Who are the Highest-Paid Public Employees in Your Hometown?

By Open the Books’ Adam Andrzejewski

In Illinois politics, anything happens for the good of the people, it’s entirely by accident. Public service has little to do with serving the public and everything to do with using the public’s money to serve politicians.

In a recent look at government salaries at Forbes, we discovered a new ‘minimum wage’ of $100,000+ for 50,000 Illinois public employees costing taxpayers $8.0 billion per year.

We found nearly 9,000 state employees, 5,000 City of Chicago employees, and nearly 2,000 Cook County employees earning more than six-figures per year. We also discovered park district managers out earning the state director of parks; school treasurers out-earning the state treasurer; 72 small-town ‘managers’ out-earning every governor of the 50 states; and an University of Illinois at Chicago doctor making $1.3 million as the highest paid public employee.

Illinois, like many states, is in trouble. Data and analysis at OpenTheBooks.com show that Illinois has 1 million public employees either active (650,000) or retired (350,000 receiving a pension check). Yet, there’s only 6.2 million total jobs. Therefore, roughly one of every six ‘paychecks’ goes to a government employee or retiree.

So who are the highly compensated public employees in your hometown and neighborhood?

Use this interactive mapping tool to quickly search and review the public employees in Illinois who earn more than $100,000 per year.

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