Nikita Richards should be fired today

By: Diane Benjamin Nikita Richards is not only the chair of the local Democrat Party, she is an employee of the City of Bloomington in Human Resources. Yesterday she posted this on Facebook: Nikita just alienated all 130 Bloomington police officers. Nikita accused every officer of being unprofessional at best and racist at worst. How […]

Pension Spiking: incredible waste of money

By:  Diane Benjamin Spiking pensions in Bloomington has cost taxpayers over $2,000,000 since 2012. Spiking a pension means collecting more in retirement than employees are entitled to.  Your government “gifts” them more retirement at taxpayer expense.  The IMRF retirement system started charging for spiking when they realized the pension funds would not remain viable if […]

How about Outsourcing HR?

By:  Diane Benjamin I was looking for something else when I came across this again on my computer:  http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/watchdog/ct-municipal-pension-padding-met-20150816-story.html The story is from August 2015.  It is where we found out for the FIRST time that City employees were allowed to spike their pensions, and then taxpayers had to make additional payments to IMRF (the […]

Oops – Bloomington slipped

By: Diane Benjamin See this link:  http://www.bizjournals.com/chicago/news/2015/12/08/on-a-list-of-top-cities-for-tech-job-and-wage.html On a list of top cities for tech, job and wage growth, Chicago and Illinois rank low On a new list that ranks U.S. cities for their growth in the technology industry, wages and jobs, Chicago and the rest of Illinois don’t fare very well. Excerpts: How were […]