Pension Town Hall Meeting Stirs Debate

Illinois' state pension debt is currently at $95 billion — citizens discussed their ideas of how to fix that at Monday's meeting.

Passions were high at Monday night's town hall meeting on current state pension proposals. Panelists at the meeting, which was held at the Wilmette Community Center, included Sen. Daniel Biss (D-Evanston), Rep. Laura Fine (D-Glenview), Rep. Robyn Gabel (D-Evanston) and Cook County Commissioner Larry Suffredin (D-Evanston).  The meeting, which was so packed that it had to be split up in to two rooms to make room for everyone, was held to discuss the Senate Bill 35 (SB35) and House Bill 98 (HB98), which both aim to end the "long, bitter impasse over pension reform at the state Capitol by combining what has been proposed by business, labor, legislators and civic groups with some new ideas," according to a hand-out passed out before the …

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Dissecting District 219's Budget

Retired Administrator Makes $71k to Design T-Shirts

Patch investigation reveals pattern of administrators working as high-paid consultants shortly after retiring.

A Patch investigation has revealed that retired administrators have been landing lucrative contracts as consultants at the same time teachers are fighting to keep their jobs in the face of looming budget cuts in Niles Township School District 219. Most notably, former principal and fine arts director Robert Freeman received more than $71,000 for designing T-shirts, creating PowerPoint presentations and drafting logos for the district’s new gymnasium during five months as a consultant, he said. “My background is really in art,” Freeman told Skokie Patch in a recent interview. “I designed stuff for the school district.” Around the same time Freeman was consulting, the District 219 school board said it would be laying off 10 tenured teachers …

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