The Man with 10 Jobs / The $5 Million Tollbooth Worker

[MachineGhost]

The Man With 10 Jobs

Bellwood, Illinois is a small, mostly black residential suburb of about 20,000 people, located just south of O'Hare Airport.

It's about a 15-mile commute straight east to downtown Chicago.

The median salary in Bellwood is $57,000 a year according to recent census reports.

When I did a recent search on the Zillow real estate website, I found just over 300 houses listed for sale in Bellwood right now.

Just one of these homes is listed at a price higher than $200,000... and only 12 are listed above $100,000.

In other words, this is not a particularly wealthy place.

But the little town of Bellwood made news recently when a story came out in the Chicago Tribune about a local (white) official named Roy McCampbell.

You see, for running this little suburb West of Chicago, Mr. McCampbell made an astonishing amount of money...

In his final year before retirement, McCampbell pulled in a whopping $472,255.

How did he make so much... more than any other municipal executive in the entire state of Illinois?

Well, according to McCampbell, he did the work of 10 people for Bellwood. This is great. Comical, really. Let me show you the list of jobs McCampbell claims to have done:

Comptroller, administrator, public safety CEO, finance director, budget director, human resources director, mayoral assistant, corporation counsel, property commission director, and development corporation officer.

But hold on... it gets better...

As part of his contract, McCampbell was allowed 5 MONTHS worth of sick days each year, starting in May of 2008.

Yes, you read that correctly... he got 5 MONTHS worth of sick days every single year.

And because it's completely impossible for anyone to take five months of sick days in a year (especially when you are doing the jobs of 10 people!), McCampbell was able to get paid for many of the sick days he never took.

This brought his salary up to close to half a million dollars a year.

When asked about his pay, McCampbell told the Tribune: "I didn't hold a gun to anybody's head to get this. I'm not trying to do anything bad."

What kind of world do we live in where neither this guy, nor any of the other local officials who approved this contract, see a problem with this situation?

And wait... there's still more...

McCampbell also was given a free car and free gas – all paid by the taxpayers, who also covered his premiums for health and life insurance, as well as his pension contributions.

Asked by the Tribune if he ever felt like he was being overpaid, McCampbell told the paper, "I truly didn't."

And to top it all off, taxpayers are still not done paying Mr. McCampbell...

Because of salary bumps, bonuses, and cashing out his unpaid sick leave, McCampbell was able to dramatically increase his final year's pay, which in turn gives him a pension estimated to be as high as $264,000 a year.

McCampbell, who was 55 years old when he retired, could conceivably live another 30 years or more... which could make his inflated pension worth nearly $8 million.

And don't forget, he didn't contribute a single penny towards his pension – that was also covered by the taxpayers.

Unfortunately, in America today, there are Roy McCampbells in every state, town, and municipality... in every level of government.

The $5 Million Tollbooth Worker

Maybe you heard about the tollbooth worker from New York whose average salary was $70,000 a year. Believe it or not, that's not the absurd part of this story, although that in and of itself is pretty amazing.

What's remarkable about this tollbooth worker is how he was able to legally "steal" millions from taxpayers in the coming years...

What this fellow did was work tons of overtime and cash in dozens of sick days, which more than doubled his final year's salary, to $150,000.

Because his pension is based on his last year of work, this guy will get a pension of $120,000 a year... for the rest of his life! That's 71% more than his highest year of regular pay.

He's only 50 years old, which means taxpayers could easily be on the hook for $5 million or more in total.

And like I said, these stories are the "new normal" in what I call "Corruption USA," where it's all about taking as much as possible, even if you didn't earn it and don't deserve it.

The exact same thing is going on in every state, in every county, and in every municipality of America today.

We have state-funded janitors, firefighters, cops, mayors, councilmen, administrators, etc., retiring as early as possible (some in their mid-40s), setting themselves up for payouts of millions of dollars for the rest of their lives, because of outrageous public pensions.

In my mind, this "pension padding" is the exact same thing as stealing. You are taking money you didn't earn... and don't deserve.

And it happens at every level of government–starting at the top.

USA Today recently did a study on how various legislators around the country pad their final year's salary, and thus their pension:

"Kentucky legislators add their annual allowance for stationery — up to $1,500 for senators and $750 for House members — plus another $15,000 to $17,000 a year in expense payments to the salary on which pensions are based. Connecticut lawmakers can increase their pensions up to 50% by including mileage reimbursements that add as much as $15,500 a year to the salaries used to calculate their pensions."

So the new normal is for government employees to pad their final year salaries, then retire early, often on pensions fattened by gaming the corrupt system.

It's a complete disgrace, and another prime example of what I call "The Corruption of America."

This corruption has affected our society in a profound way... to the point where most people in our country think it's 'normal' to defraud the government... or refuse to pay their debts... or even steal from their employers or shareholders.

[clacy]

This is obviously an extreme case of pension inflation, which is happening all over the country.  Inflating pensions in the last couple of years of work and double dipping need to be addressed by all federal, state and local governments. 

These types of stories (and there's numerous cases of similar situations) are public sectors workers, figuratively speaking, instances of stabbing the tax payers in the back.  I look at this as fraud and theft, frankly.

[TripleB]

I spent some time talking to a teacher friend of mine retiring soon and he said his pension is calculated on his "base" pay of his final year, so cashing out sick days, getting extra stipends for coaching a sport, etc, will not count towards his pension calculation.

It's probably different in corrupt aka socialist states like NY, Cali, NJ, Illinois.

[l82start]

a friend in ny city tells me this kind of double dipping is so common its the new normal there, it happens quite a bit in CA as well i have heard.. 

[MachineGhost]

So when are we going to stop being distracted with dumbass doping allegations in cyclists and start clawingback all of these overpaid public employees and retirees?  It is beyond outrageous.