Cook County Board Members Give Themselves 10% Pay Hike, Plus Indefinite Annual 3% Raises

CHICAGO — In response to recent historically high levels of inflation, Cook County commissioners granted 10 percent raises to themselves and other elected officials and locked in annual 3 percent pay hikes for the indefinite future.

The board approved the raises by a vote of 13-4 at a special meeting Tuesday. They are the first pay bumps for Cook County elected officials since the year 2000. Since then, inflation has increased by 45 percent, according to county finance officials.

At the finance committee meeting ahead of the final vote, 13th District Commissioner Larry Suffredin (D-Evanston) shared an anecdote from a mentor, longtime Illinois politician Abner Mikva.

During Mikva's first year as a state representative, when he sought to increase salaries for legislators to allow him to provide for his family, he was confronted by infamous Democratic Secretary of State Paul Powell, Suffredin said.

"Representative, you understand that if you raise the salaries, good people will think about running against us," Powell told Mikva, the retiring commissioner recalled.

"I want to make that point today — that if we don't keep the salaries up to a reasonable level, we're not only going to affect ourselves, and the people who are here, but we're going to affect future generations, because we won't have the high quality of people running that we currently have on the board or in the other elected positions," Suffredin said. "This is not just county commissioners. This is for all the other elected, and many of them are in situations where their key staff makes much more money than they do, which is a bad management tool."

Cook County's sheriff, clerk, treasurer, assessor, board president, board of review members and each of the 17 commissioners will get salary increases at the start of their next term in December. The circuit court clerk's raise takes effect in December 2024. The raises do not apply to the offices of the state's attorney's and chief judge.

According to the ordinance setting the new pay rates, the 10 percent raises were calculated by combining the 7.5 percent increase in the consumer price index last year with a 2.5 increase based on cost-of-living adjustments given to other county staff in recent years.

Every year going forward, commissioners and other elected officials will receive yearly pay bumps equal to the increase of the consumer price index, up to 3 percent.

"The annual increase shall continue until the Cook County Board of Commissioners votes to repeal or amend the annual increase," according to the ordinance.

Representatives of the League of Women Voters and the Chicago Civic Federation opposed the automatic annual cost-of-living increases.

"The League continued to oppose the provision in the proposed ordinance that provides for the continuation of this yearly increase in perpetuity," according to a statement from the League read into the record during the committee meeting. "Instead, the League continues to support the board regularly reviewing the salaries prior to the beginning of the new terms to determine whether any further increases whether for some or all of the elected officials are warranted."

Laurence Msall, president of the Civic Federation, joined with the League and urged the board to reassess the salaries and vote on new increases every four years.

"If there is a need for further adjustments in the future, they should reflect the actual duties and responsibilities and any changes that have occurred in those offices, rather than automatically increasing those salaries every year going forward," Msall said.

Deborah Sims, who represents the South Side and south suburban 5th District, like Suffredin and Elmwood Park Republican Peter Silvestri, is retiring at the end of her current term after 28 years on the board.

"All of a sudden now everybody feels like they should get a raise, and the three of us are leaving. That's ironic," Sims said.

Each commissioner, other than the finance chair, previously received an annual salary of $85,000. That goes up to $93,500. The finance chairperson's salary rises from $90,000 to $99,000 under the terms of the new ordinance.

"There's no way that anybody should work on a job, with the way that cost of living is going up, and continue to work at a salary with no increase. You have to love this job in order to do it without a pay increase," Sims said.

"I know people say that this is a part-time job. But it's not a part-time job when you're at the grocery store and someone stops you and tells you that their son is in jail, and can you make a phone call to find out where they are," she said. "Or if you're in church, and somebody comes over to you and say, I'm having a problem with the road in my village."

Suffredin said he planned to introduce additional legislation at the board's June 16 meeting that would request another market survey for a review of compensation in December 2024 and require a vote one way or another by April 2025, more than a year before the next election.

Voting in favor of the salary increases:

• lma Anaya, 7th District (D-Chicago)
• Scott Britton, 14th District (D-Glenview)
• John Daley, 11th District (D-Chicago)
• Bridget Degnen, 12th District (D-Chicago)
• Bridget Gainer, 10th District (D-Chicago)
• Brandon Johnson, 1st District (D-Chicago)
• Bill Lowry, 3rd District (D-Chicago)
• Donna Miller, 6th District (D-Lynwood)
• Stanley Moore, 4th District (D-Chicago)
• Kevin Morrison, 15th District (D-Mount Prospect)
• Peter Sylvestri, 9th District (R-Elmwood Park)
• Deborah Sims, 5th District (D-Chicago)
• Larry Suffredin, 13th District (E-Evanston)

Voting against the increase:

• Frank Aguilar, 16th District (D-Cicero)
• Luis Arroyo, 8th District (D-Chicago)
• Dennis Deer, 2nd District (D-Chicago)
• Sean Morrison, 17th District (R-Palos Park)