Sunday, June 21, 2015

Retired at 52 Already Collected $750,000: Chicago's new transit chief got sweet pension deal


The Chicago Sun-Times reports on the greed of some government workers:
When Dorval R. Carter Jr. returned to the CTA last month as the transit agency’s president, he had to temporarily give up a sweet pension deal that had paid him three-quarters of a million dollars in just five and a half years.

Taking advantage of a little-known early-retirement incentive offered by the CTA, Carter left his second stint with the agency in 2009 and started collecting a $137,229-a-year pension the same month he turned 52, records obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times and Better Government Association show.

Carter didn’t retire, though. He moved to Washington, D.C., to take a post as a top lawyer in President Barack Obama’s U.S. Department of Transportation, where he would rise to the post of acting chief of staff, making $146,450 a year.

Double-dipping as a federal government official while also collecting a pension from the CTA allowed Carter to take home a combined taxpayer-subsidized income that reached $283,679 a year, records show.

Now 57, Carter collected $754,762 in pension payouts between November 2009 and this April, when he accepted Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s offer to return to the CTA for his third stint there, this time as its $235,000-a-year boss.
Dorval Carter sure likes big government! Now you know why people go into government: to get overpaid. Your 401K would have to be mighty large to get this kind of payout every year. Why, you'd have to be a 401K multi-millionaire. Public transportation can be expensive when you have to fund the Dorval Carter's of the world. Just a reminder, the next time you are asked to pay high fares. No word yet on this story from Barack Obama, defender of America's "first responders".