Copyright 2006 Chicago Sun-Times, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
By FRAN SPIELMAN
Chicago Sun Times (Illinois)
Fire Commissioner Cortez Trotter will be hauling in $281,280 in annual government paychecks — 30 percent more than Mayor Daley’s $216,210-a-year salary — as Chicago’s chief emergency officer.
Daley’s decision to create the new job paves the way for Trotter to retire as fire commissioner on May 1, collect his $131,280-a-year Fire Department pension and add what City Hall revealed Monday would be a $150,000 salary as emergency chief.
Civic Federation President Laurence Msall blasted the arrangement as a “gaming” of a pension system that can ill-afford such “double-dipping.”
“At a time when the firemen’s pension system is only 42 percent funded, we should not be allowing employees to take a double-helping of both a pension and a salary from the same unit of government,” Msall said.
“The mayor and City Council must eliminate this type of double-dipping in which an employee is incented to retire, earn very generous retirement benefits and still draw an additional salary from the city treasury. . . . It flies in the face of the intent of public pensions systems, which are to provide economic security for those no longer able to carry out their full-time responsibilities. Allowing such double-dipping shakes the confidence of taxpayers that these retirement systems are being effectively managed.”
Trotter could not be reached for comment.
Asked on the day he was appointed whether he intended to draw two government paychecks, Trotter said, “I hope so. I mean -- I’ve spent 30 years here. I should get my pension. I think that’s only fair. . . . And I like the mayor a lot. But I don’t know that I could do this for free.”
Pressed to reveal his new salary as emergency chief on that day, Trotter said, “We’re negotiating.” On Monday, City Hall revealed that Trotter and Daley had agreed on $150,000 a year.
Four years ago, Fleet Management Commissioner Robert Degnan, brother of Daley’s former political enforcer Tim Degnan, quit his $115,260-a-year city job to accept a newly created $95,000-a-year job with the CTA.
By jumping through an early retirement window, Robert Degnan got a lump-sum bonus of 10 percent of his annual salary. He was also free to collect both a pension and CTA paycheck.
Trotter’s arrangement marks the first time in recent memory that a high-ranking city employee collected both a pension and regular paycheck from City Hall.