Marathon Pundit: ILL-inois: Dem party chief crony at center of Metra outrage was already getting city pension

Friday, July 26, 2013

ILL-inois: Dem party chief crony at center of Metra outrage was already getting city pension

Oh, Illinois has the second highest unemployment rate in the nation. But this pensioner finds it easy to be a double dipper--because he's a crony of Michael Madigan, the speaker of the statehouse and the chairman of the ILL-inois Democratic Party.

From the Chicago Sun-Times:

Nearly $110,000 a year wasn't enough for Patrick Ward — the Mike Madigan campaign worker at the center of Metra's patronage scandal.

When Ward complained to the powerful state House speaker last year that he wanted a raise on top of his annual Metra salary of $57,000, Ward was already drawing at least $52,700 a year from a taxpayer-subsidized city pension, a Chicago Sun-Times investigation has found.

Pension and payroll records show Ward, now 57, began collecting retirement benefits in 2009 after 30 years of government service. He made $84,000 his final year of employment with the city and got an initial pension of $52,700. As he began collecting his pension, he also started working for Metra.

The Sun-Times has also learned that when Ward then took a state job last May after leaving Metra he earned a "special salary adjustment" guaranteeing him a double-digit pay hike to work in Gov. Pat Quinn’s administration. The newspaper discovered the special salary adjustment despite the governor's assertion that "no special treatment" was used to get Ward on the state payroll.