Yahoo Finance After suburban pushback, Cook County leaders propose exempting parks, school districts from paid leave requirements
Responding to a robust lobbying effort, Cook County leaders are moving to exempt thousands of suburban park and school district employees from a new Cook County ordinance that strengthened paid leave policies by allowing workers in the county to take time off for any reason, not just sickness.
Decrying an unfunded mandate and scant notice about how to implement the hastily passed ordinance, several suburban park and school district leaders urged the county to exempt them from the union-backed initiative. With enforcement efforts kicking in next week, the park and school district leaders mounted a letter-writing campaign in recent days and pleaded their case at the Cook County Board meeting on Thursday.
Their pushback led to an unusual split between some city and suburban county commissioners over whether to partially unwind the new rules. Dozens of suburban district leaders said the requirements are confusing and burdensome, and would lead to cutbacks, reduced services or increased fees for residents.
Shortly before the holidays, the Cook County Board passed its own expanded version of the state’s paid leave law. That new state law, which took effect Jan. 1 across Illinois for employees of businesses of any size, gave workers the right to accrue an hour of time off per 40 hours worked and use it for any reason, not just illness. The county’s rules went slightly beyond the state’s law to make it apply to airlines and government bodies. The county ordinance also allowed workers to sue their employers for violations.
While state and federal employees, students working for their college, and short-term employees of colleges and universities are exempt from the county ordinance, employees of municipal governments, park districts and schools are not.
Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle and Commissioner Scott Britton introduced an amendment at Thursday’s board meeting to exempt park and school districts, with hopes of passage in February. It has nine co-sponsors, largely from the suburbs, a slight majority of the board’s 17 members.
“This strategic move is aimed at alleviating the distinctive administrative, operational, and financial challenges faced by these districts, ensuring they are not burdened disproportionately. The amendment aligns with the State’s Paid Leave law that went into effect on January 1, 2024,” Preckwinkle said in a statement.
“It is our responsibility as a board to guarantee workers’ needs are adequately met while balancing unintended consequences,” Britton said in a statement. “That is why I am proud to sponsor this amendment to the Paid Leave Ordinance and have this important discussion.”
Among the concerns of districts: county overreach. One letter sent by Maine High School District 207 Superintendent Ken Wallace asserted the county did not under state law have the authority to impose the regulation on schools and that school district employee sick leave policies are already covered by state code.
The changes will have “substantial adverse financial, staffing and operational impact” and present confusion in districts that straddle two counties, Wallace wrote. The letter asked the board to exempt school districts and avoid “legal disputes which will otherwise inevitably result.”
“It’s an unfunded mandate,” Wallace told the Tribune. “In my 15 years as superintendent, I don’t really remember an issue coming from the county council that even impacted us — we don’t interact with them. Do they even have a legal standing to pass an ordinance that causes another entity, like a public school district, unencumbered costs, especially when it’s not aligned with state law?”
Wallace said the ripple effect of part-time employees being eligible for paid time off affects the essential functions of a school district where teachers who work full-time on nine-month contracts take personal days, including vacations and sick time that are built into a district’s finances.
“A substitute teacher, for example, is a part-time job. It’s contractual,” Wallace said. “If substitute teachers now substitute enough hours and are eligible for paid time off, that drives up the cost.”
Jumbled eligibility is another challenge. Wallace oversees buildings in two different municipalities: Maine South High School and Maine East High School are in Park Ridge — a municipality whose board voted to exempt schools from the county’s ordinance — and Maine West is in Des Plaines, which is still covered by the county rules.
“Will we have two sets of rules, one for staff that work in Park Ridge and one for staff at Maine West in Des Plaines?” Wallace asked.
There are similar problems beyond District 207. A few districts — such as the Elgin-based U-46 school district, as well as districts in Barrington and Elmhurst — span both Cook and other collar counties, creating islands where Cook County rules apply.
Wallace’s letter was also shared with superintendents in the region who were urged to send a copy of their own to the county. At a minimum, Wallace suggested the superintendents ask the county to extend the date of implementing the ordinance to allow for a better understanding of its implications.
Chris Leiner, the executive director of the Northbrook Park District, said the most significant impact for his workers would be tracking hours and providing benefits to the district’s roughly 725 part-timers: lifeguards, camp counselors, after-school program workers and golf caddies. Some work just eight to 14 weeks a year.
