How much municipal executives' cars are costing suburban taxpayers
Taxpayers in 49 suburbs will spend $261,974 this year for top municipal administrators to drive around in their own cars.
Most village managers and city administrators in the suburbs use their own cars to get around during work and receive allowances for doing so, a Daily Herald analysis of compensation reports and administrative contracts in 71 suburbs shows.
That subsidy ranges from $8,130 paid to Palatine Village Manager Reid Ottesen to $800 paid to Aurora Mayor Tom Weisner, that city's top executive. Towns such as Bartlett, Elgin, Glen Ellyn, Lindenhurst, Schaumburg, St. Charles, West Chicago and Wood Dale all pay stipends above $7,000 a year. The average among the 49 suburbs is $5,346.
Managers in 11 other towns don't receive a stipend but instead get a car to use as they drive around town or to Chicago and other suburbs for meetings.
“It's cheaper for the village to pay me $500 a month than give me a car, and then I also get to pick the car that I want to drive,” Carpentersville Village Manager Mark Rooney said. “There's probably a meeting of some kind that's 20 miles away several times a week.”
Stipends come with another perk. They can be considered earnings and count toward a public pension, in some cases, which would increase retirement benefits and taxpayers' obligations, according to Illinois Municipal Retirement Fund Executive Director Louis Kosiba.
Another 11 municipal executives in the suburbs don't receive a stipend or use of a vehicle, though they are eligible for mileage reimbursement, like any other employee, if they use their own cars for work. Those include the top municipal executives in Barrington Hills, Grayslake, Naperville, Rolling Meadows and Rosemont.
But many elected officials don't want their administrators spending time counting miles and tracking their trips.
“I probably drive four to five days a week, and that would be a lot of time and effort to track it for that purpose,” Lake Villa Village Administrator Karl Warwick said. “I use my car for business as much as it's needed to get the job done.”
Warwick said he was offered a village-owned car when he was hired three years ago but instead chose a $1,200 annual stipend. It has since been increased to $2,760.
Municipal executives who get the use of cars have to log personal use for tax purposes and often can't let anyone else drive. Executives in towns such as Elk Grove Village, Lisle, Mount Prospect and Wheaton are all driving municipal-owned vehicles, according to town records.
“I've got to believe it's cheaper to do it this way and have a vehicle the village keeps and can use for a dozen years than spend $6,000 for me to use my own car,” Barrington Village Manager Jeff Lawler said.
But other managers disagree. Village-owned cars are maintained, cleaned and repaired by the village, and those costs are often not part of any cost analysis calculations, they said. Taxpayers don't have to worry about additional costs when a manager's own car breaks down or needs an oil change.
Many municipal executives think the stipends allow them to break even on the cost of using their own cars for work. AAA reports the average American driver puts 13,476 miles on his or her car each year.
The federal reimbursement rate for work trips, which many other governments and businesses follow, is 54 cents per mile. That's expected to cover portions of the cost of gas, depreciation of the vehicle and insurance.
At that reimbursement rate, Ottesen's $8,130 stipend covers 15,056 miles a year. That's 753 round trips from Palatine's village hall to the Northwest Municipal Conference headquarters in Des Plaines.
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