Some City Council members on Wednesday questioned the high salaries that new Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration is paying many of his freshly recruited Cabinet members.
The Chicago News Cooperative reported Tuesday that many top aides to Emanuel are being paid more than the 2011 city budget allocated for their salaries. (See the 100 highest-paid employees.)
Ald. Robert Fioretti (2nd Ward) said he was unaware that new city officials often have higher wages than their predecessors in the administration of former Mayor Richard M. Daley.
“I think he better re-evaluate that,” Fioretti said. “We’re in a difficult budget time. He has told us over and over again that everybody has to share in the pain. Citizens are sharing in the pain, and the top officials should be sharing in the pain, too.”
Fioretti said he questions Emanuel’s commitment to making City Hall more transparent because his administration did not provide salary information to aldermen before releasing it to the public.
“We have a long way to go,” Fioretti said. “I’m hearing conflicting stories from some of my colleagues about how they’re being treated, and it doesn’t put things on the right foot immediately here.”
On Wednesday afternoon, the mayor’s office announced that it had posted the salaries of all city employees on the Internet, much as officials recently made available city building permit and contract data. CNC first reported the salaries Tuesday after obtaining the records from the city’s Human Resources Department through a Freedom of Information Act request.
The Daley administration did not post salary data on the city’s website.
Ald. Walter Burnett (27th) noted that Daley aides, city workers and even elected officials each had taken as many as 24 unpaid days off a year to help ease perennial budget deficits.
“The alderman and all of the people who work for the city take furlough days, so I think he needs to balance that out,” Burnett said. “I think that’s something he needs to look at and reconsider.”
Asked Wednesday to explain why he is paying some of his aides more than their counterparts in the Daley’s Cabinet, Emanuel did not directly answer the question, instead saying that he ordered his department heads to cut overall management salary costs by 10 percent. The move is expected to save $5.5 million, city officials said.
Emanuel also noted that his new police superintendent, Garry McCarthy, would earn far less than his predecessor, Jody Weis. McCarthy’s annual salary is $260,004, while Weis was paid $310,000 a year as Daley’s last police superintendent.
Still, McCarthy becomes the second highest-paid police chief in the nation’s five largest cities, behind only the chief of the Los Angeles Police Department. Here is how McCarthy’s deal stacks up against his peers’ pay:
*New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly: $205,180
*Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck: $307,291
*Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy: $260,004
*Houston Police Chief Charles McClelland: $220,806
*Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey: $255,000
McCarthy is the highest-paid city employee. The lowest-paid Emanuel appointee is Mark Angelson, the former business executive who is serving as deputy mayor for $1 a year.
Michael Lipkin contributed reporting