Editorial: DuPage County approves a 35% raise for its board chair. Taxpayers should ask why.

For the first time in three years, inflation outpaced wage growth in the U.S. in April, undermining workers' purchasing power.

Apparently those economic pressures are less acute inside government.

It's a good day to work for DuPage County. As many families struggle with grocery bills, housing costs and everyday expenses, county officials approved increasing the County Board chair's base salary to $185,000. Current total compensation for the position is about $137,000, including a vehicle allowance, according to county records.

That’s a 35% pay raise. At a time when real wage growth isn’t keeping up with inflation.

By 2030, the chair's pay is set to jump to nearly $200,000.

For comparison’s sake, Cook County President Toni Preckwinkle's fiscal 2026 salary is $204,340.

She runs a county of 5.2 million people. That’s five and a half times the population of DuPage County.

Perhaps she'll read this and start angling for a bigger raise herself, given DuPage's precedent. Preckwinkle’s salary as board president has leaped from what was $170,000 just four years ago.

"As to the chair, it has become a full-time job. … If something goes wrong here in this county, whether it's a flood, whether it's a natural disaster or an unnatural disaster, the first person who is going to get called is the chair," board member Sam Tornatore said during the pay raise debate. Raises were approved on April 28. Tribune Publishing’s Naperville Sun reported that it's thanks to Tornatore the bump was so large - the chair's salary originally was set to rise to $154,390. That's still a significant pay bump, but nowhere near the $185,000 county taxpayers are now on the hook for paying.

After the vote, County Board Chair Deborah Conroy expressed gratitude for the increase. Taxpayers footing the bill are entitled to ask what results will accompany it.

On top of this raise, which takes effect in December, board members also will see their pay increase from $52,102 to $53,144 in December. By fiscal year 2030, they'll be paid $62,000, yet board positions are not full-time roles.

Cindy Cronin Cahill, one of the board members who voted against the pay raises, said during committee debate she didn't think she should "be voting on an increase for my salary," adding, "This is a public service for me."

Board members insisted they were not technically voting to raise their own salaries because the increases take effect after the next election. But incumbents in local races often win reelection, meaning many of the same officials supporting these increases likely ultimately will benefit from them.

In Illinois, DuPage County Board members are hardly the only public servants who have taken that step.

Back to Preckwinkle. In 2022, the Cook County Board of Commissioners voted to give themselves and most other county elected officials 20% raises over four years, and then baked in future automatic annual raises at 3% or the consumer price index for the Chicago area, whichever is lower. In perpetuity.

With 3% annual raises, Preckwinkle’s salary will be something close to $230,000 by the end of her next term in 2030 under the safe assumption she’ll be reelected in November. How will the DuPage County Board respond by then?

During a lame-duck session in January 2023, Illinois state lawmakers increased their base salary to $85,000 from about $73,000. Today, their base pay is $98,000, thanks to automatic annual raises.

Public officials deserve fair compensation but what worries us is the emergence of a political compensation culture in which elected officials increasingly benchmark their pay against one another, much like private-sector executive compensation practices that have resulted in soaring CEO pay, rather than grounding raises in measurable public results or taxpayer value.

Taxpayers are entitled to ask what exactly they are getting in return for these raises.

Better financial stewardship? Lower debt burdens? More efficient services? Greater confidence that government is solving problems rather than simply becoming more expensive to maintain? Those are reasonable expectations when elected officials approve compensation increases far larger than what many private-sector workers will ever see.

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This story was originally published May 15, 2026 at 5:15 AM.