Pyle's pay deal - one smelly deal

When Sgt. Greg Pyle was arrested in January for ten counts of predatory criminal sexual assault on a child (under age 13 and a family member), Sheriff Keith Nygren put him on administrative leave. The Northwest Herald reported that Pyle was on paid administrative leave.

Ever since that date, the world had to assume that Pyle was continuing to pull his monthly pay of about $7,000. No mention has ever been made in the Northwest Herald of a change to unpaid status.

To impose a discipline of "more than 30 days" on Pyle, Nygren would have had to take the request for discipline to the Sheriff's Department Merit Commission. He never has. Then Nygren decided to say that Pyle was taking vacation and sick pay. But was he? How could Pyle, as still an employee of the Sheriff's Department, receive vacation and sick pay that he supposedly had accumulated? Don't you have to quit to get that?

Now that the Feds have charged Pyle with additional crimes, Nygren is back-pedaling on the pay issue. What's the real story? Nygren has apparently said that Pyle never took any vacation time during ten years on the Department. Baloney! First of all, there should be Human Resources rules in place that employees must take vacation time. You cannot accumulate it. You use it or lose it.

One of the reasons to insist that employees take vacation time and leave work is clearly demonstrated in the case of the Dixon, Ill. comptroller, who is accused of stealing $53,000,000 (that's $53 Million). Supposedly, she never took any time off in 20 years. When she finally did, somebody noticed something was fishy.

So, we are supposed to believe Nygren when he says Pyle never took any vacation time in ten years? NEVER? And now we learn that there was some deal with Pyle via his attorney to "let" him resign when his so-called vacation and sick-pay ran out. That in itself ought to be enough to force Nygren out of office.

Did Pyle accrue any additional retirement benefits by what one MCSD employee called a "sweetheart" deal? Why would the top administrator of a large County department ever give any kind of a break to an employee accused of such horrendous crimes? Is the County Board or the Law & Justice Committee investigating that "deal"? Or the County Administrator? Or the County Auditor?

To what extent has the Sheriff's Department investigated any improprieties with the Evidence Room? Pyle was in charge of that. He was also Nygren's go-to guy on computer forensics. Would Pyle be the guy who examined Kurt Milliman's computer or the computers of Timothy Smith or Kimberly Holian Smith? Was Pyle the guy who tore into the computer of Doran Bloom or the business computer of his mother? Is everything that Pyle touched at MCSD under a microscope? If so, by whom? By an impartial investigator?