Rosemont and Orland Park pay their mayors more than Rome, the capital of Italy.
Rosemont and Orland Park pay their mayors more than Rome, the capital of Italy.
Tokyo has 13.29 million people.
Rosemont has just over 4,200.
But at $260,000 per year, Rosemont Mayor Brad Stephens outearns his counterpart in Japan’s largest city, Yuriko Koike, by nine percent.
Koike makes $238,000, $22,000 less than Stephens.
A Local Government Information Services (LGIS) analysis of mayoral pay around the world found that Stephens and Orland Park Mayor Dan McLaughlin sit in rarefied air.
Stephens ranked second among fifty cities we surveyed; McLaughlin, who makes $150,000 per year to run a city of just under 60,000, ranked 30th. Those two and Albany, NY mayor Jackie Buskupski ($134,000) represented the the only mayors whose communities had fewer than 100,000 people.
Albany, the state capitol of New York, has a population of 98,424.
Rosemont, of course, is atypical as a booming convention and hotel hub adjacent to O’Hare Airport. Its population is small, but its business activity is big.
But Orland Park, mid-sized commuter suburb of cul-de-sacs and subdivisions in the southwest corner of Cook County is typical. And it pays more for its mayor than Madrid, ($101,190), Moscow ($96,987), Rome ($57,699) and Paris ($9,242).
McLaughlin, whose pay was suddenly increased last year from $40,000 to $150,000, earns the same as the mayors of Tampa and Milwaukee and more than the mayors of Cleveland, Las Vegas, Nashville, Salt Lake City, Portland, Minneapolis, St. Paul, St. Louis, Kansas City, Cincinnati, Charlotte, Oklahoma City, Sacramento, Louisville, San Jose, Pittsburgh, Indianapolis, Miami, Phoenix, Austin, Dallas and San Antonio.
In Illinois, after Stephens, the highest-paid mayor is Chicago’s Rahm Emanuel. The mayor of Tinley Park earned $62,286 last year. In Naperville, the mayor earned $20,000.
Stephens and McLaughlin earn more than every mayor in Indiana.
Indiana’s highest paid mayor, according to an Indianapolis Star analysis, is Gary’s Karen Freeman-Wilson, who earns $129,922. In Greenwood, Ind., an Indianapolis suburb of 55,586 similar to Orland Park, Mayor Mark Myers earns $74,494.
Highest Paid Mayors in the World
| Rank | City | Country | Mayor | Salary | Population |
| 1 | San Francisco | USA | Ed Lee | $289,000 | 837,442 |
| 2 | Rosemont | USA | Brad Stephens | $260,000 | 4,236 |
| 3 | Vienna | Austria | Michael Haupl | $258,000 | 1.741 M |
| 4 | Los Angeles | USA | Eric Garcetti | $238,000 | 3.884 M |
| 5 | Tokyo | Japan | Yuriko Koike | $238,000 | 13.29 M |
| 6 | Houston | USA | Sylvester Turner | $235,000 | 2.196 M |
| 7 | Helsinki | Finland | Jussi Pajunen | $229,000 | 599,676 |
| 8 | New York City | USA | Bill de Blasio | $225,000 | 8.406 M |
| 9 | Philadelphia | USA | James Kenney | $218,000 | 1.553 M |
| 10 | Chicago | USA | Rahm Emanuel | $216,000 | 2.719 M |
| 11 | London | England | Sadiq Khan | $208,000 | 8.674 M |
| 12 | Stockholm | Sweden | Karin Wanngard | $207,000 | 932,917 |
| 13 | Oslo | Norway | Marianne Borgen | $207,000 | 618,683 |
| 14 | Calgary | Canada | Naheed Nenshi | $205,000 | 1.097 M |
| 15 | Washington, D.C. | USA | Muriel Bowser | $200,000 | 658,893 |
| 16 | Atlanta | USA | Kasim Reed | $185,000 | 463,878 |
| 17 | Orlando | USA | Buddy Dyer | $178,000 | 255,483 |
| 18 | Detroit | USA | Mike Dugan | $177,000 | 688,701 |
| 19 | Boston | USA | Martin Walsh | $175,000 | 645,966 |
| 20 | Seattle | USA | Ed Murray | $175,000 | 652,405 |
| 21 | Jacksonville | USA | Lenny Curry | $174,000 | 842,583 |
| 22 | Columbus | USA | Andrea Ginther | $173,000 | 822,553 |
| 23 | Denver | USA | Michael Hancock | $172,000 | 649,495 |
| 24 | Baltimore | USA | Catherine Pugh | $171,000 | 622,104 |
| 25 | Memphis | USA | Jim Strickland | $171,000 | 653,450 |
| 26 | Honolulu | USA | Kirk Caldwell | $165,000 | 374,658 |
| 27 | New Orleans | USA | Mitch Landrieu | $155,000 | 378,715 |
| 28 | Tampa | USA | Bob Buckhorn | $150,000 | 352,957 |
| 29 | Milwaukee | USA | Tom Barrett | $150,000 | 599,164 |
| 30 | Orland Park | USA | Dan McLaughlin | $150,000 | 58,590 |
| 31 | Cleveland | USA | Frank Jackson | $140,000 | 390,113 |
| 32 | Las Vegas | USA | Carolyn Goodman | $139,000 | 603,488 |
| 33 | Nashville | USA | Megan Barry | $137,000 | 678,889 |
| 34 | Albany | USA | Kathy Sheehan | $136,000 | 98,424 |
| 35 | Salt Lake City | USA | Jackie Buskupski | $134,000 | 191,180 |
| 36 | Portland | USA | Charlie Hales | $134,000 | 609,456 |
| 37 | Anchorage | USA | Ethan Berkowitz | $133,000 | 300,950 |
| 38 | St. Paul | USA | Chris Coleman | $132,000 | 294,873 |
| 39 | St. Louis | USA | Francis Slay | $132,000 | 318,416 |
| 40 | Kansas City | USA | Sly James | $129,000 | 467,007 |
| 41 | Cincinnati | USA | John Cranley | $128,000 | 297,517 |
| 42 | Sacramento | USA | Darrell Steinberg | $128,000 | 479,686 |
| 43 | Louisville | USA | Greg Fischer | $118,000 | 760,026 |
| 44 | San Jose | USA | Sam Liccardo | $114,000 | 998,537 |
| 45 | Boise | USA | David Bieter | $113,000 | 214,237 |
| 46 | Minneapolis | USA | Betsy Hoges | $110,000 | 400,070 |
| 47 | Buffalo | USA | Byron Brown | $106,000 | 258,959 |
| 48 | Albuquerque | USA | Richard Berry | $104,000 | 556,495 |
| 49 | Omaha | USA | Jean Stothert | $103,000 | 434,353 |
| 50 | Pittsburgh | USA | Bill Peduto | $102,000 | 305,841 |
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