Gary Council questions Mayor’s sanitary district pay, professional services budget – Chicago Tribune


Gary Mayor Jerome Prince was grilled Wednesday about his budget request for the mayor’s office on the third day of joint Ways and Means and Finance committee hearings for the 2023 budget.

The pushback came after two days of budget hearings where departmental requests went through largely unchallenged. So far the budget for the new year includes a 3% pay increase for almost all full-time city employees.

Prince is seeking the raise for his workers and to add a chief of staff to run the day-to-day operations of the mayor’s office. He is also seeking to add another $160,000 to the office’s professional services budget to cover what Prince said were the actual special counsel and professional services costs after the budget was cut to $60,000 for 2022.

“I’m not seeking to add additional counsel, I want to be able to sustain the ones we do have, whether it be counsel or other professional services,” Prince said. “We have certainly had to be creative in order to support and fund those items (this year).”

Officials did not appear to have a problem with the pay increase, but Council President William Godwin questioned the need for the additional professional services funding. If the 2022 bills for counsel are being paid by other departments, Godwin said he would expect to see a reduction of like amounts in those departments’ budgets for 2023.

“Obviously these people have been paid, from different parts of the budget. Since we are increasing in this part of the budget, are we decreasing other areas …” Godwin said.

He also questioned why the mayor was receiving $54,000 in pay from the Gary Sanitary District. Prince is one of several city employees who are partially compensated by the GSD because of work done for the entity, which is technically separate from the city.

Godwin said the money was intended for the GSD’s special administrator. That position is no longer needed, according to the consent decree governing the GSD. The consent decree said GSD could not pay more than $54,000 for a special administrator. Godwin said he does not see why the mayor should be paid those funds for simply appointing board members since there is no longer a special administrator.

Statutorily, the Gary Common Council has to approve the GSD budget put forth by the GSD board, though it has no say in how the GSD spends its money.

Prince said the GSD payment is not tied to the position of special administrator and covers his various responsibilities pertaining to the GSD, including oversight of the city’s employees, including attorneys, who work for the GSD.

Godwin said he would not support the item if he did not receive an itemized accounting from the mayor on what he does for the GSD and how much of his time as mayor is spent doing that work.

Prince said he can’t provide the litany of work and the amount of attention and detail that is paid to the sanitary district is part of his work as mayor.

“The work is constant,” Prince said.


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