Chicago Tribune Uncovers Pension Scams of Ex-Mayor Daley and Friends
On May 2, Jason Grotto of the Chicago Tribune penned his experience in ferreting out how former Mayor Richard M. Daley (pictured) and his friends were able to milk the city’s pension system for millions and hide it from public view for 20 years.
We’ve been exploring the pension crisis in Chicago and Illinois for about two years now: it takes that kind of time to understand how the pension system and individual pensions work.
Illinois pension laws are like a giant jigsaw puzzle. Without the time our editors have given us to figure out how the pieces fit together, we probably wouldn’t have been able to [figure out] how individuals [like former May Richard Daley and former Alderman Thomas Allen] are able to use Illinois’ convoluted pension laws to dramatically boost their pensions.
The scam began in 1991 when Daley was just two years into his first of six terms as mayor of Chicago. He resurrected a bill that his predecessor, Mayor Harold Washington, had rejected as being too costly and frivolous. That bill, designed to boost Chicago aldermen’s pension benefits, served to provide the circuitous route that Daley himself manipulated into a retirement benefit far above what it would have been, while saving himself the trouble (and the expense) of contributing $400,000 to his own plan. As Grotto noted:
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