Dec. 1 - What if ...?

December 1st is the day that newly-elected officials take their offices. Or re-elected officials dust off their chair seats and sit down again for four more years.

How long does a chair have to be empty before there is dust on it? Would dust begin to collect if, say, the occupant of the office were in Minocqua or Cape Coral for 1-2-3-4 weeks? Or would another employee slip quietly into the big office and sit down to keep the chair warm and free of dust? Who does use the big office when the head cheese is on vacation? Anyone?

Instead of a change in command that the voters in McHenry County could have caused in the McHenry County Sheriff's Department, Keith Nygren survived the challenge on November 2. That's no real surprise, considering the Republican orientation of McHenry County. But he got only 58% of the vote, and that is no landslide. It's no mandate.

Now, what could be coming down the pike for Nygren? His new term begins today. How long will he stay in office?

Will he retire and head south to Cape Coral?
Will he resign and let the Chairman of the County Board appoint a Republican to finish out the four-year term?

Or could something else be in the wind?

If something really nasty were to surface, would the County Board refuse to accept a resignation or letter of retirement? Would it try to keep Keith around to face the music, until the last beat was played?

I wasn't thinking about the unresolved Seipler issue or the Schlenkert unpaid compensation issue. But now that I do, would Keith try to get out of town, before the three judges of the Appellate Court rule (and most likely squash Keith)?

And is Schlenkert's lawyer going to have to sue Nygren to get him to pay Schlenkert for all the back pay that is payable? Does anyone doubt, even for a minute, that, if Nygren said "Pay him now", that it would be done?