There was a time not that long ago when being a civil servant was a true sacrifice. Giving up a career in the public sector meant taking a pay cut; not any more. Now being a civil servant is the next best thing to winning the lotto.
A website, Open The Books, mission is ‘Every dime. On line. In real time’. It shows the salary of every government employee nationwide. Dr. Tom Coburn, the Honorary chairman, retired U.S. Senator from Oklahoma is quoted as saying the website “is putting sunlight through a magnifying glass”.
Illinois is broke and continues to flirt with junk bond status. But the State’s financial woes aren’t stopping 63,000 government employees from bringing home six-figure salaries and higher”. This is partly why Illinois is in trouble. Over 600 government employees in Naperville are part of that huge number. The list at the end of this posting has 640 line entries of individuals over that $100,000 benchmark. I say ‘line entries’ because some government employees are shown twice on the list. In other words, they are getting money from two different Naperville government sources.
An example of that is Naperville Police Chief Bob Marshall. He’s getting $173,000 yearly from his time on the police department, and he’s hauling in another $172,000 from the City of Naperville. That equates to nearly $40 per hour around the clock; not bad for a civil servant.
Naperville city manager Doug Krieger is pocketing $187,000 per year, while assistant city manager Marcie Schatz is getting about $170,000 per year. I say ‘about’ because the numbers on the list below are from 2016, and I have rounded off the numbers to keep myself from getting dizzy looking at all these 6-digit salaries.
A Top-Ten winner on the list, is Naperville Park District Director Ray McGury coming in at #4 with $203,000. Ray must be really talented at what he does, because the only other Park District employee on the list is Kevin Finnegan coming in at #442, at about half of what McGury is taking in. This begs the question, is McGury, along with others on the list, really that talented, or is he, along with others overpaid?
The list represents the 2016 Illinois Employee Salaries exceeding $100,000. The categories are employees from:
- Community School District 203
- Naperville Police Department
- City of Naperville
- School Association For Special Education DuPage (only two employees at #627 and #635)
- Naperville Township
The range of salaries goes from $267,049 down to $100,018. I’m guessing the person last on the list would have preferred earning $19 less per year.
Nine people you will not find on the list are Mayor Steve Chirico and the other eight city council members. Let’s see if council member compensation becomes an agenda item during an upcoming meeting.
This is outright theft as these people in most cases control the boards which award these outrageous salaries and benefits and with respect to the city positions a grossly incompetent city council who rubber stamps whatever the city bureaucrats submit.
Open the Books is a great website for exposing the lack of fiscal responsibility of people we elect to manage our local government, public services and schools.
Salaries in comparable jobs in the private sector are much lower. And don’t forget the premium benefits like health insurance and retirement packages that public sector employees get.
Why should we fund these abuses by paying high property taxes? Other states are beckoning us with lower taxes.
Very interesting
What I see when I look at the first page of the list displayed is that over 63% of these people work for the school district which has a total budget that is close to 1/2 that of the city. That McGury is making 9% more then Krieger but oversees a budget that is 2/3 that of the city’s. Which tells me if we want to reduce our property tax bill we need to look more closely at the School District and Park District budgets
This is only what the public sees . There are numerous perks for which the taxpayers pay.
Nobody monitors the abuse. Taxpayers are clueless .
WTF? Gypsies tramps and thieves suckling at the breast of Madigastian.
My new mantra…Escape the State
Jim
All three taxing districts are running amok but the school districts compromise about 80% of my real estate taxes .There are no checks and balances and the abuse of giving teachers a 6% salary increase prior to retirement is continuing . Hardly anyone talks about this . We tax payers love to be abused .
The city of Naperville for a period of 5 years was reducing its property tax revenue, then it was flat for three years and the last couple of years the increase has been less 3% annually. If the other property taxing bodies in our community had show this degree of fiscal responsibility for the last 10 years we would all be seeing a property tax bills at least 10% lower then they are right now.
During the financial downturn of 2007-8 the city cut staffing by over 10%. This was a significant cost savings because the largest part of the city budget is salaries and benefits. This cut was in addition to cuts in capital spending. None of the other taxing bodies in our community did any of this, In fact the Park District increase the amount they could collect by the maximum amount allow without a ballot referendum. And don’t even get me started on school district spending.
If people in this community were really serious about cutting property taxes they would insist on the level of government transparency, practiced by the city, being practiced by all the property taxing government bodies in our community. If these other elected officials were held to the same standards and accountability as city elected officials their behavior would be radically different.
so where’s the info on school district 204 staff? Naper Settlement? The library? Firefighters? this is a nice list but definitely incomplete. Something tells me this info is not all that accurate.
Naper Settlement, the Library and Firefighters are all part of the Naperville city government so they would show on this list as city employees (look at the Naperville city budget and you will find this info also). The reason on 204 employees are listed is because of the search parameters used you would need to go to this website and search the list yourself to get this info.
school district 204 is not part of Naperville since the district covers also south Naperville Bolingbrook,Aurora .