http://www.officer.com/online/articl...ion=1&id=42648


Chicago Top Cop's Pay Tops the Charts


Posted: Wednesday, August 6, 2008
Updated: August 6th, 2008 12:01 PM PDT

Art Golab, The Chicago Sun-Times; Contributing: Dave McKinney, Mark Konkol
Chicago Sun Times



They may be the bosses, but Mayor Daley, Gov. Blagojevich and Cook County Board President Todd Stroger are not the top wage earners in their respective governments, according to a Chicago Sun-Times survey of public payrolls.

It turns out that a registered nurse working the night shift at a state Department of Human Services facility for the developmentally disabled made $201,000 last year -- $35,000 more than the governor.

And Chicago Police Supt. Jody Weis makes nearly $90,000 a year more than his boss, the mayor, while Stroger's special assistant Laura Lechowicz-Felicione pulls in $2,700 more than her boss.

Stephanie Marshall, the retiring president of the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, also out-earned the governor by more than $95,000.

The nurse, Loreatha Coleman, who works at the state-run Howe Developmental Center in Tinley Park, earns a base salary of about $64,000. But a 10 percent night differential and lots of overtime more than tripled her pay, a DHS spokeswoman said.

'IT'S WORTH IT'

When Weis was hired last November to clean up the Police Department, Daley justified his top salary by saying the former FBI agent would be wearing two hats: those of top cop and chief emergency officer.

"This man could go anyplace within the FBI," Daley said at the time. "He could go outside. I'm very responsible paying him that much money -- both for being [police superintendent] and for homeland security [chief]. . . . Yes, it's worth it."

But in July, Weis' authority to supervise response to disasters was diluted when Fire Commissioner Raymond Orozco was named to head the Office of Emergency Management and Communications. Daley said Orozco, not Weis, will be calling the shots at disaster scenes.

Marshall, the former president of the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, the state high school in Aurora, was already making more than Blagojevich's $166,000. But when she retired last year, her $188,000 salary was boosted by accumulated sick and vacation pay, bringing her total to nearly $242,000.

Also, dozens of doctors working for the state and county made more than their chief executives. (The Sun-Times didn't count them here in order to better compare administrative salaries, but they are included in an online searchable list of 145,000 city, state and county employees at www.suntimes.com.)

And although they are not doctors, a county hospital administrator and the head of the county Public Health Department also do pretty well, making $50,000 and $25,000, respectively, more than their boss, Stroger.

Then there are state university officials, many of whom pull down a lot more than the governor, but the state was unable to provide salary data for higher education employees