By: Diane Benjamin Agenda: https://bloomingtonil.portal.civicclerk.com/event/4112/files/agenda/9284 Up to $50,000 for an audit of your sales tax mental health spending? Since the money has been stockpiling instead of being spent, $50,000? Money is meaningless to government because they aren’t spending their own. Why doesn’t this include 2025? . The only item on the regular agenda is: . […]
By: Diane Benjamin The City of Bloomington voted in July to suspend payments to the County for the Behavioral Health Action Plan starting July 1, 2025: Shared Sales Tax suspended Why is this payment listed on Bills and Payroll if payments are suspended? Bills and Payroll 12-15-2025 I’d ask but getting an answer is evidently […]
By: Diane Benjamin Agenda: https://bloomingtonil.portal.civicclerk.com/event/1021/files/agenda/6725 Justin Boyd is getting a Proclamation for serving 9 years on the Planning Commission. The documentation doesn’t say if he’s leaving or if he’s just being celebrated. My question: Is Bloomington better now because of his ‘Planning” than it was 9 years ago? Guess what’s back! . TEN YEARS ago […]
By: Diane Benjamin Sometimes I think readers know what I mean when I say Accelerated Payments since I’ve been writing about them for years. Since 1 commentor asked what the numbers in this story mean, I will explain in detail: https://blnnews.com/2025/06/05/bloomington-is-still-spiking-pensions-2/ Bloomington employees are allowed to accumulate sick days (Sick Leave Buy Back). They collect […]
By: Diane Benjamin Bloomington could have a short meeting tonight: http://bloomingtonil.iqm2.com/Citizens/FileOpen.aspx?Type=1&ID=1163&Inline=True Some highlights: Is anyone going to ask why businesses keep leaving downtown for the East side? Is anyone going to admit the City Core is Veterans Parkway not downtown? Sick Leave Buy Back is still being paid, it just can’t be used to spike […]
By: Diane Benjamin Bills and Payroll: https://www.cityblm.org/home/showpublisheddocument/26488/637588526176300000 Wasn’t Sick Leave Buy Back abolished? Buy local? Not when Amazon can deliver office and cleaning supplies with a mouse click. This is what the City spent in one month: Even administration participated: Remember when the Coliseum was sold as it would pay for itself? https://blnnews.com/2017/01/28/coliseum-who-to-blame/ Hint: It […]
By: Diane Benjamin The law was changed in 2012 to require additional contributions to IMRF retirement fund if employees received large payouts that increased their pension at retirement. (accelerated payments) That law was badly needed because cities and employees never contributed to the higher payouts. Since the spiking practice should now be over in Bloomington […]
By: Diane Benjamin Someday SLBB is going to end. It cost you MILLIONS because employees were allowed to spike their pensions which meant additional funds had to be paid into the retirement system. Add that to the MILLIONS spent on a never used fire station and more spent on a never used water tower. Add […]
By: Diane Benjamin https://www.cityblm.org/Home/ShowDocument?id=25362 I thought there was a deadline for City of Bloomington employees to retire if they wanted to spike their pensions, but evidently it’s still happening: These two employees will receive much higher pension benefits merely because nobody at the City stopped them. This fleece has cost Bloomington taxpayers MILLIONS of dollars […]
By: Diane Benjamin https://www.cityblm.org/Home/ShowDocument?id=23816 Celebrate! More pension spoking: Just a reminder of how much you pay for empty buses every month: Save these for when the reports gets posted, it will be a long time: Amelia Buragas isn’t on the Council – why is she getting a free trip from taxpayers? See PDF page 88 […]
By: Diane Benjamin Public comment only had two people, one was a member of the Connect Transit Working Group. See her comments at 13:30. She was excited about the upcoming report. It will be interesting to see how many members agree with her. Those who don’t agree need to issue their own report. She mentioned […]
By: Diane Benjamin Source: http://bloomingtonil.iqm2.com/Citizens/FileOpen.aspx?Type=1&ID=1051&Inline=True Does the highlighted name look familiar? https://blnnews.com/2019/11/04/bloomington-fireman-5-gets-off/ You might have missed the Edgar County Watchdogs version: https://edgarcountywatchdogs.com/2019/11/illinois-state-university-police-let-fireman-off-of-alleged-dui-due-to-his-employment/ The BCPA staff uses this building instead of the the BCPA offices. No event reports have been posted for the BCPA since my last FOIA. Citizens have no idea what happens in […]
By: Diane Benjamin The Live Stream of the Council meeting had no sound last night. Today a video is posted with no sound until around 12:00. When there is sound it wasn’t recorded from the microphones, people whispering, shuffling papers, and footsteps can be heard in numerous places. At 8:10 a lady spoke during public […]
