DuPage County Board accused of violating Open Meetings Act in approving pay raises for elected officials

Pay raises for some elected officials in DuPage may be in jeopardy as County Clerk Jean Kaczmarek raises questions about the vote approving the increases.

On Friday, Kaczmarek filed a complaint with the Illinois Attorney General’s public access counselor. She claims the county board violated the Open Meetings Act when it voted on April 28 to approve pay increases for the future county clerk, treasurer, county board chairman and sheriff.

In her complaint, Kaczmarek argues the county violated state law by failing to post notice of the proposed salary increases six days in advance. Under the state’s open meeting rules, compensation packages totaling more than $150,000 for employees participating in the Illinois Municipal Retirement Fund must be publicly posted six days before a vote to approve.

The agenda for the April 28 meeting was publicly posted on April 24.

Kaczmarek also contends that a last-minute increase to the proposed salary for the county board chairman, increasing it from the originally proposed amount of $154,390, which was included in a publicly posted agenda packet, to $185,000 during a finance committee meeting on the same day as the county board meeting, did not provide enough notice to the public.

Under state law, county board members must approve their own and other elected officials’ salaries 180 days before the election for those positions. The approved salaries take effect Dec. 1, after the officials for those positions have been sworn in for their next term. If the state finds the board did not follow open meeting rules, it could nullify the vote approving the raises for the next term.

Kaczmarek, who lost her bid for reelection in the April primary, argued that the change not only resulted in a higher salary number than originally posted, but also a change in historical policy where the county board chairman’s salary had been lower than that of other elected officials.

The originally posted salary would have brought the board chairman’s salary in line with those of the county clerk and treasurer. However, the approved salary puts the county board chair at a higher level than even the sheriff, whose salary was set at $175,461.

“If the Open Meetings Act’s requirement for agendas to set forth the general subject matter of any resolution or ordinance is so broad that the County Board can post one set of specific salary figures in advance and then dramatically amend those salaries on the board floor without notice, then the pubic derives no benefit whatsoever from the originally posted ordinance or text,” Kaczmarek wrote in her complaint.

On Friday, DuPage County Board Chair Deborah Conroy declined to comment and referred questions to the DuPage County state’s attorney.

In an email, a spokesman for the state’s attorney’s office stated the Open Meetings Act requirement to post salaries of employees earning $150,000 or more six days in advance of approving them does not apply because elected officials are not considered county employees.

However, in her argument, Kaczmarek also pointed to the Illinois Pension Code, which, in part, includes elected officials in its definition of “employee.”

“The point of the Open Meetings Act is to offer the most transparency,” she said.

DuPage County Board member Jim Zay questioned Kaczmarek’s motives, noting she has not been to county board meetings and has not actively participated in the county’s budget process for some time.

“You want to talk about hypocrisy,” Zay said. “Now, all of a sudden, she can show up at a county board meeting and speak out. Sounds like a lot of sour grapes to me.”

Kaczmarek, however, noted she raised a similar issue in 2014, when the county board was set to approve salaries for elected officials. At that time, the board opted to delay the vote for six days.

She said this time, however, she waited to see if the county board would take any corrective action on its own. When it did not, she decided to go to the board.

“No one else came forward,” Kaczmarek said, “so I decided to do it.”