A Night for the Good of Illinois

Tom Sodeika, president and CEO of Precision Payroll of America; Cisco Cotto, radio host and Total Living Network co-host; and Charles Butler, radio host and Fox News contributor, are coming together to celebrate A Night For The Good of Illinois from 6:30 to 9 p.m. Thursday, June 28, at Chicago Marriott Oak Brook Hotel, 1401 West 22nd St., Oak Brook.

It is time for us to open the books and wake up Illinois before it’s too late. Be a part of the effort to reach 3 million Illinois voters in the next four months. Please join us for a night of fellowship with special guests and a presentation of the real financial facts of our great state.

About Open the Books (www.OpenTheBooks.com)

Since its September 2011 website launch, more than 50,000 people have rendered 750,000 questions.

Search your school, village, township, park district, forest preserve, library, water, police, fire, university, college, community college, county, executive, judicial, legislative, transit authority… all the pay and pensions of virtually all Illinois public employees. This portal contains 7 million lines of data and a quarter-trillion dollars of government spending.

We found legal pension corruption of non-government organizations who have “muscled” themselves into our government pension plans. Because of openthebooks.com, Sen. Matt Murphy (R-Palatine) drafted SB 2499: Pension Abuse Loophole Reform. This legislation would simply codify into law that “Government pensions are for government employees—period.”

Insiders are literally draining tens of millions of dollars from hard working rank-and-file teachers, government employees and taxpayers. This abuse needs to stop. How many people received a paycheck for a pension check from some level of Illinois government last year? 1 million people.

ACCOUNTABILITY: As US Senator Everett Dirksen said, “When I feel the heat, I see the light.” Our portal has a unique feature to “salary graph” the 10-year history of most public employees. See the massive pay hikes that public employees have experienced over the last 10 years. While, private sector pay increases are up only 27 percent according to the National Average Wage Index, most Illinois public employees have pay increases of between 60 percent and 100 percent since 2001.

For The Good of Illinois' Open The Books Project has set a national standard of proactive transparency. Before citizens even conceive of a question regarding pay and pensions of public officials, the information is already posted on our website, www.openthebooks.com.
 
Register online for the Thursday event. Tickets are $45 and include hors d'oeuvres and one drink ticket.