Schaumburg Township divided over Costin hiring

Political turmoil has fallen within the long stable, long quiet offices of Schaumburg Township.

At the center of new infighting among elected officials is Highway Commissioner Robert Fecarotta's hiring of Schaumburg mayoral candidate Brian Costin to serve as his website designer and budget administrator.

Fecarotta said he has no interest in Costin's political ambitions, which include challenging Schaumburg Mayor Al Larson in next year's election. Instead, he believes Costin's philosophy about online transparency makes him the perfect candidate to design his department's website.

But Schaumburg Township Supervisor Mary Wroblewski said that, politics aside, she believes hiring Costin is a waste of taxpayer money. The township already has awarded a $12,500 contract to redesign its website to low bidder NVision of Elgin.

Costin will be paid $17 an hour for about 10 hours of work setting up the highway department's website, which will be linked to the township's site. He then will remain on Fecarotta's payroll at the same rate for about five hours a month, maintaining the site and serving as the highway commissioner's budget administrator.

"I said I'd be willing to do it for free, but (Fecarotta) said, 'No, no, no, you should be paid for your work,'" Costin said.

Fecarotta said he believes there would be greater political questions if Costin were not being paid for his work. And he insists that $17 an hour for such a small number of hours a month is "a steal."

Costin also works for the Illinois Policy Institute, where he spearheaded a survey of governmental websites that rates them on their access to financial information and other documents.

The survey began earlier this year by looking at local governments within Schaumburg Township. The township itself did not score highly.

Costin said the survey was not a way to solicit 'repair work' on websites that did not rate well. Fecarotta is the only official who's reached out to him, and he said he based that decision on Costin's earlier online work for his own Schaumburg Freedom Coalition.

"I did not go to Schaumburg Township and say, 'I want a job,'" Costin said. "Mr. Fecarotta contacted me out of the blue."

Other township officials are in the process of deciding what their redesigned website will include when launched July 1. They are meeting to discuss that question Wednesday night.

Wroblewski said her preference is not to post the township's budget online devoid of explanations of expenditures. That key difference to Costin's philosophy of online transparency.

The supervisor said she's always been open to providing a thorough explanation of the budget to whomever wants it.

"Just to turn someone loose with it, that's not a logical thing to do," she said. "There's so much that can be misinterpreted."

"That's unfair to the people," Costin countered. "Part of the process of answering questions is to provide the information that would help develop those questions. I don't believe there's any justification these days for not putting a budget online. It's not like personal information."

Fecarotta, who's stopped talking to Wroblewski by phone, is moving his office out of the township building and into the highway department garage next door. He's also fighting with his supervisor over $40,000 his department donated last year to senior transportation and now wants back.

The donation freed the rest of the township from that expense so it could instead pay its obligations to its private pension fund, Wroblewski said. The money was spent in last year's budget and can't be recovered, she said.

But Fecarotta argues that his department could be compensated from this year's budget, even if from surpluses.