Inspector General Questions Savings From Furlough Days
CHICAGO (WBBM) -- The city's Budget director is taking issue with an Inspector General's report accusing the Daley Administration of overstating how much it is saving through employees' unpaid furlough days.
As WBBM Newsradio 780 Political Editor Craig Dellimore reports, last week, Chicago Inspector General Joe Ferguson said city pension funds were shortchanged more $24 million, as workers took unpaid off, but, his report said, they still accrued pension benefits.
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Ferguson said the taxpayers will have to make up that money.
But city Budget Director Eugene Munin said that is not what the law says right now, and the Illinois General Assembly is not trying to change it. He says Ferguson is wrong.
"He's assuming that the legislature is going to do what it did with police and fire for the municipal laborers, but they haven't done that, so we will achieve the savings that we said we were going to achieve," Munin said.
Ferguson's office's response to Munin does agree with the basic point that furloughs reduce pension payments without reducing benefits. The only question is who has to pay what's lost.
