What are the the pay rules at McHenry County Sheriff's Department? Are these set by McHenry County government? You know, the County Board? Or can, or does, an official at the top of the pile get to decide about who gets what, and when?
I'm not talking about standard, basic wages here; e.g., "salary". I'm talking about pay for vacation, sick time, comp time and personal days. For an employee with pretty good longevity, say 20 years or so, that can add up to substantial amounts.
Should there be a "use it or lose it" policy? If you get three weeks' vacation (or four or five) for the year, should you have to actually take that vacation time in the following year (and before the end of that year)? And should you have to sign up for the time off, so that manpower can be adjusted well in advance to cover the absence of that employee?
What happens to the budget of an organization when an employee doesn't take time off but, instead, accrues it? There is a liability on the books.
But what really happens, when that employee is allowed to cash in the economic value of that time in his last year of employee, causing his earned wages to increase substantially?
If an employee can do that and cause a significant boost in his income, on which his retirement pay is based, he can cause an increase in his monthly retirement income that will be paid for many, many months. Is that fair? Sure, the employee likes it. And, if he is a "favored" employee (i.e., if he gets to do that, but another employee (or other employees) cannot), is that fair? More importantly, is it ethical? Is it legal?
Since overtime ought to be an exception in a Department, it should not be counted for retirement pay purposes. If a Department (let's say, the McHenry County Sheriff's Department) is routinely incurring enormous amounts of overtime expense, then the administrator or executive of the Department (here, the Sheriff) ought to be re-examining manpower needs and hiring more deputies at basic salaries, not incurring ongoing overtime.
Until recently, the public was most likely unaware of the high total wages of many, many deputies at the McHenry County Sheriff's Department. Who would have guessed that so many were earning at the $90,-100,000/year mark?
A chart I'd like to see is the basic salaries of the deputies and a separate column for the dollar amount of overtime they collected. It would be very revealing to see the figures that the Sheriff took to the County Board and said, "Here are the salaries for 2009."
Did anyone on the County Board ask for a projection of overtime for 2009?
I'll tell you - I don't think the folks in McHenry County will stand for this. The problem is they just don't know about it. OK, folks. It's time to know about it!
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2 comments:
Gus, Gus, Gus. You want to be Sheriff, but know so little about County Government let alone the MCSO. How could you be the boss?
Maybe you should get your nose out of the FOIA statutes and start reading the Counties Code and statutes regarding Sheriff's and IMRF.
All Counties except Cook are under IMRF. (Illinois Municipal Retirement Fund) The rules regarding pensions are set by the STATE Statute, not the COUNTY.
You can not single out certain types of compensation and say this counts but that doesn't. Also the SHERIFF can't just hire more deputies as he sees fit. The number of deputy sheriff's is set by resolution of the COUNTY BOARD.
Pay is set by a collective bargaining agreement mutually agreed to by the COUNTY BOARD. Get a clue here GUS. The SHERIFF does not set wages. The COUNTY does. It’s a binding legal contract.
You again single out the MCSO for wages, yet truth be told, the MCSO is far from being the top in compensation. Many agencies in McHenry county compensate their officers much higher. ALL agencies incur overtime. You want deputies taking their benefit time off but who is going to patrol the streets? Sometimes to let one person off, you must pay someone else for shift coverage. Here’s a flash Gus, OT is a planned for event and is covered in the budget submitted each year.
OT is a fact of life. Under King Gus rules, when a person retires are they supposed to donate the time back to the County?
Law enforcement is or should be a major concern of everyone who lives in McHC, and the Sheriff's dept. receives and deserves an enormous amount of cooperation from county taxpayers, as any law-enforcement agency should.
While in theory this sounds good, in practice it could, and probably would, create chaos in the Sheriff's Dept. that would negatively affect safety in McHC.
I think when things are working, you don't begin making 'reforms'.
Sheriff's officers are already stretched thinner that I'd like; they have a large patol area and sometimes we'd like to see more rather than less coverage. This "plan" would necessitate yet less covering than already is problematical.
Forget about it.
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