Was Joliet Native Jim Haller A Joliet City Hall Fat Cat?

JOLIET, IL - You can't take away the fact that Jim Haller was a dedicated city of Joliet employee. He spent more than 36 years showing up for work everyday at downtown's Joliet Municipal Building. The Joliet City Council was so impressed with Haller's performance that at the time of his retirement he was honored with a proclamation on July 19, 2016. "It is hereby deemed appropriate that Jim Haller be recognized and commended for the outstanding and professional manner in which he performed his duties as Director of Community and Economic Development and for the many years of dedicated and loyal service to the City of Joliet," read the proclamation signed by Mayor Bob O'Dekirk.

"I'm truly honored to be recognized in this way, but more importantly, I'm really honored to have served the people of Joliet for this entire time," Haller told the city council that night. "We were exposed to everything, we did it all. We built all kinds of things ... There's a lot of great people who rolled up their sleeves that got it all done. I was just one of them. But I want to thank you very much for this proclamation."

From the viewpoint of Joliet's council, Haller was a fine and faithful public servant. Haller also may be an example of a local government fat cat. A guy who hangs around City Hall because he has job security, a few other City Hall friends in high places and knows how to game the system, a broken political system that's generally rigged against taxpayers.

With Joliet, Haller worked in city management. In other words, he was classified as exempt, meaning he got no overtime pay. In 2015, Haller's last full year on the job, Haller made a salary of almost $155,000 with the city of Joliet.

Then last year, Haller worked a total of seven months on the job with Joliet before retiring. His regular pay for 2016, according to city of Joliet salary records, was $88,850. He was honored with the city proclamation in mid July.

As of August 1, 2016, Haller began to collect his local municipal government pension to the tune of $122,967 annually, according to the Better Government Association public pension database.

But that's not all.

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For calendar year 2016, Jim Haller, who didn't work at City Hall the last five months of the year, actually was the fourth highest paid employee for the entire city of Joliet last year, a Joliet Patch analysis of city payroll records found.

Joliet's salary data shows Haller made $179,126 in gross wages in 2016. In addition to the $88,850 in regular salary, Haller made another $90,276 last year in what the city of Joliet's public salary spreadsheet classifies as "Other" compensation. The same spreadsheet indicates Haller received no overtime pay, no stipends, no holiday pay and no pay for special assignments, which were the other compensation categories listed besides regular pay.

I have nearly 22 years experience covering municipal governments in Elkhart, Indiana, Geneva, Illinois, the state of Wisconsin twice and Omaha, Nebraska, but I was in the dark about Joliet's classification of "Other" pay. So on Friday afternoon, I called a city official seeking clarification on Haller's other $90,276 for last year.

The city official I spoke with indicated that more than likely, the payout was related to Haller's accrued sick and unused vacation banks.

Last week, I reported on a total of 14 retiring city of Joliet employees including Dave Mackley, one of Haller's long-time cohorts, who gets to walk out of Joliet City Hall with a payout of $104,155. Mackley, who already makes an annual salary of $118,000, had the opportunity to stockpile his unused sick and vacation banks over his 33-year city government career thanks to Joliet's generous fringe benefits program for staff.

Mackley will be retiring at the end of March.

These extraordinary payouts to city officials including Haller and Mackley, as well as an extra $38,000 and $35,000 going to two soon-to-be retiring city of Joliet meter readers who both made more than $90,000 last year, are occurring at a time when the city of Joliet is strapped for cash.

RELATED: Illinois Budget Prompts Joliet To Whack OT Pay

A city of Joliet press release issued on Friday afternoon by corporation counsel-interim city manager Marty Shanahan indicates the current mayoral administration has taken recent steps to scale back the fringe benefits packages for non-union full-time employees.

"We have a duty to our residents to ensure fiscal responsibility and to fully understand the impacts of past practices," Shanahan stated. "We will continue to address policies which date back years and even decades which have a negative effect on our budget."

Joliet residents should be pleased by this announcement from City Hall, even if it's too late to close the barn door on the taxpayer-funded payouts to retiring public servants like Dave Mackley and Jim Haller.

Image via City of Joliet