Based on the number of hours part-timers worked and their average wage of $18 an hour, he estimated the paid leave requirements could cost the district an additional $100,000 a year. If the district front-loaded 40 hours of leave for all of its workers, it could cost hundreds of thousands more, as well as the extra work of overtime to fill the gap, he said.
The district already faces state caps on property tax rates, which Leiner said haven’t even kept up with inflation.
“Only 50% of our budget is tax based, the rest is user fees,” Leiner said.
Because the Northbrook Park District has already set its property tax levy for the year, Leiner expected the district would likely have to hike fees for items such as pool passes, ice skating and camps to make up the cost.
He hoped the County Board would exempt park districts and schools entirely or at least find a way to carve out seasonal workers.
Progressive commissioners who represent Chicago were less willing to grant the carve-out, while suburban commissioners were willing to grant them. Such a clash is rare for a board composed almost entirely of Democrats intent on unanimity.
The paid leave ordinance’s original sponsor, Commissioner Alma Anaya, said Wednesday that while she was “sympathetic” to the challenges facing suburban districts, she was skeptical of some of their claimed costs of compliance and remains a “firm believer in ensuring everybody is included in this.”
When it passed, the ordinance also had strong support from the Chicago Federation of Labor. The umbrella organization for the area’s unions favored more strident pro-worker measures that recently went into effect in Chicago. While existing union contracts are not affected by the new regulations, they create a floor for future negotiations.
Public unions have already begun to push back.
“Stripping paid leave from more than 20,000 school employees and park district workers now would send a very clear message that their work is not valued by the County,” Dian Palmer, president of Service Employees International Union Local 73, which represents public workers in school districts, municipalities and social agencies, said in a statement. “We will work to block any amendment to the Paid Leave Law which seeks to strip workers of this vital benefit for their families.”
AFSCME Council 31 spokesman Anders Lindall said in an email that the union, which also represents government workers in the suburbs, is opposed to any exclusions.
“Every worker should have access to paid leave for use when they’re sick, to care for family, to attend their child’s school events and more,” Lindall said. “The county paid leave provision lays a foundation for all workers to build on.”
“We’re trying to reach consensus among all players,” added Cook County Board member Anthony Quezada of Chicago, who co-sponsored the measure.
Still, Anaya acknowledged that sticking to her guns might result in entire municipalities opting out of the county’s sick leave ordinance altogether. While those towns and villages would still be subject to the state’s paid leave rules, workers would not have the ability to take their employers to court for violations, and the state, not the county, would take complaints about violations.
Kevin Skinkis, superintendent of Riverside Brookfield High School District 208, worried the new law would hurt the district’s ability to educate students.
“There’s a lot of support staff at school districts that we rely on to do some daily supervision or operational responsibilities,” Skinkis said. “Whether it’s a substitute teacher, maybe a cafeteria supervisor or a bus driver or coach — those things will be impacted by this new ordinance, which would impact the operation of the whole school.”
Skinkis said superintendents needed clarification on the language of the paid leave expansion so they can figure out how deep it’ll run into staffing given the days off that are already built into the school year, including two weeks of winter break, a week in spring break, and three months for summer break.
“If we’re having trouble getting staff or services in the middle of a school year because people are taking paid time off or different times off, it just doesn’t flow with our calendar as a nine-month operation,” he said. “Does this strictly impact support personnel, or does it impact all employees?”
In Rosemont Elementary District 78, Superintendent John Jonak was spreading salt outside the front entrance of Rosemont Elementary School and shoveling snow out of the bus lanes.
“We’re a little bit unique — we’re such a small-time shop that any of this is going to have an impact,” Jonak said. “Earlier we had a leak in our ceiling and we’re sucking up the water — everybody’s all hands on deck here.”
Jonak said the pre-K through eighth grade district isn’t financially equipped to handle the repercussions of an expanded paid leave policy with existing projects eating away at the budget.
“We’re in the midst of trying to build a new building, we have a roof that is failing at different times, so it would be challenging,” Jonak said. “There’s funds out there, but it’s not something that we have planned for or that we would want. I believe that we take care of our employees really well here and we’ve already got this covered.”