By: Diane Benjamin Payments for tonight: https://www.cityblm.org/Home/ShowDocument?id=23165 Who did they pay moving expenses for in Administration? More traveling at your expense! The cost of auditing, don’t forget – they aren’t looking for fraud. Can’t announce a new season without a party! I wonder if there is a course in “Right Fit”? What’s happening at the […]
By: Diane Benjamin https://www.cityblm.org/Home/ShowDocument?id=22419 There isn’t any new business on the agenda – everything is on the Consent Agenda. Unless some item is pulled, the meeting will last 10 minutes. The former Gypsy Room, now Mystic Kitchen and Tasting Room is up for a Liquor License. It includes package liquor. To start they will only […]
by: Diane Benjamin http://www.cityblm.org/Home/ShowDocument?id=22287 Reports to me from people who attended last year: Don’t take your kids: The documentation doesn’t name the Parkview Inn, but this ordinance is so they can get back in the gaming business. It’s generic in case another establishment with video gaming now is destroyed and rebuilt: Tari Renner and Jenn […]
By: Diane Benjamin A reader told me the paper has an article about a new musical at Heartland Community College: Gypsy. Will the self-appointed head of the speech police, Jenn Carrillo, attack them the way she attacked a fledgling downtown business when they had Gypsy in their name? Bills and Payroll from the first meeting […]
By: Diane Benjamin City of Bloomington AFSCME Local 699 ratified a new contract yesterday that eliminates Sick Leave Buy Back. The City Council will approve it Monday. Congrats to both sides! For once the City did not hire a Chicago lawyer to negotiate for them. That made a contract easier to achieve and saved both […]
By: Diane Benjamin Below is what the failure by the Bloomington City Council to change the Sick Leave Buy Back policy has cost you. Penalties began to be charged in 2012, they are assessed for allowing employees to spike their pensions with pay for unused days off. Received by FOIA from IMRF: (the final cost […]
By: Diane Benjamin Bills and payroll for Monday night: http://www.cityblm.org/Home/ShowDocument?id=21241 6 more employees will be spiking their pensions: This is the penalty for the last group who spiked theirs: The legal budget must be running out of money, this is less than a normal month. I filed a FOIA request for the […]
By: Diane Benjamin http://www.cityblm.org/Home/ShowDocument?id=20987 More pensions spiking: (the penalties will come late) Coliseum continues to fleece: Employee partying, but called Community Relations. Were you invited? Springfield Law firm MONTHLY charges: I have no idea what this is, but Nov-Jan wasn’t paid until February? Is […]
By: Diane Benjamin Bills and payroll for Bloomington Monday night: http://www.cityblm.org/Home/ShowDocument?id=20474 I wonder who taxpayers will be handing gift cards to: Green Top’s taxpayer 3 month subsidy: Celebrate! Four more employees spiked their already high unaffordable pensions so they get an even more unaffordable retirement at your expense: Agenda: http://www.cityblm.org/Home/ShowDocument?id=20488 Likely without discussion […]
By: Diane Benjamin Bills and Payroll: http://www.cityblm.org/Home/ShowDocument?id=20301 Ending Sick Leave Buy Back and the penalties that go with allowing employees to spike their pensions is not going to end anytime soon. What the Council passed recently was a dog and pony show designed to make you believe they heard your outrage. Monday night you will […]
By: Diane Benjamin PDF page 336 http://www.cityblm.org/Home/ShowDocument?id=20206 Sick Leave Buy Back and the resulting pension spiking is finally being addressed (years late) Monday night. The law changed in 2012 to allow IMRF to penalize municipalities who practice pension spiking. Without doing another FOIA to IMRF, I believe the penalties Bloomington has paid are nearing $2,000,000. […]
By: Diane Benjamin Bills and Payroll for 6/11/2018 http://www.cityblm.org/Home/ShowDocument?id=18004 More Pension Spiking! 1200 hours of paid time @ $44.85 per hour. The second one doesn’t list the hours. More vote-buying with your money. They call it Community Relations to sound nice. Is Code Enforcement being outsourced now? Anybody want to FOIA? Huge Petty Cash at the BCPA has […]
By: Diane Benjamin Bills and Payroll Monday night: http://www.cityblm.org/Home/ShowDocument?id=17676 Bi-Weekly Overtime! (hours/payment – PDF page 6) Weekly employees Overtime: Two entries for Sick Leave Buy Back. Pension Spiking: More expenses for the Coliseum? They haven’t gotten to the elevator yet. Consultants – Administration How many downtown properties aren’t paying taxes because Bloomington bought them? Maybe […]
