Years ago, and unbeknownst to taxpayers, School district in Illinois began giving retiring teachers extra pay shortly before they retired. This policy costs the districts very little, but boosted pensions substantially. This practice is one of the leading causes of the unfunded pension liability.
The following table shows the post employment goodies for teachers in Wheaton-Warrenville CUSD 200.
The affect of this (and similar arrangements in other districts can be seen in the pension payouts. Take a look at pdf page 109 of
“Comprehensive Annual Financial Report
for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2015
Teachers’ Retirement System of the State of Illinois”
http://trs.illinois.gov/pubs/cafr/FY2015/fy15.pdf
A teacher who had been retired less than one year (i.e. retired in 2015) who had 30 to 34 years of service on average would be receiving $5,661 in current monthly benefits, or $67,932 annually. Graphing the current monthly pensions from this page we get:
Notice the jump in the data about 20 years ago, That would be around 1995. Could this be due to end of career salary spiking?
Or was there any changes made tot he TRS law around this time that would account for the jump?
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