Evanston Now reported last week that the mayor and city council cost 10 times more per capita in Evanston than in some comparable Chicago-area communities.
This week we’re taking a look at the impact those differences in pay may have on who ends up filling those jobs.
The Illinois towns we’re comparing Evanston to all have between 50,000 and 100,000 residents, the council-manager form of government, and median household incomes of at least $75,000.
We learned this week in analyzing who serves on these governing bodies that paying more is somewhat associated with having more minority lawmakers.
None of the three lowest-paying towns had any minority lawmakers. But that was also true of two of the three highest paying towns.
The percentage of minorities in a town’s population is more strongly associated with the share of minority officeholders. In this collection of 13 communities, any town with a minority population of less than 40% had no minority lawmakers.
(For this analysis “minority” includes all residents who are not non-Hispanic whites.)
Only two of the towns had no women among their governing board’s members. But paying more had very little impact on the percentage of female elected officials in each community
And it had no impact on the median age of lawmakers in those towns.
While this report looks at the complete universe of communities that meet the criteria outlined, that doesn’t mean that similar results necessarily would be found if a different group of communities was studied.
None of the communities in this group pay their council members or trustees cash compensation that would equal the Cook County minimum wage for a full-time job.
At $14 an hour, that would be $29,120 for a 40-hour work week 52 weeks a year.
Evanston pays its council members $15,990 in cash, plus full family health care coverage if they ask for it.
But several council members responding to a survey from the Compensation Committee this week said they spend 40 or more hours a week on their aldermanic job.
In several cases being retired, or otherwise underemployed, gives them the free time to bulk up their hours of service.
The committee plans to interview the council members in person about that, and other issues, at its next meeting on May 1.
Ultimately the committee only makes a recommendation, and the City Council gets to decide this summer how much elected officials will make after next April’s election.