Watchdog: Is official a ghost payroller?

Is official a money saver or ghost payroller?
February 13 2005
James Fuller Daily Herald Staff Writer


By now, Ron Smith should be used to fighting for his job.

Smith is a code enforcement officer for Milton Township - a position that doesn't even exist in neighboring townships.

While he defends his post, saying he's called on to handle reports of illegally draining sump pumps, abandoned cars or greenery obstructing a line of sight on a township road, his critics say he's nothing more than a politically connected "ghost payroller" collecting a township salary for
work the county should handle.

Smith is an Illinois Republican Central Committeeman whose vote played a role in naming Andy McKenna the new leader of the state party. Smith is also known as a friend of former Illinois Senate President James "Pate" Philip.

Current township Trustee Don Sender of Wheaton goes as far as to call Smith a "ghost payroller."

The battle over the $18,000-a-year job will return to the spotlight in April when the decision to rehire Smith will fall under the power of a new township highway commissioner.

The past

The debate over Smith's job began to burn a little hotter in 2001 when Township Assessor Jim Gumm was accused of sexual harassment. Gumm believes Smith helped fabricate the charges to get him tossed out of office.

The township settled the lawsuit with Gumm's accusers despite his protests. Gumm is now suing Smith, several township officials and Philip for what Gumm believes was a clandestine group effort to smear him.

To head off any confrontations between Smith and Gumm, Smith was banned by the township's insurance carrier from entering town hall during business or lunch hours, said Barbara Murphy, township board member.

"It was strictly just to let things cool down for awhile," she said. "I frankly didn't like it because Ron is a citizen, and he had paperwork to do for his job, but he wasn't able to come in the building anymore. I thought, 'Doggone it, just let Jim Gumm behave for a change.'"

Hank Kruse, who was township supervisor at the time, paints a different picture, more in line with Gumm's lawsuit.

Gumm claims the defendants conspired to fabricate harassment claims against him in retaliation for raising assessments on the properties of the defendants' friends. Smith denies those claims and says he was a whistleblower who made sure women in the assessor's office were treated with respect.

But Kruse said Smith was an "unstable" employee who made physical threats against Gumm and was thus the "cause of great acrimony."

"I made it clear he was not allowed in the building," Kruse said. "If I'd had the power to terminate him, I would have."

Even now, Smith is under orders not to enter the assessor's offices at township hall.

Regardless of his role in the harassment claims and the Gumm lawsuit, Smith defends his job as an appointed part-time employee. He believes he has a solid track record of doing his job whenever called upon.

Vagueness of job

Smith, a Lombard resident, works without benefits for up to 600 hours per year at a salary of $18,000, the equivalent of about $30 per hour.

He was appointed to the post in 1999 because township officials thought, as a former township supervisor, he would know local laws, Smith said.

He's also secretary of the Illinois Republican Party and a longtime activist in the DuPage GOP.

Part of Sender's objection is that apparently no one keeps track of what Smith does.

For one, he doesn't write tickets to violators.

"We try to be informal," Smith said. "We don't want to give people fines. We just want to take care of the problem."

He also doesn't file reports of his township work.

Smith said because he can only work 600 hours a year, or roughly 2 1/2 hours a day, there's not enough time to write reports.

He does keep the message slips taken whenever someone calls the township with a problem that falls under his duties.

"That's basically my record as to what I've been doing," Smith said.

He couldn't say how many of those slips he receives in an average month.

"It depends on the time of year," he said.

During his recent reappointment, Smith held up a 2 1/2-inch thick, multicolored stack of phone message slips as evidence of his work. But the stack doesn't reflect all his work since 1999, he said, because he usually tosses a slip when the issue has been dead for six months or so.

Murphy admits the system for tracking Smith's time is flawed.

"I have no idea how to verify his hours," she said. "But how do you know when anyone is really working when they have a desk job?"

But she defends Smith, saying she hears him receive calls when he volunteers with her at DuPage County GOP headquarters.

"I hear him get calls all the time," she said. "I know he works."

Necessary job?

Addison, Wayne, York and Winfield townships all report they rely on county employees to solve the same problems Smith handles for Milton Township.

The county has six inspectors in its zoning and drainage departments. Plus, the sheriff's office has enforcement deputies with power to write tickets for things such as abandoned vehicles.
Residents in Milton Township pay an extra tax to help cover salaries for the deputies, but they remain under the jurisdiction of the sheriff's office.

Murphy said that's where the cost savings come in.

"Ron's job cuts down on taking time away from our people who really need to be out on the roads," she said. "Do you want your patrolmen to take time knocking on people's doors to tell them when water is backing up out of the big pipes on the sides of the roads? I would rather see them spending their time on patrol."

Milton workers referred all questions about the sheriff's deputies to Township Supervisor Chris Heidorn, who defends Smith's job as a "citizen-friendly" method of enforcing township-specific codes.

Heidorn said having the sheriff's officers do Smith's job would be a waste of their enforcement duties, and county inspectors lack the knowledge of township codes to do the job.

As far as the quality of Smith's work, "if there were ever any question about Mr. Smith's performance, I'm certain the highway commissioner would have advised the board of his dissatisfaction," said Heidorn in an e-mailed statement. "Instead, we have received only the highest recommendations of Mr. Smith."

Mike Dutton, the current highway commissioner, submitted a letter in support of Smith, but declined to talk about Smith's township job.

"I'm going to be out of there in four months," Dutton said in January. "I don't want to get involved."

Township Trustee Ken McNatt defends Smith as someone who "does a pretty good job."

Sheriff's deputies didn't do as good a job enforcing the codes Smith deals with when it was their responsibility, McNatt said, adding it shouldn't matter how other townships handle such work.

"Why do we have to care what the other townships do?" he said.

Trustee James Flickinger echoed McNatt and Murphy's sentiments.

Despite Smith's supporters, Sender's objections remain. He still questions the amount of work Smith does and the scant proof of the hours he keeps.

In hindsight, Sender said he regrets not making a close examination of the 2 1/2-inch thick stack of phone messages to make sure they were genuine.

Sender, who has voted against Smith each year, believes his stance against Smith and support of Gumm resulted in Sender also not being slated for re-election by the GOP. But he doesn't regret either position.

"I voted against Ron Smith every time," Sender said. "He's a troublemaker."

The future

While Smith successfully won enough votes from the Milton Township board in December to keep his job for another year, he has promised to resign in April when a new highway township commissioner is appointed, he says, so he or she can put a new team in place.

The man who's all but certain to become Smith's new boss is fellow Milton Township Republican Precinct Committeeman Gary Muehlfelt, the party's nominee for highway commissioner.
Muehlfelt declined comment for this report while he grieves a recent death in the family.

Flickinger, Murphy and McNatt all backed Smith for reemployment in December.

"He just really wants to do a good job," Murphy said. "He's a hard worker, and he's honest. To me, his job is the kind of thing that saves the taxpayers money."