Piatt County Personnel Committee discuss Per Diem for Board Members –

Piatt Co., IL. (ECWd) –

The Piatt County Personnel Committee held a meeting on March 5, 2020, where one of the agenda items was Board Member Per Diem.

Board members questioned when the proper time was for setting their compensation – nobody knew the answer.

Time for setting the compensation of elected officials is no later than 180- days prior to the beginning of their term of office:

(50 ILCS 145/2)
    Sec. 2. Time of fixing compensation. Notwithstanding any other law to the contrary, the compensation of elected officers of school districts and units of local government, including home rule units, which compensation is to be fixed by that school district or unit of local government, shall be fixed at least 180 days before the beginning of the terms of the officers whose compensation is to be fixed.

During public comment, I informed the board their current compensation setting Ordinance was invalid and violated the Counties Code. An Illinois County Board can only set compensation as “per diem” or “annual” or a combination of per diem and annual. Nowhere in the counties code does it permit compensation on a “per meeting” basis as the Piatt County Board set in 2016, and per diem only gets paid for one meeting per day. The ordinance is invalid and these types of payments cannot continue.

I also informed the Board, as an example of excess compensation, that Chairman Ray Spencer had been compensated during January 2020 for a total of 30 meetings. Spencer should have only been paid for 14 meetings, as the remaining 16 were on days where he was already compensated for a meeting.

Chairman Spencer was overpaid by $960.00 in January 2020. Those funds need to be reimbursed to the county.

Kirk talked about the Chairman being paid for a meeting that did not happen – Spencer said he reimbursed the county and that it was a mistake.  After being asked if there were other similar mistakes the Chairman refused to comment any further.

Watch the video below, the public comment starts at the 27:38 mark:

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