This Fox News Chicago report by reporter Dane Placko, and the Better Government Association raised some disturbing questions about a number of Cook County employees who are wasting time on the taxpayers dime, including one employee based in the Schaumburg Cook County office.

We were also mystified as to what a highway engineer was doing. We followed Bharat Patel, who makes $81,000 a year, as he left district headquarters in Schaumburg and stopped in Elk Grove Village to take some pictures of a construction site. Then a wild, meandering drive back through Schaumburg, Streamwood, and into Hoffman Estates. He continued to South Barrington, Inverness, Palatine, Rolling Meadows, and Barrington Hills. Other than lunch, Patel never stopped or got out of his car.

When asked what he does, he said “I’m supervising my crews.”

Patel has accumulated the third highest total of overtime in the highway department. Ponticelli, the man we watched in the restaurant, is number two.

So are taxpayers getting their money’s worth? Using simple math, we divided the number of highway employees into the number of road miles the county maintains. In Cook County, the formula works out to a little more than four miles per employee. But in the in surrounding counties, it’s anywhere from six to eight miles per employee. 
 

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