Illinois’s $100,000 Plus Workforce: Strong and Growing
by Mark Cavers Illinois will have $8.3 billion in unpaid bills by the end of the fiscal year, a projected deficit of $1.7 billion for fiscal year 2012 and $86 billion in unpaid pension liabilities. A contributing factor to our deficits, and a major reason behind calls for higher taxes is government employee’s pay and benefits. Rather...
by Mark Cavers
Illinois will have $8.3 billion in unpaid bills by the end of the fiscal year, a projected deficit of $1.7 billion for fiscal year 2012 and $86 billion in unpaid pension liabilities. A contributing factor to our deficits, and a major reason behind calls for higher taxes is government employee’s pay and benefits. Rather than reining in the explosive growth in personnel costs by taking steps similar to those in states across the country like hiring stops and salary freezes, our Governor has decided to double down on the failed policies of the past: expanding government, raising taxes, and borrowing to bailout a broken system. Last year, the Governor gave out pay increases to 46,000 state workers and this year he wants to hire an additional 945 employees. Already, one out of every four dollars from the State’s general fund is spent on labor costs. Tellingly, the number of high paid government employees in Illinois has increased dramatically over the past three years.
In 2008, the State employed 3,504 workers who received annual salaries of over $100,000 (inflation adjusted), by 2010 that number had risen to 4,252, an increase of 748 people and 21%.
From 2008 to 2010 the amount of money going to employees making over $100,000 increased by $93,761,096 (inflation adjusted) or 21% from $457,195,553.33 to $550,956,849. This increase in funding, set aside to pay employees making over $100,000, is the equivalent of paying the salaries of over 1,500 new first year teachers at the Chicago Public Schools. The $93,761,096 in higher pay is more than the taxes paid by 20,000 Illinois workers making $70,000. Its also enough to pay off theentire backlog of unpaid bills to the Departments of Public Health, and Children and Family Services. At a time when human service providers are waiting on payments from the state, the funds being diverted to compensate the highest tier of government employees are soaring.
Increasing the salary and size of Illinois’s workforce ensures that families and other government service providers will continue to feel the pinch either through higher taxes or cuts to services that will be necessary to shift money to pay for bloated payrolls and higher salaries.
Tax hikes hurt real people. This year, the average family will have to get by with $1,400 less than they did last year, that’s clothes for two years, or feeding a family of four for 10 weeks. Asking families to cut their own budgets to prop up unsustainable government salaries is especially difficult to justify.
The second place money for these higher salaries will come from is by diverting funds away from other areas of government. A government’s resources are finite; every time politicians set aside funds for unsustainable salaries and benefits they pass up the opportunity to spend the funds elsewhere or return the money to citizens in the form of tax credits. By the end of the year, our government will owe $8.3 billion to nonprofits, small businesses, and other vendors for services already rendered. Instead of making the hard choices necessary to bring down spending and then allocating excess revenues towards paying back the people we owe, legislators seem intent on spending every last dollar to expand the size of government. By showing an unwillingness to reign in salaries at the expense of taxpayers, service providers who are owed money, and core government services, politicians are signaling their priorities to citizens.
The numbers cited above are only salaries. They exclude the pension, health, and other benefits which are huge drivers of the overall higher compensation packages of public employees. Further, higher salaries fuel our largest looming crisis: A pension system that is over $86 billion in the red. Higher salaries drive up individual pensions and more employees expand our pension liabilities. Rather than halting hiring and freezing pay until we can get our pension and budget crises under control, our Governor continues to dump fuel on the fire. Public employee salaries already eat up one out of every four dollars in the state’s budget. Illinois’s poor and disadvantaged cannot afford to see 25% of government spending going towards salaries. The Governor should work to freeze hiring and renegotiate union contracts to lower pay increases.