Like Peanut Butter & Jelly

....These two stories just seem to go together.

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.

Over the course of their lifetimes, both men stand to receive more than a million dollars each from a state pension fund that has less than half of the assets it needs to cover promises made to tens of thousands of public school teachers.

Union President Dan Montgomery said the deal Preckwinkle and Piccioli landed "should never be allowed again." But the union, which provides its employees with a private 401(k)-type plan, is standing by the lobbyists' right to have access to the public pension.

How did Preckwinkle and Piccioli become the only ones to take advantage of the change in law? Neither one consented to an interview.

Records, however, show that Preckwinkle applied for his first substitute teaching certificate four weeks before the legislation passed, then subbed at a Springfield school six weeks before the window to become eligible closed.

Preckwinkle even signed a witness slip in support of the legislation during a House committee meeting, although the teachers union says he lobbied for a different provision in the same bill, not the perk for union officials such as himself.

Preckwinkle, 59, stands to receive about $2.8 million by the time he turns 78, about $3.8 million if he retires next year and lives until he's 84. Piccioli, 61, stands to collect about $1.1 million by age 78, about $1.7 million if he lives until 84, according to an analysis by the Tribune and WGN-TV.

and debauchery from those who haven't scored their heists quite yet:

Missoula police say an 11-year-old boy turned up drunk on the courthouse lawn, from the Occupy Missoula encampment early Thursday morning. That's the group protesting corporate greed.

Police say one of the camp's occupants bought the youngster alcohol. Twenty-seven year old John Skinner was charged with endangering the welfare of a child.

The police report said Skinner encountered the boy and a friend outside a downtown Missoula bar. Police say the friend asked Skinner to buy them alcohol.

They say Skinner invited the boy and his friend into his tent so he could "keep an eye on him.

" But they said Skinner didn't call 911 or emergency medical technicians.

Police said the boy had permission to be out late at night. But they found the boy unconscious and vomiting on the courthouse lawn.

Occupy organizers said Skinner arrived at the camp Wednesday and had been drinking. The group has a zero tolerance for drinking alcohol on site. "He assured us that he wasn't, that he had been drinking elsewhere," said camp facilitator Kathleen Kelly.

She said the group gave him a chance to sleep it off in a tent.
.....
Skinner pleaded not guilty to the charge. Bond was set at $2,000.