Reporter's Notebook: County Board members frank about Franks
Some McHenry County Board members had a few choice words Tuesday for state Rep. Jack Franks and bills he has filed aimed at the structure of county government.
Franks, D-Marengo, filed bills last month aimed at requiring counties with more than 300,000 people (read: McHenry County) to allow voters to directly elect the board chairman, and to allow voters to have the power of cumulative voting (meaning you can assign more than one of your four votes this year for your County Board representatives to any given candidate).
Although the county is still formulating an official response to Franks' offer to pull the bills in exchange for two binding referendums for direct chairman election and a 17-member board, a number of members during closing comments at their meeting formulated their own unofficial response: Mind your own business.
"He was elected to straighten out the mess in Springfield," a visibly angry Peter Merkel, R-McHenry, said.
Merkel called the bills politically-motivated hit jobs aimed at Koehler – a sentiment Koehler wholeheartedly shares but did not air Tuesday – and said he cannot remember ever seeing Franks at a County Board meeting to talk things over or address concerns. Merkel also mentioned other Franks initiatives in the same vein, such as efforts to remove Jack Schaffer as the county's representative to the Metra Board of Directors in the wake of the Phil Pagano scandal.
The reason Franks does such things, Merkel said, is to get his name in the paper – Merkel said the words "the paper", "headlines" and "front page" about half a dozen times before I stopped counting.
"It's time somebody called him out on this. If he has a problem, come talk to us," Merkel said.
Ersel Schuster, R-Woodstock, was one of several board members who said they were glad that Merkel spoke up. She said the Franks letter offering to pull back his bills in exchange for referenda "sent her over the top."
"I felt as though there was a little bit of blackmail there," Schuster said.
Mary Donner, R-Crystal Lake, chimed in to oppose another Franks bill that would make the county a "pilot program" for his unsuccessful effort to forbid governments under the tax cap from collecting property tax increases when their total assessed value decreases from the previous year.
"He targets McHenry County all the time," Donner said.
But others told Koehler they want to have a Committee of the Whole meeting to discuss the possibility of a referendum regarding the chairman's election. Chief among them was Randy Donley, R-Union, who has advocated for the past couple of years doing so. He stressed to members that his beliefs are nothing personal regarding Koehler.
"We have 300,000 people, but 13 [board members] elect the chairman?" Donley asked, referring to the majority vote of the 24-member board.
Koehler, who has been chairman since 2004 and has been re-elected elected by the board three times since, said he would schedule such a discussion, provided Franks' bill passes legal muster. Koehler said the state's attorney's office is reviewing the law to determine if what Franks is requesting is in tune with state statutes.
"There are some issues of law that Mr. Franks is not taking into consideration," Koehler said.
State law gave the County Board a window last year following post-census redistricting to change its makeup and the election of the chairman without having to go to referendum. Both were discussed in the Legislative and Intergovernmental Affairs Committee in charge of redistricting, but rejected.
Following that discussion, County Board members in May approved guidelines for the committee's redistricting process on a 16-4 vote, that kept the current structure as is. County boards in McHenry and Lake counties elect their chairmen – the public elects them in Cook County and the remaining collar counties (Will County has an executive).
From what I'm hearing, the reply being formulated to Franks' last letter is contingent upon what the state's attorney's office concludes.
What will it say? Stay tuned.
(NOTE: This post was corrected from an earlier version that did not state that the Lake County Board elects its chairman.)
Senior Writer Kevin Craver can be reached at kcraver@shawmedia.com.
