Kane state’s attorney lobbies for first staff raise since 2007
Kane County State’s Attorney Joe McMahon plans next month to push for raises for his 121 staff members, including a $13,000 bump in the starting salary for prosecutors to $53,000 a year to make them more competitive with state’s attorney’s offices in surrounding counties.
In all, McMahon will be asking the Kane County Board to sign off on $446,000 more in salaries for the coming budget year, which begins Dec. 1. Overall, it translates to 5.1 percent more than the $8.8 million being spent in the current year to run his office.
McMahon said Tuesday during his monthly media briefing that attorneys in his office have not had a blanket raise since 2007 and he doesn’t expect a salary increase to compete with private practice law firms.
“We have first-rate lawyers and we pay them second-rate wages. The caseloads are higher (in Kane) than surrounding counties, yet we’re paying significantly less for more work,” McMahon said. “I want to make this whole office competitive.”
He says the nearly 33-percent bump in the starting salary for Kane prosecutors will help reduce turnover in his office, which will allow for cases to move through the system faster.
Assistant state’s attorney’s in Kane County gain experience in trying more serious cases, but they generally leave in their fourth and fifth years to other counties where they get paid more to work on less serious cases. When an attorney leaves, those cases are reassigned and take longer to resolve, he said.
McMahon said starting prosecutors in Cook, DuPage, Lake, Will and McHenry counties have an average starting salary of $53,900 with a high of $57,000.
He said low pay is the top reason cited by attorneys who leave his office and it also is a factor in applicants choosing other counties over Kane.
“I understand it. They have families. They have student loans,” McMahon said.
McMahon is expected to formally present his budget request to the county board’s finance committee next month.
He is not pushing for an increase in property taxes and believes the raises could be covered through user fees and finding savings in other areas.
“I understand there are great needs across the county. You can’t just gut one department at the expense of another,” he said. “Public safety is an important issue and being able to handle cases efficiently also is important. I don’t want to lose people to the other state’s attorney’s offices, especially in this region.”