The mayor of one small Cook County town employs 17 members of his family on the town's payroll. The town, which has a population of 200, paid about 7% of the town's entire budget in the form of salary to the mayor's family, according to a report from the Chicago Sun-Times' Steve Warmbir.

McCook Mayor Jeff Tobolski (D) was just recently elected to the Cook County Board in November.

Warmbir reports:

In fact, in 2009 alone, the greater Tobolski family had 17 government jobs and received about $350,000 in compensation from the village, as well as from the library and park districts, which are separate governmental entities the mayor doesn't run. The jobs ranged from the mayor's own job to full-time supervisory positions to part-time or seasonal work.

That doesn't include the two family members at [the village recreational facility] whom [Mayor] Tobolski hired this year -- his wife and [an in-law hired to run the facility] -- who make about $60,000 a year each.
...

[Mayor Jeff] Tobolski said he sees nothing wrong with hiring family, noting the village is run well and efficiently, and local residents enjoy knowing the people who are working in their village government.

He said some of the family members had worked at the village for decades, and some were hired under his father, the late Raymond Tobolski, who was mayor from 2005 to 2007. Jeff Tobolski was appointed to replace his father in 2007 after his death. The village has a population of about 200 people these days, with a majority of them senior citizens, and an annual budget of roughly $5 million, Tobolski said.

The smallest town in Cook County (IL), McCook is but an illustration of the you-scratch-my-back, I'll-scratch-yours mentality endemic in Chicago and Cook County politics...

(Make sure to read the comments to the Sun-Times story, some of them are priceless.)