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Wirepoints President Ted Dabrowski said Illinois residents are
forced to pay the nation’s highest property taxes, and one of
the highest tax burdens overall, to fund the $100,000-plus
government salaries and pensions of the public sector. Dabrowski
explained how taxpayers paying these large salaries for a
growing number of government workers is unsustainable.
“The bigger the divide gets between the government sector, which
has pension guarantees, the Constitutional protections of
Amendment 1, guaranteed labor contracts, guaranteed raises …
they get all that. The private sector doesn’t get any of those
kinds of protections, and yet they have to pay higher and higher
taxes to pay for the government class. We’re creating two
classes of workers: one that’s protected and one that’s not,”
said Dabrowski.
Dabrowski said public school superintendents have the biggest
share of the taxpayer funded pie. According to Wirepoints, there
are 56,000 teachers and administrators in Illinois schools who
are getting a pension or salary over $100,000.
“Kevin Nohelty, the current superintendent of Dolton SD 148,
receives almost a half million a year to run a school district
where just 14% of students can read at grade level. Those big,
big salaries turn into big, big pensions. You’ve got Lawrence
Wyllie of Lincoln-Way and his pension is almost $400,000,” said
Dabrowski.
Open the Books counted 94,000 government members with $100K
compensation back in 2018, and in 2023 more than 140,000
Illinois government-sector workers and retirees received more
than $100,000 in compensation in 2023, that’s a 50% increase.
Dabrowski said there is a problem, recently and nationally,
where more and more Americans are saying, ‘if you can’t beat
them [the public sector] join them,’ but Dabrowski said the
bigger problem is the tax burden for Illinoisans paying large
salaries for government workers.
“People are saying, ‘I can’t afford this. I am leaving the
state.’ This is why you're seeing cities around the state suffer
from population loss. If you can’t make it here and if it’s too
expensive here…and there’s too much government, then you have to
go to a state with less government and more opportunity,” said
Dabrowski.
Dabrowski said it’s not the fault of the public sector employees
for negotiating high salaries but lawmakers are at fault because
they approve public sector employee benefits at a price that
ordinary Illinoisans can’t afford.
“Peter Murphy, President and CEO of Illinois’ Association of
Park Districts made nearly $468,000. It’s not fair and it’s not
right to ask ordinary people to pay that kind of salary and
eventually those kinds of pensions to people. It’s going to
create such a big divide between the public sector and private
sector and eventually people will leave,” said Dabrowski.
Dabrowski said most job creation is from government jobs and he
said Illinois will suffer if the government continues to use
taxpayer money to pay big salaries in the public sector.
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