Entries from March 2007
D-47 denies resident’s open-records request Crystal Lake
March 19, 2007 · Leave a Comment
Categories: City of Crystal Lake
Teachers’ contract talks begin Crystal Lake
March 19, 2007 · Leave a Comment
Categories: City of Crystal Lake
District 47 hopefuls consider school finances, growth issues Crystal Lake
March 19, 2007 · Leave a Comment
Categories: City of Crystal Lake
Letters reveal D-47 struggle Crystal Lake
March 18, 2007 · Leave a Comment
Categories: City of Crystal Lake
District 47 summer maintenance projects approved Crystal Lake
March 18, 2007 · Leave a Comment
Categories: City of Crystal Lake
Township jobs all in the family Crystal Lake – Algonquin Township
March 18, 2007 · Leave a Comment
Township government often resembles a family business in McHenry County. At least 10 elected officials spend taxpayer dollars to pay relatives who work for them, according to township records recently obtained by the Northwest Herald.Family ties exist in 14 of 17 townships across the region, and at least five officials pay their spouses, siblings or children about $30,000 a year or more each to work as their assistants, records show.
Most officials acknowledge that nepotism is prevalent in township government. But some dispute whether hiring relatives – sometimes for jobs not advertised to the public – is wrong.
“You use nepotism as a dirty word,” said Algonquin Township Road Commissioner Bob Miller, who has several relatives working in the department he runs. “If people are working for an honest day’s pay and putting in an honest day’s work, I guess I don’t understand how that can be construed as unethical.”
Others say townships are not the place to hire relatives, regardless of how productive or qualified those employees are.
“It makes me furious,” said Ersel Schuster, Seneca Township’s supervisor. “It’s just not a healthy thing to do. It reflects on every one of us.”
Some face no competition
In some cases, township officials say they rely on their children or spouses to fill summer jobs or to help clear roads during heavy snowfalls for as little as $9 an hour.
Elsewhere, however, township road commissioners and assessors pay their relatives tens of thousands of dollars for work that they say is demanding and essential to their department’s success.
Sometimes relatives are hired without any competition from the public because the jobs they fill are not advertised.
In Chemung Township, Highway Commissioner Donald Staver did not advertise the opening or conduct any interviews before he hired his brother as the department’s third worker about six years ago.
“He needed a job, and I asked him if he wanted to work for me,” Staver said. “I had nobody that came out and applied. Nobody asked.”
Now, his brother, Joseph Staver, earns $18 an hour, or about $37,400 a year, which is more than Donald Staver’s $34,500 annual salary.
In Nunda Township, Road Commissioner Donald Kopsell pays his wife, Donna Kopsell, $20.50 an hour, or more than $47,000 a year, to be his full-time office manager.
A similar situation exists in Algonquin Township, where Miller hired his wife to manage his office for $46,000 a year. His wife is Anna May Miller, who also is a member of the McHenry County Board from District 1.
Miller’s son-in-law, daughter and the father of his grandchild also work for the road district.
“I feel that family is held to a higher standard,” said Bob Miller, who commended all of his employees but particularly those closest to him. “The intensity of work that I get from family is far and above other employees.”
Loyalty a ‘big issue’
It’s not always inappropriate for officials to hire their relatives, Grafton Township Supervisor John Rossi said. But some cases are clearly questionable.
Rossi himself raised questions last year when his township’s road commissioner, Jack Freund, created a job for a full-time office assistant and hired his daughter to fill it for almost $40,000 a year.
When township trustees slashed Freund’s budget for an assistant to $15,000 a year, he hired his daughter for an additional job as a part-time flagger for road projects.
Rossi did not comment on Freund’s hiring. But he defended Grafton Township Assessor William Ottley, who employs his wife and daughter for more than $37,000 a year each.
“There are situations where you could look at and suspect unfair advantages,” Rossi said. “And situations where you say, ‘Hey, you know what, maybe he just hired someone he can trust.’ That’s up to the public to make those distinctions.”
Freund did not return several calls for comment.
For his part, Ottley said, his staff often brought work home with them to keep up in a department that assessed more than 21,900 parcels last year.
“Loyalty is such a big issue,” said Ottley, who took office in 1990. “When you want to have good numbers, you’ve got to have loyalty and a lot of people willing to work a lot of hours off the clock to get the job done.”
In Greenwood Township, Assessor Karen Roth said her husband worked for her for about three years without pay because the township did not have the money to pay him.
Randall Roth, 57, took state assessor certification classes along with Karen Roth in 1995, and they often worked into the night and on weekends, Karen Roth said.
Randall Roth later was paid as a part-time employee, Karen Roth said, and he became a full-time employee in June. In September, he received a 40 percent raise from $1,750 a month to $2,450 a month, or $29,400 a year.
“I live here in this township, and I care about this township,” Karen Roth said. “And we’ve taken nothing and brought it up to where it is. I would hate to take that and hand it over to someone and have that go down.”
Boards have no say
Part of the problem, some officials say, is that township supervisors and trustees lack the power to stop department leaders from hiring friends and relatives.
Once a year, township trustees determine budgets for the highway department, assessor’s office, and other departments.
In all but a couple of cases in McHenry County, trustees have no power over whom department heads choose to hire with the money.
“As long as it fits on a budget line item, they have the authority to go and spend the money,” Nunda Township Supervisor John Heisler said.
That bothers Hebron Township Supervisor Greg Kuhs. In Hebron Township, the only hired relative is a planning commissioner’s wife who earns $25 a month to record notes at meetings.
“There should be more control,” Kuhs said. “The road district commissioners need a boss.”
Meanwhile, Marengo Township Supervisor Steven Weskerna cast doubt on some officials’ claims that the most qualified job candidates happened to be their spouses or children.
“I don’t think it’s good policy,” Weskerna said. “I think there’s a lot of [qualified] people out there that could fit that bill.”
Kuhs said he did not mind talking about township nepotism. He said he hoped that the issue would help residents to understand what township government should be, and to participate in its decisions over road maintenance, tax assessments, general assistance, senior services, and more.
“They need to know what their township does,” Kuhs said. “Come to the meetings. Say what’s on your mind.”Read more: Township jobs all in the family
Tags: City of Crystal Lake, Crystal Lake Illinois, Corruption, Algonquin Township, Algonquin Corruption, Crystal Lake Corruption
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March 18, 2007 · Leave a Comment
Categories: City of Crystal Lake
Hopefuls tread Vulcan Lakes Crystal Lake Il
March 18, 2007 · Leave a Comment
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Categories: City of Crystal Lake
