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* Cook County Board President Todd Stroger just can’t get a break these days. The Chicago Sun-Times led with a front page article yesterday on how Stroger’s cousin Donna Dunnings, the county’s new chief financial officer, is receiving a 12% pay increase.
Dunnings’ salary will be the largest increase of any county employee in the budget, with the average increase coming in at around 5%. She will make nearly $160,000 with the pay increase, about $5,000 more than Tom Glaser made at the job previously.
Stroger’s spokesman, Gene Mullins justified the pay increase by saying that “she’s doing twice the work she was before and has more responsibilities.”
The news has brought out many critics:
“It sends the message that taxpayers have to make sacrifices and President Stroger’s friends, family and supporters get special treatment,” said Jay Stewart, of the Better Government Association. “It is a classic example of how Cook County politicians look at the world — one set of rules for the outsiders and a different, more favorable set of rules for the insiders.”
Several Cook County Board commissioners are upset as well:
“This is a little bit over the top to go ahead and afford these kinds of raises,” said Commissioner Tim Schneider, a Bartlett Republican, on Monday.
Commissioner Forrest Claypool had the harshest criticism though:
“This underscores Todd Stroger’s arrogance,” Commissioner Forrest Claypool (D-Chicago) said of the pay raise for Dunnings. “Everybody seems to be doing poorly except for Todd Stroger’s family.”
* Stroger’s decision to spend more and hire more contradicts recent comments by Mayor Daley, who said his city government is tightening its belt and freezing hiring because of poor economic conditions. Discuss.
posted by Kevin Fanning
Tuesday, Mar 25, 08 @ 9:35 am
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Why isn’t William Beavers playing the race card and defending Todd?
Comment by Ravenswood Right Winger Tuesday, Mar 25, 08 @ 9:48 am
No sympathy here. When you claim to conduct a nationwide search for a CFO and end up hiring your cousin, who had never been a CFO, you’re going to take your whacks.
It’s interesting that Stroger has singled out the Sun-Times as having a vendetta against him. I haven’t noticed any other media outlets giving him a pass.
Comment by wordslinger Tuesday, Mar 25, 08 @ 9:50 am
Beavers is no longer the big hog, that’s why I’ll bet. Oh and Stroger may be arrogant, but he’s incompetantly arrogant. If the city is tightening it’s belt why shouldn’t the county.
Comment by Levois Tuesday, Mar 25, 08 @ 9:52 am
While it is fine to pillory Todd Stroger for seemingly excessive raises to family members, we continue to ignore the larger problem of compensation for governmental workers.
In my area the local council is about to approve a compensation plan for all non-union workers which will provide for increases in compensation of up to 6% per year on top of the 3% COLA.
That is year to year pay increases up to 9% without any promotions involved! The stated purpose is to match what the union members get.
That is where the money is, not just the family members who get special treatment.
Comment by Plutocrat03 Tuesday, Mar 25, 08 @ 9:54 am
How much does the equivalent position make for the City of Chicago?
How much does the equivalent position make for Orange County (the biggest county in the US…Cook is second) in California? DuPage County?
Saying someone is overpaid is disingenuous. By definition, anyone who makes more than me, *especially* if they are in the public sector, is overpaid.
Gimme some comps. Pointing the finger at Stroger’s cousin conveniently distracts from the issue that ALL Cook County commissioners are overpaid fat cats. Claypool is talking through his hat.
Comment by Leroy Tuesday, Mar 25, 08 @ 10:12 am
During the next two years I would like to encourage the Toddler to hire more of his family members. Keep up the stupidity until the March 2010 primary.
Let’s seem his beat Claypool after 3.5 years of corrupt arrogant stupidity.
Comment by IrishPirate Tuesday, Mar 25, 08 @ 10:23 am
I love how Suffredin criticizes the move in an interview yesterday, despite his role as Stroger’s enabler. What did Suffredin expect?
Comment by Greg Tuesday, Mar 25, 08 @ 10:35 am
Personally I don’t care how much his cousin gets paid if she’s qualified for the position she holds and performs her duties cpompetently. I have some doubts in this regard, but not enough information to reach a conclusion one way or another. Any Northwestern Kellogg school graduate deserves considerable respect and commands a high salary in the private sector.
However, Todd Stroger and his minions have an undeniable genius for saying and doing things that generate negative publicity and bad political/public relations.
Comment by Anonymous Tuesday, Mar 25, 08 @ 10:50 am
On top of Toddler’s many other shortcomings, we must now add his lack of gratitude regarding his comments about the Sun-Times. After all, had it not been for that newspaper’s disasterously shortsighted endorsement of Toddler in 2006, Tony Peraica might be County Board President today and Ms. Dunnings might be out in the real world, looking in vain for a job that pays so well for doing such a pitiful job.
