ITASCA, IL – County Board Member, and candidate for DuPage County Board Chairman Debra Olson serves as the Chairman of the DuPage County Public Works committee. According to the DuPage County website, from January through November 2009 (a total of 11 months), Olson’s committee met for a total of 9 hours and 51 minutes.

In addition to her County Board salary, Olson receives a $3,000 stipend to serve as chairman of the Public Works Committee. (A cursory examination of other committees indicates that many of the County Board committees meet for approximately the same amount of time.)

“There are people in our County struggling to put food on the table and Deb is being paid $300 an hour, and obviously spends so little time scrutinizing and analyzing the multi-million dollar contracts that fly through her committee, this strikes me as being fiscally irresponsible,” said State Senator Carole Pankau, who along with State Senator Dan Cronin and Burr Ridge Mayor Gary Grasso face Olson in the February 2nd Republican primary. “I call on the County Board to eliminate these stipends this year. In any economy, spending $54,000 a year on ‘stipends’ for paid County Board Members is tough to stomach, but in this economy, it is atrocious”