Daily Herald:
DuPage Forest Preserve commissioners voted unanimously Tuesday to reduce their own salaries from nearly $57,000 to $53,500, but they disagreed on whether the cuts were deep enough.

Commissioner Joe Cantore suggested reducing salaries in October and on Tuesday fought to keep the issue from being tabled to next week’s commission meeting.

He urged fellow commissioners to cut their salaries to $50,000, roughly equal to the annual compensation DuPage County Board members receive.

“It was just time for some action,” Cantore said. “We needed to get it done. But I don’t think we reduced it enough and I guess you could call it a compromise.”


Oh Joe, you great crusading action hero you.

Reality check, please. The median income per household in the USA as of the last census was a little over fifty thousand. In DuPage it's just over $75,000. Assuming an average of 1.5 wage-earners per household, that means that even if this proposal had passed, Joe and his buddies would still each have been getting the same money the rest of us get, plus very generous benefits like health care and pensions. But the rest of us have to work full time for our money; not so Joe. DuPage Forest Preserve Commissioners claim (in the Herald article linked above) to work 1000 hours a year; that's only half a full-time job, if true; the real amount of time they spend is probably quite a bit less. Most if not all of them have day jobs—Cantore is an industrial building remodeling contractor.

Then there's this:
[Outgoing commissioner Carl] Schultz said one forest commissioner represents the same number of people as three county board members per district. He added that county board members also have offices, while forest commissioners keep offices in their homes.


This is a bloody silly argument for a number of reasons. Besides the obvious, that running the forest preserves might not be quite as much work as running the entire rest of the county, the fact of the matter is that DuPage County Board members are also grossly overpaid, getting full-time salary and benefits for work they do as a sideline to their regular jobs.

Joe and others, if you're really out to save the taxpayers some money, cut your salary and benefits to what a typical ten-hour-per-week position would offer. Give up your guaranteed government-provided health care and retirement income until such time as the rest of us are entitled to such things, which might happen if we get the Republicans out of state and federal government.

Alternately, keep the salary and benefits, but make the Commission work for them. Make it illegal for Forest Preserve Commissioners (and County Board members) to accept any outside paid position or own a significant interest in any business during their terms. Transfer to them some of the work currently being done by salaried managers and make them spend enough time on it to earn that money we're giving them.