By: Diane Benjamin OpenTheBooks.com has a wonderful new feature for seeing how your money is spent. It’s called BENJAMIN chatbox. It isn’t named after me, it’s named after Benjamin Franklin. Click this link and look in the lower right corner: https://www.openthebooks.com/ You can search salaries, pensions, and vendor payments for anyone who gets tax dollars. […]
By: Diane Benjamin Citizenship in America is meaningless as illegals continue to flood the border. They are handed benefits paid for by you. If you haven’t asked yourself why tax dollars are used to house them you probably went to a public school that didn’t teach what immigration as always been: opportunity, not freebies. You […]
By: Diane Benjamin WGLT employee RC McBride chaired the Vote YES for Unit 5 group that failed to get the referendum passed in November. That should convince you WGLT actively tried to convince you to vote YES, RC is the General Manager. On January 19th WGLT did a story detailing draconian cuts that would happen […]
By: Diane Benjamin Part 2: https://blnnews.com/2022/05/21/this-needs-explained-by-unit-5-part-2/ —— Follow-up to this story: https://blnnews.com/2022/05/18/unit-5-big-raises/ OpenTheBooks.com shows: In 2019 Unit 5 had 2059 employees – total salary: $85,561,545. In 2020 Unit 5 had 2024 employees – total salary: $90,070,590 That is a huge increase in salaries with fewer employees than the previous year. I FOIA’d the data Unit 5 […]
By: Diane Benjamin Unit 5 story: https://blnnews.com/2022/04/01/unit-5-did-esser-funds-inflate-salaries/ The numbers on the graph again come from Open The Books and from the ISBE School Report Card website: https://www.illinoisreportcard.com/District.aspx?source=studentcharacteristics&source2=enrollment&Districtid=17064087025 Enrollment decreased in 2020 and 2021. Employees increased a lot in 2021, but the average salary crashed. District 87 also needs to report where ESSER Funds were spent. […]
By: Diane Benjamin The chart below came from Open The Books. The number of employees and total payroll reported to Teachers Retirement Fund also came from Open The Books. The number of students each year came from this story – note enrollment DECREASED: https://blnnews.com/2022/03/04/unit-5-enrollment-is-decreasing/ Average salary is just Math. Even with enrollment down, salaries saw […]
By: Diane Benjamin See this story for MORE information: https://blnnews.com/2022/03/04/unit-5-enrollment-is-decreasing/ Without Open The Books this data would be very difficult to find! Salary information comes from data reported to pension funds. Checkbook data came from Unit 5. If you haven’t heard, Unit 5 wants you to pay more. Unit 5 needs to toss their Diversity, […]
By: Diane Benjamin Today’s paper has an article listing every organization that will receive a grant from the Illinois Prairie Community Foundation. They are handing out $157,347 to 73 programs. http://www.pantagraph.com/news/local/foundation-awards-k-in-community-grants/article_15fc82c0-e843-5927-b376-ed42c1b68707.html Since the Pantagraph has a policy against investigative journalism, I did it for them. The Illinois Prairie Community Foundation tax return for the year ended […]
By: Diane Benjamin With campaigns now beginning, maybe Tari will mention for the 1000th time how many fewer employees Bloomington has now. Truth? Below is what was reported as payroll in 2015 and 2016 for approval at the first meeting in November. Tari claims the payroll goes up roughly 2% every year. (whether citizens see […]
By: Diane Benjamin Household income in McLean is said to be around $60,000, maybe slightly higher. According to Open The Books – Unit 5, the top 250 employees in Unit 5 made more than $74,000 in 2015. The top 500 employees earn more than $59,000. 912 employees are currently members of the teacher’s union negotiating […]
By: Diane Benjamin While looking for something else, I found the following in the June 21st minutes of the County Board. http://www.mcleancountyil.gov/index.aspx?nid=464 At least one local company is bringing in foreign contractors and firing long time employees. The unemployment rate in Bloomington-Normal is skyrocketing. Local available jobs require skills, but don’t pay enough to support […]
By: Diane Benjamin If you are an ISU graduate I’m sure you’ve received fundraising calls from the ISU Foundation. As a non-profit organization, they have to file public tax forms. See them here: http://nccsweb.urban.org/communityplatform/nccs/organization/profile/id/376025713/popup/1 I’ve only looked at the first one listed-2014. Compensation must be disclosed – see the page below (Page 8 of the […]
By: Diane Benjamin The City of Chicago owns both O’Hare and Midway airports. From OpenTheBooks.com the salary of the person who manages BOTH airports in 2014 was: From Rosemarie’s LinkedIn page: How much does the CIRA Manager earn? http://blnnews.com/2016/01/28/cira-part-2/ $186,576 for managing O’Hare and Midway. $172,365 for managing CIRA. Anybody see a problem? […]
By: Diane Benjamin “We have to keep making progress” is one local talking point. Progress to what is never revealed – just progress. Last night City Manager David Hales got another raise. The logic used was to compare salaries for towns the size of Bloomington – all in Illinois. Evidently Renner believes Hales will leave […]
By: Diane Benjamin NOBODY has done more to force transparency on government than Adam Andrzejewski (An-Gee-eski) and his Open The Books project. If you aren’t on his email list, you need to be! Click here: http://tinyurl.com/OTB-Email-List Open the Books has compiled a summary for every taxing body in the State of Illinois. The entire list […]
by: Diane Benjamin The population of Madison Wisconsin is estimated at 243,344, Bloomington is around 77,000. That makes Madison more than 3 times bigger than Bloomington. Madison has a full-time Mayor, salary $131,855.74 Bloomington has a full-time City Manager, salary $202,489 Bloomington has 23 employees earning more than $125,000. Madison has 25 employees earning more than […]
by: Diane Benjamin Yesterday I posted the Bloomington Salary ranges by employee. Below is how Champaign compares to Bloomington. Obviously Champaign hires more part-time and seasonal staff.
