Two lobbyists with no prior teaching experience were allowed to count their years as union employees toward a state teacher pension once they served a single day of subbing in 2007, a Tribune/WGN-TV investigation has found.

Steven Preckwinkle, the political director for the Illinois Federation of Teachers, and fellow union lobbyist David Piccioli were the only people who took advantage of a small window opened by lawmakers a few months earlier.

The legislation enabled union officials to get into the state teachers pension fund and count their previous years as union employees after quickly obtaining teaching certificates and working in a classroom. They just had to do it before the bill was signed into law.

The state paid both men $93 for their one day of substitute teaching, but that’s just an appetizer. Piccioli will receive $1.1 million by the time he turns 78, and $1.7 million if he lives to 84, but that puts him in the cheap seats compared to his colleague. The Chicago Tribune calculates that Preckwinkle will get $2.8 million by the time he turns 78, and almost $4 million if he lives to 84. Their pension payments will exceed $100,000, or more than twice the average household income in the US — for working households, not retirees.

Although the bill received bipartisan support, the benefit to union officials was sponsored by Springfield Democrats showered by IFT campaign contributions during the 2006 elections.

A Chicago Tribune report says federal investigators have made covert tape recordings of Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich as part of their corruption investigation.

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What's a little Senate seat bribery between friends? Sure, Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich is accused of trying to profit from the sale of President-elect Obama's newly vacant Senate seat. And he may have allegedly tried to force the newly bankrupt Tribune Co. to fire editorial staff members who were critical of him. And it's possible he traded favors for campaign contributions. But this is Illinois; as Robert Grant, the special agent in charge of the FBI's Chicago field office, told the press at the announcement of the indictment, "if it isn't the most corrupt state in the United States, it's certainly one hell of a competitor."

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