Why do public agencies so love to throw around the taxpayers’ money — your money — just to send some executive off into a rich, fat and early retirement?
EDITORIAL
It seems like just yesterday that Metra was so obnoxiously free with other people’s money, shelling out $652,363.10 to make its executive director, Alex Clifford, go away. Now the board of the College of DuPage has trumped Metra in this game of indefensible giveaways, approving $763,000 in severance for its president. As part of the deal, the president, Robert Breuder, will quit his $484,813-a-year job three years early.
This for a guy who already scooped up a $508,000 compensation package when he left his previous job as president of Harper College.
To make matters worse, the community college’s board saw no need to keep the public apprised along the way about what’s happening to their wallets.
Since hiring Breuder in 2008, the College of DuPage board has sweetened his contract at least five times to give him extensions, more money and more time off. But approval of three of those changes sailed through without showing up on the agenda ahead of time and