City Controller Alan Butkovitz is demanding retired library president Elliot Shelkrot repay more than $236,000 in bonus money he received from 2001 through 2008. Butkovitz cites the Home Rule Charter, which calls such payments illegal.
"If you are going to receive additional payments from another entity just for doing your job, there's a specific charter prohibition on that," says Butkovitz.
Butkovitz says key city officials have been aware of this deal for 10 years but let it happen anyway because the library's board of trustees believed Shelkrot was drastically underpaid.
Sources say Shelkrot and then mayor, John Street had an adversarial relationship and the mayor blocked pay raises for Shelkrot. So the board of trustees used discretionary non-city funds to amend Shelkrot's paycheck.
"Mayor Street said, 'do what you want to do, but I'm not going to raise the compensation,'" explained David Heim, Free Library Trustee.
Butkovitz is demanding Mayor Nutter's administration take legal action to retrieve the money from Shelkrot. Mayor Nutter then quickly passed the buck to the 3½-year-old Board of Ethics.
Mayor Nutter says, "If the payments are deemed to be inappropriate, certainly by the board of ethics - again, I'll be governed by what they decide - but if they say that he should not have accepted it, then he should not have accepted it and should send it back."
Elliot Shelkrot released a statement Tuesday, reading:
-
"I believe everything I've done, everything that was done, was done properly - the way it should have been done."
