-day loan store, would allow them to come up with scheme that could pass billions of debt to the next generation.
That's right, today's millennials will eventually have to pay off the money Edgar borrowed from the pension funds of teachers, cops, fire fighters, and other civil servants.
On the topic of Edgar and pensions, did you know that Jim Edgar contributed only $164k total to his pension plan? He currently collects $13,027.58 per month in pension and it only took him about 13 months into retirement to recoup his entire contribution back.
Jim Edgar is a pension millionaire and stands to rake in over $4.7 Million. That isn't a modest pension, that's a lottery payout!
For more information on why Jim Edgar is part of problem click here:
Allen Skillicorn is Republican candidate for Illinois House in the 66th House District.
And in his booklet summarizing his term as governor, he bragged, “The governor approved the most significant increase in pension benefits for state workers in a quarter century.” See http://www.pjstar.com/x1671795427/Finke-Senate-and-governor-square-off?page=1
Now THIS is a story!
Well done IR, thank you for posting.
I will be looking forward to Mark Rhoads and Irene Starkehaus’ defense of their beloved establishment republicans on this topic, I expect it to go something like “Trump is a racist …”.
HEY! It costs BIG money to play in the race-horse game!
Edger made his pile. Now the state is broke.
If he really HAS any brains, he should sit down, shut up, count his money, and stay OUT of Illinois politics.
He was a prodigy of Big Jim Thompson. He is lucky to be one of the few Illinois governors since 1960 to have escaped indictment, conviction, and a prison sentence.
STAY HOME, Mr. Edgar, and SHUT UP.
Ne also appears to be making $71,000 a year as a visiting Professor at the U of I.
http://salaryguide.dailyillini.com/#/search
What the WHAT!?!
Edgar’s name (with an R behind it) has long been lauded as a respected one…this should fix that, especially since he clearly fixed the system in his own favor!
Once again Lake slanders without ever doing a lick of real homework. He is too lazy to do the research that would have told him that I always opposed raids on the pension fund for other spending no matter who was governor. I never served when Jim Edgar was governor because I left while Thompson was still governor. But of course I have to agree with Lake when he says Donald Trump is a racist and much worse.
I’m baffled by Edgar’s apparent absence of conscience. How does anyone with even a modicum of integrity continue to slurp at the public trough while so many Illinoisans suffer?
“What kind of Governor was Edgar?”
Well, before he was Governor, he was the Illinois Secretary of State.
I remember a radio interview at that time, when he claimed to have visited several of his SOS offices around this state, and commented on “the GREAT job they are doing.”
My friend (who shall remain anonymous) who worked in an SOS office, informed me that Edgar always announced his itinerary several weeks in advance, so those places would be on good behavior when he showed up.
FIX!!
If he would have emulated that great Republican Teddy Roosevelt when he was New York City’s police commissioner and dressed like any common person, left his entourage behind, and walked in to those offices unannounced to observe what REALLY goes on, maybe it would have done some good.
But that’s not the way elected bureaucratic executives operate, is it?