By: Diane Benjamin Bills and Payroll Monday night: http://www.cityblm.org/Home/ShowDocument?id=16320 The report shows paying 461 Bi-Weekly employees and 361 Weekly. That’s a total of 822 employees. January 2015: 458 Bi-Weekly and 335 Weekly Total 793 https://blnnews.com/2015/08/21/less-employees-at-the-city/ That’s an increase in employees of 29 in 2 years. SLBB: Sick Leave Buy Back (Pension Spiking) Ashley Furniture: We have NO idea where […]
By: Diane Benjamin Bills and Payroll: http://www.cityblm.org/Home/ShowDocument?id=16002 This is a wire transfer – no other information is available. Most likely it’s property downtown. The City is giving away more of your money: Remember when I reported on huge phone bills: https://blnnews.com/2018/02/23/they-had-to-have-bought-all-new-phones/ Sprint charges weren’t included in that story. The City has Verizon, Frontier, and now Sprint. […]
No discussion! Passed 9-0 along with the rest of the consent agenda. By: Diane Benjamin Citizens are OUTRAGED that City employees have been allowed to spike their pensions by accumulating sick days. The costs to taxpayers is close to $2 million. Tonight the Council will approve a new union contract, with a $200 signing […]
By: Diane Benjamin The City of Bloomington knew the law had changed on pension spiking in 2012. They changed the policy for NEW hires, but not for existing employees. Here’s the recap: The IMRF retirement fund was tired of paying for spiked pensions because of Sick Leave Buy Back payments that inflated ending salaries. Since […]
By: Diane Benjamin From Bills and Payroll for Monday night: http://www.cityblm.org/Home/ShowDocument?id=14766 Below are payments to employees labeled Sick Leave Buy Back (SLBB). I don’t know what MO before the first one stands for. We won’t know what penalties the City will be forced to pay (for not changing this policy that allows pension spiking) until they […]
By: Diane Benjamin I saw this on the agenda for the Town of Normal last Monday: http://www.normal.org/ArchiveCenter/ViewFile/Item/2634 The document goes on to appoint the Deputy City Manager as representative to IMRF. The Town of Normal hasn’t paid the huge penalties Bloomington has from pension spiking. Bloomington has paid $1,877,252.40, in August of 2015 Normal had paid […]
By: Diane Benjamin A reader asked me yesterday what the debt for the City of Bloomington looks like since Tari Renner became mayor. Another reader did the research for me. Below are two tables he sent to me: Source: PDF page 36 http://www.cityblm.org/home/showdocument?id=12330 . Source: PDF page 33 http://www.cityblm.org/Home/ShowDocument?id=7479 The biggest difference between the two […]
By: Diane Benjamin Obviously nothing happened at the Bloomington City Council meeting last night to change the pension spiking policies that have cost taxpayer’s millions. Policies can’t be changed close to an election, so the gravy train for government employees continues. According to the nearly year old financial statements that were just released, employees can […]
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 […]
By: Diane Benjamin One more note from last night’s Council meeting. Renner lied – how many times does this make? Of course, he wouldn’t even recognize lies anymore. The topic was Sick Leave Buy Back again. The City policy was changed in 2012 to make any new hires not eligible for this benefit available nowhere […]
By: Diane Benjamin Sick Leave Buy Back will cost Bloomington taxpayers for decades. New employees are no longer eligible as of (I think) 2013. All other employees could be getting paid for unused sick leave when they retire. The City is too chicken to tell employees it isn’t fair for them to get a benefit […]
By: Diane Benjamin The Bloomington Sick Leave Buy Back policy continues to kick Bloomington taxpayers. Hales gets a huge raise without fixing the abuse. Yes David Sage and crew, the Budget Task Force was a joke! It’s way to difficult for your elected “public servants” to look overpaid employees in the eye and tell them […]
By: Diane Benjamin Luckily IMRF actually cares about transparency. Yesterday I filed a request for all the Accelerated Payments charged to the City of Bloomington because they are to chicken to change the Sick Leave Buy Back policy. Instead of the precious government employees being told the golden goose got cooked, employees are told it’s […]
By: Diane Benjamin See Bills and Payroll for Monday night – the LAST page: http://www.cityblm.org/index.aspx?page=242&parent=9535 Remember how Bloomington was exposed in the Chicago Tribune paying massive penalties for allowing employees to SPIKE their pensions? http://blnnews.com/2015/08/26/imrf-what-did-hales-know-and-when/ Remember when the Budget Task Force recommended fixing the problem but never did? Well, it just cost you another $122,735.32! […]
