1 Reason for High County Taxes

According to a page given to me during last week's County Board meeting, 22 County Board members earn $18,601.70/year for staying awake during Board meetings and heading up some committees. But . . . the Chairman of the County Board gets paid $74,406.02! Whoa! Wait just a minute! $74,000??? And that's plus a whopping $13,182.96 for his health insurance AND $6,272 contributed to his pension.

I thought that was a part-time job. Pretty nice, eh?

I'll be doing more digging to figure out the disparity in health insurance costs to the County (us!) for health insurance costs of the other 23 Board members. According to this same page, these are the health insurance costs for other Board members (the number of Board members whose health insurance cost is the amount shown is in parentheses).

County Annual Health Insurance Contribution (FY 2008) for County Board members, excluding Chairman Koehler:
$17,050.56 (5)
$13,182.96 (1)
$12,537.24 (1)
$9,478.32 (3)
$8,214.72 (1)
$7,800.00 (4)
$7,339.68 (1)
$646.08 (1)
$0.00 (6)

The above numbers are "each", not total for the number shown in parentheses. There are five (5) County Board members for whom we pay $17,050.56 PER YEAR for their health insurance. What in the world is going on here???

Why would any business pay a health insurance cost (premium/contribution) almost equal to the annual compensation of its worker???