Chief Roechner's Pension Spike Surpassed Joliet's Salary Range

JOLIET, IL — A 19-percent salary increase for Joliet's Police Chief Al Roechner on his second to last day on the job boosted his pay to $192,435, which is $14,113 more than Joliet's salary scale allows for city department heads, Joliet Patch has found.

On Feb. 16, Patch reported that Roechner negotiated a raise of 11 percent to spike his pension and boost his retirement severance in exchange for submitting his retirement letter to outgoing city manager Jim Hock. This week, Patch confirmed through city payroll staff that Roechner's outgoing pay increase was $31,045, rather than the $19,847 that Patch initially reported.

In any event, Roechner's new final base salary of $192,435 will determine his Joliet police pension even though Roechner had a regular salary of $161,390 when he worked as chief of police.

According to Joliet's payroll department, the minimum and maximum salary allowed for a department head, which includes the police chief, ranges from $124,875 to $178,322.

On Jan. 7, outgoing city manager Jim Hock approved the double-digit salary increase to convince Roechner to retire on his own terms. After rejecting some of Hock's salary increase proposals, Roechner agreed to leave at a salary of $192,435.

Otherwise, Roechner faced the prospect of being fired by Joliet's new permanent city manager Jim Capparelli, who was starting at City Hall the following week.

Roechner served as Joliet's chief of police from August 2018 until he agreed to retire Jan. 7.

During Roechner's short two-year tenure, the Joliet Police Department was in a constant state of upheaval and the department found itself involved in a litany of federal lawsuits and controversies, including some lawsuits that were filed by members of the Joliet Police Department against Roechner and his administration.

Earlier this month, Joliet's human resources director told Patch it was her understanding that the $192,435 salary amount for Roechner included several other standard Joliet police compensation benefits such as annual longevity pay, a court and annual holiday pay.

At the time of the interview, the city's HR department was under the impression Roechner negotiated an 11 percent raise with Hock and the chief's departing salary was around $180,000.

This week, city employees involved with processing payroll told Joliet Patch that $192,435 became the new base salary for Roechner. Therefore, his annual longevity pay stipend, court allowance and special holiday pay boosted his total compensation to more than $200,000.

Every year, in addition to his regular salary, Roechner got $3,080 in what's known as longevity pay, a $2,100 annual court allowance plus $6,138 in holiday pay, Patch has previously reported.

Roechner was not on the job at the police station once Capparelli started at City Hall. Instead, Roechner used some of his remaining time off during his final two weeks with Joliet.

His official retirement took effect Jan. 22.

At that time, Joliet paid its departing chief $121,111 for cashing out his excessive amount of unused vacation, his sick leave bank and comp time accruals, using an hourly rate of pay of $96.95. Over a full year, that's the equivalent of $201,656 in salary for Roechner.

If Hock had played hard ball and told Roechner he could retire at his existing salary or risk being fired by the new city manager, the police chief's retirement payout for his vacation, sick and comp time accruals would be about $95,000, Joliet Patch determined.

In other words, not only did Roechner's $31,000 raise spike his forthcoming Joliet police pension, but it let him walk off the job with another $26,000.

On Thursday, Joliet Patch interviewed Hock, Joliet's former city manager who negotiated the settlement with Roechner. Hock is now back in his native Michigan serving as an assistant city manager for Birmingham, a suburb of Detroit about 20 miles away.

Hock told Patch the pay increase allowed Roechner to reach the city pension Roechner would have got had he remained with Joliet until July, which would have marked Roechner's 30th anniversary at the Joliet Police Department.

Hock told Patch he believes he had the authority as city manager to override the city's salary range schedule for city department heads in this instance. As city manager, Hock said he can transfer money within the operating budget, and he didn't need the City Council's consent to approve the raise for Roechner.

Had he remained with Joliet through his 30th anniversary this summer, Roechner would have reached his maximum police pension benefit, which is 75 percent of his final salary.

Instead, Roechner agreed to retire with 29 years of service, which will put his pension benefit at 72.5 percent, not the maximum benefit.

After Joliet Patch's Feb. 16 article revealing Roechner' pension spike, five dozen Joliet Patch readers went online to offer their comments.

Here's a sampling of what they had to say:

• "Time for investigation into Joliet and their whole political payoff system probably guarantees he won't testify against Mayor and Hoch and their deals with consultants which city hires for everything instead of doing in house using employees they pay way above wages."
• "Serving the community, or takin' a taxpayer ride? Look at how unsustainable the pensions are. Chicago, is a broke, crime ridden s_ _ _ hole. Sorry to say Joliet is running to catch up! People move away from where many of them voted to really f' it up. Then, some are so ignorant, they keep voting the same way and then say, 'ah, why is this happening?'"
• "Pay to play, or, in this case, 'give me x amount of money and I will retire'. In the long run, it was cheaper to pay him off than keep him and his sh**hole crew in place. Bye bye, don't let the door hit you in the a&& on the way out."
• "This practice is all to common among 'public' employees and is done at taxpayer expense. The vast majority of taxpayers do not enjoy similar benefits through their employment - it is NOT a common benefit practice among private employers. Absolutely no reason why public employees should be able to do this and shame on municipalities who feel they can take care of their human resource issues by using this type of practice."
• "This is very simply a fraud on all the other Police Officers that pay into that pension and a real insight into Roechner as a person. Good job Patch for letting us know something we should have known the day he retired."
• "I’m a retired police officer after 25 years and this is not fair. The Joliet police pension board should deny the pension increase. The same thing happened where I used to work and our pension board reduced an ex-Chiefs padding of his pension."
• "Did he get to keep the elf costume?"