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.

Donna Kurtz

An email from McHenry County Board member Donna Kurtz:

“Saw your article on voting for the EDC.

“Just wanted to tell you that although I voted for the $163K or so to contribute to marketing McHenry County to the business world, and of course we are competing for these business opportunities with other county EDCs, I have NOT supported any of the payroll increases that we have voted on in 2012.

“These payroll increases are the real dollars, in the millions, that cause the cost of government to go up over the years.

“For example, regular salaries are approximately $46.7 million out of a $90 Million budget for the County.

“Technically, when we vote to increase even by 2% these salaries our budget increases by $934K.

“Then when we provide annual salary increases we increase the increases exponentially.

“These are the real costs that have the greatest impact on increasing tax payer costs and/or push government toward deficit spending.

“In closing, the latest vote that was just passed supported a 2.5% for our non-union County employees http://www.nwherald.com/mobile/article.xml/articles/2012/07/03/r_txifo0dr4ykn8t1qfatfq/index.xml.

“I greatly respect the work that all of the County employees provide, but I could not vote for this increase because I have gotten very strong guidance for people all over the county that they don’t want to pay any more for their government at this and this increase, which is for approximately half of our county employees will amount to approximately $500K annually.

“My decisions on these votes are important because they allow me to position the tax levy increase situation appropriately in November.

“Please post this email on the blog if you’d like. I just wanted to make sure you understand the extent of the actions I have taken as a Board Member to be fiscally conservative.”

= = = = =
Other public officials or candidates who wish to use this forum to explore issues or explain votes are welcome to do so. The email address is on the left hand side of the screen.

This is the eight and final page of salaries by job classification published by the City of Crystal Lake.

State law required a list of all employees earning more than $70,000 a year to be made readily available.

This concluding list runs from Utility Customer Service Representative to Wastewater Pre-Treatment Coordinator.

Click to enlarge this page.

This is the seventh page of salary information made public by the City of Crystal Lake, pursuant to a new state law.

The job titles listed run from Public Works Maintenance Worker to Records Supervisor.

Click to enlarge.

This is the sixth page of salaries that the City of Crystal Lake has published, as required by state law.  The job titles run from Police Officer to Public Works Fleets & Facilities Superintendent.

Click to enlarge.

More tomorrow.

A new state law requires municipalities to post salaries for employees earning more than $70,000 a year.

The City of Crystal Lake has posted on its web site such job titles and salaries.

What you see in the fifth page of the report running from Public Works Maintenance Worker to Records Supervisor.

Click to enlarge this page.

More tomorrow.

Today we move to page 4 of the report of city employee salaries posted because of the passage of a new state law.

Crystal Lake employees with job titles running from Firefighter Paramedic to Planner.

Click to enlarge this image.

A new state law requires municipalities to post their employees’ salaries. McHenry County Blog is on the third day of posting pages made public by the City of Crystal Lake.

The job titles today cover more Firefighter Paramedics.

Click to enlarge this page.

More tomorrow.

Here’s the second of seven pages of salaries of City of Crystal Lake employees. They are listed by job title. Today’s runs from Deputy Fire Chief to Firefighter Paramedic.

Click to enlarge this list of Crystal Lake City employee salaires.

More tomorrow.

The City of Crystal Lake in purported compliance with a new law that required municipalities to list employee salaries over $70,000 has put up a link on its Finance Department page.

Where I was directed when I filed an Freedom of Information Act request for city salaries above $70,000.

Too small to see the links?

Which link do you think would give you employee salary information?

By a process of elimination, I tried the one with the Public Act number.

And, I was right.

Here’s what I found on the first page:

Click to enlarge this unsearchable image of the first page of the Crystal Lake employee salary information mandated made public by a new state law.