Showing posts with label McHenry County Board. Show all posts
Showing posts with label McHenry County Board. Show all posts

Monday, June 27, 2011

The elephant in the room

With all the stink being raised about the probably-illegal "pre-meeting" of the McHenry County Legislative and Intergovernmental Affairs Committee on May 26, no one is talking about the elephant in the room.

Certainly, someone has noticed the elephant, but no one is talking about it.

Plenty has already been written about it elsewhere. The Office of the McHenry County State's Attorney has weighed in, offering that it might not have been illegal but was contrary to the spirit of the Open Meetings Act.

The Attorney General's Public Access Counselor will examine the meeting for the possibility of violation of the Open Meetings Act.

Five County Board members were involved: Chairman Ken Koehler, Vice Chairman John Jung, Jr., and board members Marc Munaretto, Nick Provenzano and Tina Hill.

So who was the elephant? The big question is - who should have exercised control? Who should have said, "We can't do this."

The Board Chair, Ken Koehler? Absolutely.
The Vice Chair, John Jung, Jr.? If Ken didn't, John should have.
Marc, Nick or Tina? You bet. They are all experienced public officials.

Playing "You come out; I'll go in" deserves more than a "Naughty, naughty" from the State's Attorney's Office. It deserves more than a slap on the wrist, if that's what comes from the AG's office, with a "You shouldn't have done that."

Should there be sanctions? Fines? And not paid by the taxpayers, either!

Whoever came up with that lame-brained idea should admit it. Whose idea was it???

What response would come from a direct question to each of the five? What if I asked, "Was it your idea to pull that rotation scheme?" What answers might I hear?

No. No. No. No. I don't remember.

Friday, December 10, 2010

Limit County Board terms?

On www.mchenrycountyblog.com/ today Cal Skinner reports the position on term limits for County Board Chairman. The Management Services Committee of the County Board may consider Donley's viewpoint on Tuesday at 8:30AM.

Want to help persuade the Committee?

Call your County Board representative today or Monday and tell him or her what you think? Should the Chairman of the County Board be limited to two terms? Yes!!!

Here are the members of the Management Services Committee:

Chairman: Ersel Schuster
Vice Chair: Pete Merkel
Members: Yvonne M. Barnes, Paula Yensen, Kathleen Bergan Schmidt, Tina Hill, Lyn Orphal

Ask your representative's position on this issue and report it here in a comment after you call.

Friday, January 8, 2010

Feb. 2 - Barb Wheeler


When Primary Election Day arrives on Feruary 2 (or, if you can't wait to vote and decide to vote early), vote for Barb Wheeler.

Barb is Republican candidate for re-election to the County Board for McHenry County District 3. Her district is southern McHenry Townships, all of Nunda Township, and Algonquin Township Precinct 29.

Visit her website at www.barbarawheeler2010.com/

Monday, July 21, 2008

1 Reason for High County Taxes

According to a page given to me during last week's County Board meeting, 22 County Board members earn $18,601.70/year for staying awake during Board meetings and heading up some committees. But . . . the Chairman of the County Board gets paid $74,406.02! Whoa! Wait just a minute! $74,000??? And that's plus a whopping $13,182.96 for his health insurance AND $6,272 contributed to his pension.

I thought that was a part-time job. Pretty nice, eh?

I'll be doing more digging to figure out the disparity in health insurance costs to the County (us!) for health insurance costs of the other 23 Board members. According to this same page, these are the health insurance costs for other Board members (the number of Board members whose health insurance cost is the amount shown is in parentheses).

County Annual Health Insurance Contribution (FY 2008) for County Board members, excluding Chairman Koehler:
$17,050.56 (5)
$13,182.96 (1)
$12,537.24 (1)
$9,478.32 (3)
$8,214.72 (1)
$7,800.00 (4)
$7,339.68 (1)
$646.08 (1)
$0.00 (6)

The above numbers are "each", not total for the number shown in parentheses. There are five (5) County Board members for whom we pay $17,050.56 PER YEAR for their health insurance. What in the world is going on here???

Why would any business pay a health insurance cost (premium/contribution) almost equal to the annual compensation of its worker???