Uninvited guest at DuPage County Board pay raise meeting

There was an uninvited and unacknowledged guest at Tuesday's DuPage Board meeting where a majority of Board members voted to increase their pay beginning in December, 2016. That would be the of issue of wealth and income inequality which is stalking America with greater dysfunction than since the Roaring Twenties collapsed in the Great Depression. Several principled Board members alluded to this issue by voting and speaking out against increasing the already substantial $50,079 pay of mostly affluent professionals for a PART TIME gig. They referred to this unneeded largesse coming at the expense of already strapped taxpayers, the County Board members being among the highest paid in state, and the money needed for substantive citizen services rather that to provide more toys for the already well off.

Among the more tone deaf defenses offered for the increases came from attorney Sam Tornatore who astoundingly claimed that "if we dont' do that (increase pay) we're sending a signal to the County Board members they're not doing a good job." Ouch! I wonder if Tornatore, a Republican, adheres to the GOP commandment that the working poor trying to survive on $8 an hour ($16,600 yearly for FULL time work) don't deserve a living wage because they'd be ripping off their fabulously well off employers and besides, their low pay proves they're incompetent slackers? 

It was bad enough the DuPage County Board tried to ram through these increases without adequate public notice; a shenanigan halted by a local citizen watchdog who blew her civic whistle for all to hear. But to go ahead and pile on more goodies to public officials, some of whom feel they never get enough, gives a local lesson to all watching how the game of income inequality goes on and on. The DuPage Board increase reminds of a line in Leonard Cohen's prescient song 'Everybody Knows':

            "Everybody knows the fight is fixed; the poor stay poor, the rich get rich"