Breen's Push For Hefty Raises For Joliet Police Supervisors Hits Snag

JOLIET, IL — The Joliet Police Department's Supervisors Association, led by Sgt. Matt Breen, wanted Joliet's City Council to ratify a new three-year labor contract before Chicago's departing deputy mayor Beth Beatty takes over as the new city manager of Joliet next week, but that's not going to happen.

On Monday night, Jan Quillman, Larry Hug and Joe Clement voiced lots of concern with interim city manager Rod Tonelli's decision to work behind the Council's back to negotiate a new contract. The agreement stands to line the pockets of Joliet's highest paid police officials with several thousand dollars in extra pay, years of retroactive pay and substantial increases in the city's future police pension obligations — at the expense of Joliet's taxpayers.

"For me, she's going to be here long term," Clement said of Beatty. "I think we owe her that. This is a big deal. These contracts are big deals, and I stand here today and if it were any other union I would say the same thing ... I think she should be able to look at this. And again, it's not going to hurt anything another two weeks or a month at the most ... I don't think it hurts anything."

At Monday's meeting, Tonelli remarked that Breen and his Supervisors Association preferred to have the contract adopted by the City Council before the new city manager started.

However, Council members only learned of the contract details at the end of last week, hardly enough time to analyze the financial impact of the agreement in time for Tuesday night's vote. As a result, the proposed agreement could be pulled off the meeting agenda.

The agreement negotiated by Tonelli gives the Joliet City Council and Joliet's taxpayers the false impression that the Joliet Police Supervisors are only getting modest annual raises of 2.49 for 2023, 2 percent for 2024 and 3.25 percent for 2025.

But, as Joliet Patch found, the devil is in the details, and Tonelli's agreement makes mention of a "Side Agreement."

The Side Agreement is where the real money is at in terms of extra salary hikes and retroactive compensation for at least 40 of the 53 Joliet police sergeants and lieutenants, including Breen, who made $183,250 last year on the Joliet police force, including $39,449 in overtime pay.

The "Side Agreement" calls for additional pay raises in the thousands of dollars for all Joliet police sergeants and lieutenants who have at least 18 years of service with Joliet police.

Joliet Patch determined that at least 40 of the 53 members of the Joliet Police Supervisors would qualify for this new salary step increase that would boost their pay by a much higher percentage and margin than just 2.49 percent for 2023, 2 percent for 2024 and 3.25 percent for 2025.

On Sunday, Patch reported that Joliet police's long-time lieutenants and sergeants would be in line for retroactive salary increases for this year of roughly 5.6 percent —raises of $7,313 for many sergeants and raises of $8,022 for Joliet's experienced lieutenants.

In addition to that, these same Joliet police supervisors would get another raise that takes effect in another four weeks, on New Year's Day.

That raise would boost their annual base pay for 2024 by another 2 percent across the board, on top of the 5.6 percent amount retroactively covering 2023.

In addition to that, the Side Agreement calls for retroactive salary increases and holiday stipend pay adjustments going back to 2021 and 2022 — years when the Joliet Police Supervisors Association worked under a totally different contract.

The Joliet Police Supervisors's current contract expired in January of this year.

Even new Mayor Terry D'Arcy —who will be forced to abstain from voting on the eventual contract because his son Christopher is a Joliet police sergeant — announced at Monday night's meeting that he was supportive of delaying the vote until Joliet's new city manager Beth Beatty takes over.

This marks Tonelli's final week on the job, running City Hall. He was one of four finalists interviewed for the permanent city manager's position, but the Council determined he was not the right fit.

"I agree with the Councilman (Joe Clement), that we should delay it," Councilman Larry Hug announced. "I have questions. I did not have an opportunity to see it until late afternoon Thursday. Only got it maybe 48 hours before the media got it. You all saw the media. This is not how we did it in the past. We were kept abreast because we are the ones that have to vote up or down on it.

"I didn't even realize that you were actively negotiating," Hug told Tonelli. "I assumed that there would be some negotiations. They ended as of January 1st. We weren't kept abreast of this ... Did anybody sign a T.A. (Tentative Agreement) ?"

"Yes," Tonelli replied.

"By what authority?"

"By my authority," Tonelli answered.

"You should have probably talked to us," Hug told him. "Because you don't know how we're going to vote and we're the ones that have got to approve this. So, I would agree with Councilman Clement that it needs to be looked at, and we all have to have a chance to have our questions asked."