McHenry County Blog

Crystal Lake City Hall.

This past spring I asked various municipalities to provide emailed lists of their employees who made over $75,000 in salary and fringe benefits.

Many complied with the names and compensation information.

The City of Crystal Lake sent the information, but only by job title and for that information I was referred to the City web site.

I appealed to the Illinois Attorney General’s Public Access Division on two grounds:

• the response was not by email
• the response did not include employee names

November 15th Assistant Attorney General Steve Silverman sent a four-page letter affirming the appeal.

To my request for an email response, the Public Counselor’s Office ruled that referring me to the City web site, “does not satisfy the requirement that a public body furnish a requested with a copy of the record in electronic format.”

While I contended that the information had to be posted by name, the City contended, “[n]other in Section 7.3 or anywhere else in the O[pen] M[eetings] A[ct] requires public bodies to list the names of employees.”

The Assistant Attorney General agreed that “Section 7.3(a) is ambiguous to the extent that its language is silent as to whether employees may be identified by name or by title.”

But, puts out that in legislative debate on the law, which was part of reforms intended to prevent ‘pension abuses’ such as ‘spiking,” Rep. Karen May made reference to both terms. “Pension spiking” refers to giving an employee a large raise right before retirement, the letter notes.

“To detect pension abuses such as spiking, it is necessary to be able to compare the compensation and benefits of individually identifiable employees to their previous levels of compensation,” the letter continues.

“…To interpret Section 7.3(a) of OMA to permit public bodies to ‘identify’ individuals by job title rather than by name would impede the public’s access to information needed to detect pension and compensation abuses…Thus, the public is entitled to information regarding the compensation and perquisites of individual public employees.’

“We conclude that the City violate Section 7.3(a) of the O[pen] M[eetings] A[ct] by failing to post the names of employees whose total compensation packages exceed $75,000 per year. Accordingly, we request that the City immediately revise the information posted on its website to include the names of those employees, and also provide Mr. Skinner with an electronic copy of the salary compensation for those employees.”

The City has complied with the Public Access Divisions’ request.

Here’s an interesting Kane County Board web page entitled,

Listed are amounts paid to Kane County Board members.

You can see an example of what information is presented.

If you want to be a part-time elected official, what office should you run for?

Inspired by a front page Northwest Herald story of what mayors and village presidents in McHenry County earn, I filed a Freedom of Information request to discover how much county board members are compensated.

Take a look at the chart (click to enlarge) I received:

The highest paid mayor was McHenry’s Susan Low at $16,500. Algonquin’s John Schmitt earned $15,000.

Relatively small Island Lake’s head honcho Tom Hyde got $14,800.

Also $10,000 and more were Woodstock’s Brian Sage, Ed Plaza of Lake in the Hills, Marengo’s Don Lockhart, Harvard’s Jay Noland and Union’s Bob Wagner.

Clearly, if one wants to be a part-time public official and get paid pretty well for it, the office one should run for is county board.

Besides the $18.601.70 current annual salary, there’s health insurance, if one wants it. That can be worth up to $17,050.56 this year for the family PPO. The lowest figure is for dental insurance only. And some members don’t take any health benefits.

It does look as if county government has a pretty rich health benefits program.

You will note that McHenry County Board Chairman Ken Koehler is paid $74,406.02 this year.

And, there’s the county contribution to a pension, which can be upgraded substantially, if one wins one of the countywide offices. The years in the relatively low paid office of county board count just as much as the ones in which one might be paid about $100,000.

And, although not all county board members utilize the newly approved $1,000 a person expense allowance, it is there for those who want to use it to pay for dinners that might otherwise be paid for out of one’s own pocket.

Guess I ought to look at the salaries of township officials as well. Some of them get paid pretty well, too.

More than the county board members.

And township elections are next spring.

The informal picture of county board members comes from swearing in day, 2006. I think the others came from the McHenry County Republican Cat Tax meeting.

If you want to be a part-time elected official, what office should you run for?

Inspired by a front page Northwest Herald story of what mayors and village presidents in McHenry County earn, I filed a Freedom of Information request to discover how much county board members are compensated.

Take a look at the chart (click to enlarge) I received:

The highest paid mayor was McHenry’s Susan Low at $16,500. Algonquin’s John Schmitt earned $15,000.

Relatively small Island Lake’s head honcho Tom Hyde got $14,800.

Also $10,000 and more were Woodstock’s Brian Sage, Ed Plaza of Lake in the Hills, Marengo’s Don Lockhart, Harvard’s Jay Noland and Union’s Bob Wagner.

Clearly, if one wants to be a part-time public official and get paid pretty well for it, the office one should run for is county board.

Besides the $18.601.70 current annual salary, there’s health insurance, if one wants it. That can be worth up to $17,050.56 this year for the family PPO. The lowest figure is for dental insurance only. And some members don’t take any health benefits.

It does look as if county government has a pretty rich health benefits program.

You will note that McHenry County Board Chairman Ken Koehler is paid $74,406.02 this year.

And, there’s the county contribution to a pension, which can be upgraded substantially, if one wins one of the countywide offices. The years in the relatively low paid office of county board count just as much as the ones in which one might be paid about $100,000.

And, although not all county board members utilize the newly approved $1,000 a person expense allowance, it is there for those who want to use it to pay for dinners that might otherwise be paid for out of one’s own pocket.

Guess I ought to look at the salaries of township officials as well. Some of them get paid pretty well, too.

More than the county board members.

And township elections are next spring.

The informal picture of county board members comes from swearing in day, 2006. I think the others came from the McHenry County Republican Cat Tax meeting.