Sept. 02--Tinley Park trustees have repealed an unusual annual bonus that rewarded elected officials for staying in office and cost taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars, ending a controversial perk exposed by the Tribune.
In 2004, Tinley trustees voted to award the town's mayor and clerk an annual 2 percent increase to their base salaries for every year they have served in office after the first eight. Trustees voted to expand the benefit to themselves in 2008.
Every year, the bonus compounds, and it has been calculated to account retroactively for previous years of service, meaning some officials received big increases to their base salaries. Former Mayor Ed Zabrocki, for instance, earned $32,000 a year base salary but received an additional $24,827 during his last fiscal year in office because he first became a trustee in 1978.
The repeal, approved unanimously by the Village Board on Tuesday night, follows the biggest political changes in a generation for Tinley Park. This past spring, voters ousted three incumbents and elected outsider candidates who railed against alleged cronyism and complacency in village government. Zabrocki, who had been the town's mayor since 1981, announced his resignation a month later.
The repeal goes into effect beginning with the 2017 election.
Trustee Michael Pannitto, who won his first term in the spring, said he pushed for a repeal of the bonus because it's "wrong" and "a tricky way" to calculate a politician's salary.
"There's people out there that are actually struggling and having a tough time paying their property taxes that aren't getting raises, aren't getting extra money for this and that," Pannitto said.
New Mayor Dave Seaman, who previously defended longevity pay as a trustee, said this week that the bonus system "sounded like a good idea at the time. It wasn't."
"It was essentially an experiment that was tried, and it was not successful," Seaman said.
Earlier this year, a controversy over longevity pay threatened to derail Seaman's ascension from trustee to mayor.
When Zabrocki announced his resignation, effective in June, Zabrocki hand-picked Seaman to be his replacement. Seaman first became a trustee in 1984.
After the Daily Southtown reported that Seaman stood to receive $36,000 above his base salary on longevity bonuses if appointed mayor, new trustees threatened to block his appointment.
Seaman promised in writing not to accept the extra money, and was appointed by the board.
Experts criticized the town's longevity pay structure as "self-serving" and "highly suspect." Maryam Judar, executive director of the Citizen Advocacy Center in Elmhurst, questioned whether the suburb was skirting state law that requires elected officials to vote on raises.
David Melton, who heads the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform, called it "a sad case of self-dealing by politicians serving their own interests at the expense of the current and future voters."
The perk particularly benefited Zabrocki, whose eligibility for longevity pay was calculated to 1986.
In 2005, Zabrocki's first annual longevity payment amounted to $14,578, records show. The village calculated to account for all the years since 1986. The calculation started with $600 in 1986 and kept compounding to make it current. Zabrocki's longevity pay rate continued to grow by 2 percent each year.
Zabrocki began collecting the extra pay in 2005, the year he retired as director of guidance at Brother Rice High School. He previously defended the bonus by saying the village saves money from the long institutional memory of its leaders.
Brian Younker, who ran alongside Pannitto and Jake Vandenberg in the spring election, said repealing longevity pay was important to his slate.
"I don't even know of any other community that has longevity pay (for politicians)," Younker said.
gpratt@tribpub.com
