One third of employees in the Illinois State Police earn more than $100,000 a year. Most are line sergeants, not senior commanders.
The Department of Human Service has 674 employees making $100,000 or more. Some are doctors. Many are not.
The state has 6,215 workers, eight percent of the state’s work force, making $100,000. And that club has expanded by 1,131 since 2012.
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Gov., Pat Quinn makes $177,000 but that puts him as the 687th best-paid employee on the payroll.
Pardon us while we GASP for air at the Gateway Media study of state payrolls.
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If you make $100,000 a year, you’re only question about that number is why you don’t make $125,000. For the rest of us making far less than half of six figures, life is a different game. The wealth disparity in the nation is well-documented fact. What it means – at least among many Illinois families - is a growing cynicism with the entire system of preposterous compensation.
We are told that government cannot be run any other way. We must pay top price, or else we will lose competent employees to competitors and the state will suffer.
But the state is already suffering with the burdensome cost, and we sense no celebration about the quality of our state’s government services.
We all are trapped on a circular treadmill that must be disassembled – we must pay more because Indiana will hire our job candidates if we don’t. Iowa makes the same case about Kansas. And Ohio says Illinois is the culprit.
The financial elevator goes only up for some and only down for others, and the speed seems faster every day. The old argument about financial success flowing to those who work harder no long seems plausible. It is the paycheck of every $40,000-a -year worker who is paying for an elevator he and she cannot ride.
We are building two societies at the same time – one that makes a lot of money and expects to earn more. And another society that works just as hard, earns far less but pays all the bills. That inequity cannot be sustained forever.
