Joliet Illinois Scales Back City Employee Pension Benefits

The new policy comes on the heels of several Joliet Patch articles examining generous payouts for outgoing city staff.

November 2, 2017

[Joliet Patch] - The current administration at Joliet's City Hall has decided that enough is enough when it comes to some of the long-standing generous fringe benefits programs that were in place for city staff. City employees have received a memo from corporation counsel-interim city manager Marty Shanahan informing them the city's payout program is ending for employees choosing to wait until the eve of their retirement to cash out unused sick and vacation banks to pad their retirement pensions. That practice was allowing several employees to increase their retirement pensions, which was impacting city of Joliet finances.

In recent weeks, Joliet Patch published a series of articles examining the retirement payouts for several outgoing city officials including Jim Haller and Dave Mackley. Patch revealed that Mackley, who makes $118,000 annually, is also getting a payout of $104,155 spread out over the next few months for cashing out his bank of unused vacation and sick days that the city allowed him to accrue. March 31 is his last work day.

But that was only half the story. By waiting until the end of his career to cash out his vacation and sick banks, Mackley is able to pad his local government pension in a significant fashion. The city of Joliet determined that Mackley's $104,155 payout will also spike his monthly pension by an extra $1,319 per month. That comes out to be another $15,830 annually for Mackley's city pension.

"The past practice of extending the payouts for accrued vacation, sick and compensatory time over the last four months of employment will no longer be an option," states the Shanahan memo.

"Extending payouts for accrued vacation, sick time and compensatory time over the last four months of employment requires substantial additional city expenditures ... The new policy will continue the efforts of our city to lower long-term liabilities and future indeterminable expenses," Shanahan wrote to his fellow city employees.

For example, the 13 Joliet city employees who have announced their retirements during the past year will receive slightly more than $500,000 for cashing out their banks of unused sick, vacation and compensatory time, led by the $104,155 that is due to Mackley, who worked at City Hall for 33 years.

On top of that, however, Joliet realized it was also on the hook for an additional cost related to the impact that the payouts have upon the retiring city employee's pension.

"For example, to date, the additional city expenditures for the thirteen 2017 retirees totaled just over $900,000. This dollar figure is in addition to the $500,000-plus -- payouts for accrued vacation, sick time and compensatory time. Continuing this practice is clearly unsustainable," Shanahan warned in his memo.

The new city policy takes effect on April 1, the day after Mackley retires. Under the new regulations, the payouts for unused sick, vacation and comp time will be made in one lump-sum at the time of the employee's retirement, but these payouts will not be allowed to spike the retiree's pension. The new policy impacts the city's non-union staff, including upper management. Any changes to union contracts must be made through the collective bargaining process.

In any event, recent Patch articles highlighting Mackley's $104,155 payout struck a chord with readers.

Here are just a few of the many comments from our readers:


"When I worked in the private sector, if you didn't use your sick time, you lost it. Ditto your vacation time; it capped out at a certain amount of hours. And 'comp time' was unheard of. This is why mediocre employees become government employees: so they can achieve the rank of Fat Cat when they 'retire.' Dollars to donuts Mr. Mackley moves onto another 'job' in his semi-retirement. My crystal ball has spoken, do not doubt me."

"Remember the time when no one wanted to work for the government? Now everyone wants to work for the government, to get these benefits? Commerce and businesses are stagnant and dying. We are now a Banana Republic!"

"I think that's amazing! This gentleman has set himself up to have one comfortable 'afterlife.' If taxpayers aren't happy they should fight to make changes. However, this man simply played the hand he was dealt and he played it very well. He just added over $150k every decade to his pension payout. Enjoy your retirement Sir."

Besides Mackley, Joliet Patch also singled out the retirement payouts for Jim Haller, who retired at the end of July 2016 after working at Joliet's City Hall for more than 36 years in middle management. Although Haller did not work a day on the job during the last five months of 2016, Haller still made $179,126 in gross wages last year, making him the fourth highest paid city of Joliet employee for all of 2016.

In addition, Haller is now drawing a public pension of nearly $123,000 annually.