The Chicago Tribune reports:
Two years into his reign as Chicago's longest-serving mayor,Richard M. Daley took advantage of the state's convoluted pension system to significantly increase his potential payout while saving $400,000 in contributions, a Tribune/WGN-TV investigation has found.
Daley, a former state senator, made it happen by briefly rejoining the legislative pension plan in 1991. He stayed there just one month before returning to Chicago's municipal pension fund, but the switches made him eligible for benefits worth 85 percent of his mayoral salary — a better rate than all other city employees receive.
He was just 49 years old at the time. Even if Daley had never won another election, he could have started collecting a public pension at age 55 of $97,750 a year. Without the steps he took, his public pension benefits at that age would have been worth just $20,686.
There's more:
The roundabout way that Daley lined up his pension was made possible by a law sponsored in 1981 by then-state Sen. John D'Arco, D-Chicago, who was convicted on federal bribery charges in 1991 and 1995.
John D'Arco Jr. was a very important
associate of organized crime. No word yet on this story from Barack Obama's close friend Alexi Giannoulias who
"knows" John D'Arco Jr.
