By: Diane Benjamin
That’s to IMRF (Illinois Municipal Retirement Fund) for answering my FOIA request the same day it was filed!
I filed it because there is another Accelerated Payment to IMRF on the Bills and Payroll to be approved Monday night. That practice should have ended years ago.
If you don’t know what it is, basically employees are allowed to accumulated Sick Leave and get paid for when they retire or leave employment with the City of Bloomington. For years employees had used that payout to increase the pension they received. The law was changed in 2012 requiring the Accelerated Payments to compensate for all the money not paid into the pension system while the employee was working.
The accelerated payment was easy to avoid, just pay it after the employee’s the last day, not before. It took Bloomington YEARS to change the policy that has now cost taxpayers almost $5,000,000. Add that to the long list of other abuses like the never used fire station and water tower.
Below is the complete list of accelerated payments. All of these people are collecting larger pension payments because they were allowed to “spike” their pensions. Note the recent ones:
EMILY V. BELL $358,394.12 12/8/2014 $360,031.11 30-Apr-15 is all time fleece of taxpayer funds.
It pays to head HR
This is absolutely obscene. I suppose they just say to themselves, “who’s going to make me?” And they continue to ignore the law. But that is typical for leftist progressive democrats. BTW, even Attorney Laurie Wollrab is in on it. These people have no shame and no integrity.
Still waiting for the City of Bloomington to pay my dad’s sick leave. It has only been 28 years. Him and Joe Rusk were both screwed out of it. No worries…City still paying 100 percent on his retirement.