Cuts by village include layoffs
Trustees vote to reduce spending in all departments, reduce staff by 10; mayor calls moves politically motivated
In a move that Dolton mayor Riley Rogers said was politically motivated and promised to veto, village trustees Friday adopted an amended budget that included 10 employee layoffs and nearly 10 percent reduction in spending for all village departments.
Those cuts, which passed 4-2, include the village’s communications director, media director, human resources director, public works superintendent, public works supervisor, a property preservation engineer, two public works clerks, one water department clerk and the mayor’s chief of staff,
Trustee Duane Muhammad said.
Department heads have yet to determine how the 10 percent across the board spending cuts will affect each department, but they may result in furlough days for nonunion employees and the layoff of part-time workers, he said.
Muhammad denied any political motivation for the cuts, which touch some of the mayor’s appointees and employees perceived as his allies, asserting that they were necessary to close a more than $1 million budget deficit.
“There are just some hard choices that have to be made and done in order for us to be fiscally responsible and get Dolton out of the condition it’s been in,” he said.
To offset the cuts, the budget amendment adds a human resources generalist, which Muhammad said likely would be a contractor who performed the same duties as the HR director without the benefits; a public works manager, who would replace the department superintendent and supervisor who were let go; and money for part-time police officers.
Rogers, who said he planned to veto the budget at the next regular board meeting in September, chalked up the cuts to a political vendetta against him and said he expected they would negatively impact village serv-
ices.
“They just came after all my people, everybody. Everybody they think is associated with me, they came after,” he said. “It’s going to have a terrible impact (on the village). Some of the people that they are cutting out of the budget are in critical positions, and it’s certainly going to alter the services that they render to the residents.”
Rogers said he expected some of the employees who were let go Friday to file lawsuits against the village, alleging politically motivated terminations.
“(The village attorney) said, ‘This is going to be one hell of a lawsuit,’ ” he said, adding that he expects the laid-off workers to prevail. “It could cost the village a million dollars.”
Muhammad, who successfully argued that political motivations were behind his termination from the village a few years ago, said he invited the recently laidoff workers to bring suits against the village.
“Let the lawsuits come on,” he said. “But they’re going to have to prove it because there was nothing political in the decisions.
“We looked at this village, whose financial situation is dire, and the mayor’s staff is heavy laden with salaries … and this village can’t afford it. And that was our thinking in it.”
Muhammad said he recognized that cutting staff and department budgets was not going to be a politically popular decision, but was one that was necessary.
He said he told Rogers last month that he considered the finance director’s proposed budget to have significantly underestimated the village’s deficit and that if she did not present a revised budget that was amenable to the trustees, they would be forced to pass an amended budget with across-theboard cuts.
“He never offered us an alternative budget,” Muhammad said Monday. “Show us an alternative where we don’t have to lay anyone off and can meet our obligations and we’ll go with that.”
Rogers responded Monday that he had been unaware of Muhammad’s request for a revised budget and was caught off guard by the amended budget that included the cuts.
He said the finance director had told him the trustees had not included any cuts in their amended budget.
“She said they had talked about it prior to him bringing it up (at the last meeting) and he said there would be no cuts,” Rogers said. “Then, all of a sudden, we get hit with this at a board meeting.”
The mayor previously said he believed the cuts were introduced in direct response to a series of referendum items he is attempting to get on the November ballot that would reduce the number of trustees from six to four and prevent trustees — but not the mayor or clerk — from serving more than two consecutive terms.
Rogers said the employees who were laid off Friday still were working this week despite the fact their positions were supposed to have been eliminated effective Monday. He said he’d received legal advice that they could continue to work for the foreseeable future because he’d announced his intention to veto their terminations, and would be doing so at the next possible opportunity.