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Getting
PERSonal When Tony "Soon-to-be-ex-Senator" Corcoran, in his final "Insider Baseball" column (10/23; perhaps not coincidentally, the issue with the turkeys on the cover), referred to me and others as "meatheads," I'll have to admit, I was pretty pissed at first. But when I'd calmed down enough to think about it, three things occurred to me: name-calling is the last resort of those with a weak argument; "Meathead," a fairly old term in itself, gained new notoriety back in the early '70s as an epithet frequently hurled at his progressive son-in-law by none other than the penultimate reactionary, Archie Bunker; and since one is known not just by their friends but their enemies as well, rather than sue for libel, I should be beholden to Tony for elevating my standing amongst my peers. So I had a good laugh with my friends, and have even gone so far as to take up "Meathead" as my nom du guerre. But the Noble Martyr didn't stop at schoolyard insults. He also suggested that I couldn't be "bothered with the facts" when in my last letter to EW (10/6) I claimed that he'd be much better off financially in the new position his buddy Gov. Kulongoski had rewarded him with after the hit he did on PERS, than as a union staff member and a legislator combined. I had based my premise on guesses — educated, maybe, but still guesses. So I did some research. And here's what I found out. As a senior organizer with SEIU, Tony was making $56,724 a year (source: SEIU). Add to that the $15,396 he was pulling down as a state senator, and one ends up with a total of $72,120 per annum. But we see that in his new position with the Appeals Board he'll be making $72,576. The rest is easy math: Tony comes out nearly half a grand to the good. And that's just to start; if the Great Warrior manages to cling to his new job long enough, his salary will go up to $84,000. As for the benefits he claimed he's also being "forced" to sacrifice — can medical, dental, etc., for the staff of a service employee labor union really be better than what an upper-level Salem bureaucrat receives? Oh, there's more, by the way — the "kicker," as it were. And I'll have to admit (again), I didn't see this coming. Wiser heads than mine did, however, and if the readers been following the news on this subject, he or she is aware of it now, too. Lets talk retirement.
Now I won't go into a long explanation of how PERS works, but the system has/had two methods of calculating benefits that are/were most commonly used. The first, the so-called "money match" method, which Corcoranism essentially tore all to hell, was based generally on how much one had built up in one's account over the years. "Full formula," however, has two main key elements upon which one's monthly check is figured: how long the member was in a PERS-covered position(s); and the average salary of the member's three highest paid years. So, if Tony stays with his new job in Employee Appeals for just three years, his final retirement income will be several hundred percent more than what it would have been had he stayed a senator, just because his new wages are so much higher (about five-fold, as a matter of fact). Add to that his SEIU 401k account, and whatever else he's managed to sock away over the years, and one becomes hard pressed to see what he really lost when he left the union, particularly when one compares what the career cook, clerk or custodian will be making when they ever retire — or if, thanks in large part to this tireless advocate for workers. Dang; facts are funny things, ain't they? Even when viewed from the top of that ol' turnip truck. So, this is likely all I'll have to say about the Irish Bowling Ball (his words, not mine), as he fades into a much-deserved political obscurity. OK, except for this, which I just can't resist: in the end, it seems that "Insider Baseball" has been very, very good to him. Bill Smee of Eugene is a 25 year veteran of the UO, unpaid union activist and "proud meathead." |
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