Comment by fedup dem Tuesday, Mar 25, 08 @ 11:38 am
Plutocrato3 is right. This issue is not how much money high-ranking officials make. These jobs should be high-paying if they carry significant responsibility. Unfortunately, of course, pols like Stroger tend to hire cronies and relatives instead of conducting appropriately rigorous searches but we the people did give him, or rather his job, the authority to do so. And we can’t say that we didn’t know that cronyism and nepotism are rampant among Illinois pols at all levels, along with other forms of corruption.
The real problem is that most of the hundreds of thousands of Illinois civil servants at all levels are receiving generous compensation and raises regardless of their performance, because most civil servants are almost impossible to fire unless they are convicted of a serious crime. If they just don’t bother to do much work, that’s not enough to fire them. Forget competence or creativity…it’s not an expectation. So we are paying these gigantic salaries and getting little in return, except from the comparatively small percentage of civil servants who choose to excel despite the fact that they don’t have to bother and could keep their lifetime sinecures with little or no effort.
It’s not just the state. Take a look at your local village hall in Illinois. All kinds of locally connected lifers there, and very well paid too.
Comment by Cassandra Tuesday, Mar 25, 08 @ 12:01 pm
Stroger is a loser. I have been hearing and reading about how we should give this guy a break. Well, this is what happens when you give a loser a break - he loses again.
If he is serious about his job at all, Todd needs to fire all his friends and family members from the County roles.
By doing this he will have established credibility that he is man enough for the job, AND cut the County’s budget by several millions to boot.
But he’s a loser.
Comment by VanillaMan Tuesday, Mar 25, 08 @ 12:27 pm
this is only going to get worse
Comment by Lance Tyson Tuesday, Mar 25, 08 @ 12:34 pm
Claypool is a Eunich! he is an enabler, regardless of how he wants to spend this. He could have spoken out about Stroger, but did not. He is a slave to his party.
Comment by Wumpus Tuesday, Mar 25, 08 @ 12:51 pm
I think Claypool is loving it, just more campaign issues for him to have against Stroger when he runs in 2010.
Comment by reasonable 1 Tuesday, Mar 25, 08 @ 1:02 pm
Good point on Suffredin, Greg. You knew this was going to happen!
Comment by Snidely Whiplash Tuesday, Mar 25, 08 @ 2:05 pm
Fedup,
Awful though he may be, I suspect it would have taken a little more than the Sun-Times taking off the kidgloves to have put Peraica in that office.
Peraica is the result of an impotent county Republican Party. If they were even a little organized, that guy would not keep winning nominations.
Comment by JonShibleyFan Tuesday, Mar 25, 08 @ 2:41 pm
snides,
we get it. you don’t like the guy. quit being a crybaby.
Comment by a cub fan Tuesday, Mar 25, 08 @ 2:51 pm
in 2010 toddler will win again because in crook co the voters are to stupid to think for themselves and do what the machine tells them.ie daley, lipinski,bobby rush (obama couldnt beat him but is qualified to be president).
Comment by fed up Tuesday, Mar 25, 08 @ 5:23 pm
I think incompetence in these appointees is vastly under-rated. If these people had any brains they would end up really doing some damage. As it is, we are getting off cheap with just the cost of their salaries - heck we should be paying them but make them stay home!
Comment by A Citizen Tuesday, Mar 25, 08 @ 5:55 pm
Instead of giving her a percentage raise, they should have given her a annual bonus like IDOT gives to non-union employees. As a lump sum payment on the payroll, some people got thousand of dollars.
Comment by old timer Tuesday, Mar 25, 08 @ 6:27 pm
Aw, heck! Not a Northwestern Kellogg school graduate in the public sector!
Let’s give her another raise!
Comment by Anon Tuesday, Mar 25, 08 @ 9:29 pm
Stroger has a gift in making good news turn into bad. Last year he cut $500 million from the budget but yet we talk about his cousin. Now that is a gift!!
Comment by Barking out loud Wednesday, Mar 26, 08 @ 6:12 am
This woman actually had the audacity to go on camera to say she was better qualified than her predecessor because he went to the University of Illinois.
Well, there you have it! The school you went to is everything when it comes to being able to do your job well (or even excel) and should be the ONLY factor in determining what your salaries and pay raises should be.
Instead of r-e-s-p-e-c-t, can you say “potential underachiever” whose school didn’t teach her how to get a job without sponging off of her relatives?
My gosh, if the school you go to is a new form of entitlement to performance increases, someone find this woman a job in the private sector before she gets bitter and becomes C-O-R-R-U-P-T.
Comment by Anonymous Wednesday, Mar 26, 08 @ 7:58 am
Barking Out Loud,
Don’t believe the Stroger hype. He cut the budget last year by a little over 50 million, not 500, and he cut in all the wrong places–doctors, nurses, prosecutors, police–not bureaucrats and patronage people.
And after getting 425 million in higher taxes this year, he hires 1,100 MORE bureaucrats!
Comment by Chicago Guy Wednesday, Mar 26, 08 @ 8:24 am