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WBGZ Radio 2/16/2021 | By Greg Bishop - Illinois Radio Network Illinois taxpayers pay more than $2.1 million a month to retired state legislators or their surviving spouses from a fund that’s only 16% funded. The individual monthly payouts are as high as $18,000 per month. Some pensioners aren’t actually retired but still getting paid. There are 425 people drawing off the General Assembly Retirement System, ranging from $122 a month to $18,000. At 16% funded, state Rep. Mark Batinick, R-Plainfield, said GARS is the worst of the state’s five public sector pension funds. “You got there by skipping payments and being unrealistic and that’s a microcosm of what’s happened with all the funds,” Batinick said. All five of the state’s pensions funds combined have an unfunded liability of more than $140 billion. Being an Illinois state lawmaker is considered a part time job and Batinick said members of GARS getting that much per month in retirement is out of line. “So, part time offices, I just don’t think that a pension is in order,” he said. “It doesn’t make sense. It complicates the system and makes the math bad.”
In the nearly 232-year history of the US Senate there have only been 11 Black senators Congress set a new diversity record this year with its highest-ever number of women and racial minorities, including 60 Black lawmakers. People of color have historically had a tougher time getting elected to the Senate. Newly elected Raphael Warnock is only the 11th Black US senator since the Senate convened for the first time in 1789. Only two of those have been women. And with the departure of Kamala Harris, the number of Black female US senators is now at zero. Voters in urban congressional districts tend to be more diverse and politically progressive, driving the higher number of minorities in the House. But that has had little effect on the number of Black senators.
Provided Albert Porter Jr. was 3 when his father sent for him and his mother to leave Mississippi and join him in Chicago in the 1930s amid the Great Depression. His father had hoboed north aboard freight trains and worked janitorial jobs until earning enough money to reunite his family. They settled in Bronzeville on the Near South Side and made sure their only son got an education. Porter went on to earn a law degree; serve as a Cook County judge for 20 years; help found the Illinois Judicial Council, an organization that represents Black judges; and, at a time when few Blacks were practicing law, served as a guide post for many legal careers.
Raphael Warnock and the Solitude of the Black Senator Raphael Warnock and the Solitude of the Black Senator The Georgia pastor will be just the 11th Black U.S. senator. His victory came amid an attempt to delegitimize election results — a pattern for more than 150 years. By Theodore R. Johnson Illustration by Dakarai Akil In late January 1870, the nation’s capital was riveted by a new arrival: the Mississippi legislator Hiram Rhodes Revels, who had traveled days by steamboat and train, forced into the “colored” sections by captains and conductors, en route to becoming the first Black United States senator. Not long after his train pulled in to the New Jersey Avenue Station, Revels, wearing a black suit and a neat beard beneath cheekbones fresh from a shave, was greeted by a rhapsodic Black public. There were lunches with leading civil rights advocates; daily congratulatory visits from as many as 50 men at the Capitol Hill home where he was the guest of a prominent Black Republican; and exclusive interracial soirees hosted by Black businessmen, including the president of the Freedman’s Savings Bank.
Raphael Warnock to make history as Georgia's first Black senator By Caitlin O'Kane Warnock projected to win Georgia Senate seat Democrat Raphael Warnock is projected to win his Senate race in Georgia, making history as the state's first Black senator. CBS News projected early on Wednesday that Warnock defeated incumbent Senator Kelly Loeffler in the Senate runoff election. Only 10 African Americans have served in the U.S. Senate before Warnock. Republican Hiram Revels of Mississippi was the first African American senator, in 1870. Next was Republican Blanche K. Bruce of Mississippi, who was born into slavery and began his term in the Senate in 1875.
Proposed Senate Replacement for Harris Comes With Ethical Questions California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s choice of Alex Padilla to replace Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) may force the U.S. Senate to take a critical look at a $35 million contract awarded by Padilla, the state’s secretary of state, to a firm with deep ties to three Democratic presidential nominees. Padilla awarded the contract to SKDKnickerbocker (SKDK), the Washington-based public relations and political strategy firm, in August as part of the state’s program of providing mail-in ballots to all of the state’s 22 million voters. The purpose of the program, known as “Vote Safe California,” was reportedly to “produce advertising to encourage voters to participate in the November election.”