Daily Herald opinion: Who will step up to help suburbs determine best way to pay leaders?
According to an article this past Sunday by our own Jake Griffin, municipal elected officials in our suburbs are compensated in wildly different ways for the work they do to keep our cities and villages running. For some communities, the volunteer spirit still is the driving force, and no one is paid for serving. At the other end, communities such as Rosemont and Aurora treat their mayors as full-time chief executives, earning six figures.
Each of the 89 suburbs in our coverage area made up their own rules on compensation from their respective beginnings. By the mid-20th century most of our towns did little more than repay expenses incurred, and award per diems for meetings attended. The prevailing spirit was one of volunteerism and the compensation was primarily pride in being a respected community leader (and since many officials were also local merchants, perhaps benefiting from more trade).
Today, it’s more complicated. Fewer people are willing to sacrifice their precious free time to serve on a local board, or deal with 24/7 criticism on social media. Too many locally elected posts go uncontested. Our communities wrestle with whether they should increase compensation, and by how much. Too much pay, they worry, will result in people running for the wrong reasons. Too little, and citizens are discouraged from getting involved.
This is an important question, and each community is still going it alone. Because of that, we encourage one of our regional agencies to undertake a study on the best practices for municipal elected officials’ compensation. We’re looking at agencies who are best able to investigate questions of public policy, such as the Northwest Municipal Conference, the DuPage Mayors and Managers Conference, the Civic Federation or the Better Government Association, to name four. There may well be others.
What is at stake in getting it right? Overcompensating officials burdens taxpayers, and raises questions of incentive: Are you in it because you believe in civic duty or for a paycheck? But under-compensation also has its issues: If the only people who run are those who can afford it, you can create a representative body that represents only the wealthiest few.
Compensation alone, of course, does not necessarily determine the quality of governance. Civic pride matters, along with the opportunity to find creative solutions to interesting problems. “Cities large and small are responsible for an increasing share of public goods and services,” writes University of Houston Law Center assistant professor Kellen Zale in the Stanford Law Review. “In the face of deadlock at the federal and state levels, cities have engaged in innovative policymaking on issues as varied as climate change, civil rights, campaign finance, and consumer protection.”
And compensation alone will not bring people back to local boards and commissions. Elk Grove Mayor Craig Johnson, an old hand at local politics, tells Griffin he knows why people don’t run, and compensation is down on the list.
“The No. 1 reason … is because of Facebook,” he said. “They don’t want to see their name splashed all over social media. Time commitment is another reason and pay is probably third.”
Will one of our regional agencies, who have done so much good for us for many years, be willing to tackle this issue? We hope so, as the ultimate goal is to increase public participation in government, and to treat current officials fairly. Our local leaders will thank you.