Lyons Township and the Very Large Accrued Leave Payout

Apparently this became a story when an employee of the Better Government Association looked up a salary at Open the Books, an online database of Illinois public employee and government financial information. Open the Books is a project of For the Good of Illinois, a good-government organization founded by former gubernatorial candidate Adam Andrzejewski. Vive la transperance!

Anywhoo, the Lyons Township Schools Treasurer’s Office “invests funds and manages payroll for 13 school districts and educational cooperatives in La Grange, Western Springs and Burr Ridge, as well as other towns,” explains the Sun Times.

The office is run by Treasurer Robert Healy. It has come to light that Mr. Healy took it upon himself to cash out his accumulated paid leave, and the total paid to himself came to more than $100,000.

The sum, along with Mr. Healy’s failure to inform the board of the payment, reportedly upset Edward Maloney, the president of the three-member board of trustees that oversees Mr. Healy’s office. Maloney, who coincidentally is running for a judgeship in Cook County, has since resigned “to allow for an independent investigation” of the cash-out that will determine whether Healy was entitled to such an accrual and whether he computed the total accurately.

“I don’t know if he did anything wrong or not,” Maloney said. “I felt very upset he did this without telling us. We don’t know if the hours he turned in were justified or not and what scale is he paying himself at. Were there vacation days earned in 2007 paid at a 2011 rate?”

I believe the answer to that would be, “DUH.”

My prediction (a whiff of a scandal over investments made by the treasurer’s office notwithstanding) is that Mr. Healy’s paid leave accrual and payout will be found perfectly proper and aboveboard — that what reeks are the rules themselves.

Of course, that’s just based on my experiences with the City of DeKalb and its ruinously generous compensated leave accrual and payout policies.