Orland hikes mayor's salary
Jump from $40K to $150K to take effect at start of next term
The Orland Park village board on Monday approved more than tripling the mayor's salary despite strong protests from residents.
Currently paid $40,000 a year, the mayor would make $150,000 at the start of the next term in May.
About 80 people crowded into the board meeting room, with residents using terms such as “offensive” and “deplorable” to describe the raise and new salary.
“Nobody deserves that,” one woman shouted.
Residents said the matter should have been decided by a referendum question.
Nevertheless, trustees voted unanimously on the proposal, which broadens the duties of the mayor.
Mayor Dan McLaughlin abstained from the vote.
The new salary won't kick in until after the start of the mayor's next term in May. First elected mayor in 1993, McLaughlin plans to seek another term in April.
Along with serving as mayor, McLaughlin is executive director of the Builders Association, a trade group for the commercial construction industry in the Chicago area.
He has said he would quit that position if the mayor's duties were expanded.
Village officials say that expanding the mayor's duties and raising the job's salary will save money because the village won't have to hire a second assistant village manager and an economic development director. The hiring of those positions was recommended in a consultant's study done for the village about four years ago.
The salary hike will bring a corresponding jump in McLaughlin's pension, an analysis by the Daily Southtown shows.
As a member of the Illinois Municipal Retirement Fund, McLaughlin stands to receive 1
McLaughlin currently has 31 years and 6 months of service credit in IMRF, according to the pension fund. If he wins re-election next spring and serves out the full term, he'll have 36 years of service to his name. That means McLaughlin would stand to receive 67 percent of his final rate of earnings.
An IMRF pension is decided by an average of the highest consecutive 48 months out of the last 120 months of what the pension fund calls final rate of earning — essentially their reported wages — multiplied by the percentage acquired through the previously described calculation. Typically, the highest 48 months are the final four years before retirement.
Since McLaughlin currently makes $40,000 a year in salary as mayor, plus $3,000 annually as liquor commissioner, his highest 48 months would come during his next term in office, under the new pay scale. The Daily Southtown's analysis assumes he wins re-election and does not continue as mayor beyond 2021.
At that point, McLaughlin's initial pension would be more than $100,000 per year. The pension would grow by 3 percent simple interest each year, and after 20 years, McLaughlin would collect about $160,000 per year, a Daily Southtown analysis found.
By contrast, McLaughlin would start out with roughly a $30,000-per-year pension if he retired at that point and kept his current salary.
Should McLaughlin retire at the end of his next term and receive his pension for 10 more years, he'd realize more than $1.1 million in that time frame under the pension calculated using the proposed salary.
That's compared to roughly $340,000 under the office's current salary.
The village notes that each village employee contributes to his or her pension, while Orland Park also contributes to the IMRF. Based on the higher salary, the village says its contribution toward the mayor's pension would be $19,000 per year, with those payments ending once the mayor retires.
McLaughlin won't receive, as was initially proposed, a stipend to purchase health insurance coverage, and he won't eligible for step or cost-of-living pay raises unlike other village employees.
Any change to the mayor's salary needed to be approved at least 180 days before the start of the next term. McLaughlin, who turns 63 in January, served as a village trustee from 1983 to 1991.
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