First there was District 5’s Republican Virginia Peschke filling out the Alliance for Land, Agriculture and Water’s conflict of interest form.

Now her District 2 colleague Democrat Paula Yensen has done so, too.

Neither had to do so anymore than the 17 of 27 county board candidates who have done so.

Both women are incumbents who are not on the ballot.

Revealing such potential conflicts of interest to the Alliance for Land, Agriculture and Water for posting on its web site is strictly voluntary…unless the county board passes an ordinance to make it mandatory.

But there’s something in the political air this year that convinced this overwhelming majority of county board candidates to lay out more of their political finances than in past years.  ALAW has capitalized on it.

It’s probably the stench of political corruption coming out of Springfield and Chicago.

Certainly, no indictments have popped up in McHenry County.

My theory is that the level of corruption out here is so small compared to that in Chicago and Springfield that it doesn’t make the cut at the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

And, yes, I have verified that Federal agents have interviewed people in McHenry County.

Even I got interviewed by a Postal Inspector concerning a House Republican Campaign Committee—financed mailing put out by the HRCC’s mail house owner Roger Stanley. He wanted a copy of a mailing from an obscure political action committee created just to attack my candidacy.

I didn’t remember the committee, but when he described the mailing, I did remember it, found a copy and faxed it to him.

It is my understanding that one of the mail fraud counts Stanley pled to concerned that mailing. Certainly, the Chicago Tribune reporter who called me the afternoon of the plea agreement thought so.

Even though the wrong doing in McHenry County doesn’t reach the indictment stage, the reporting of the indictments and convictions in Chicago does reach McHenry County, angering that part of the electorate who think government ought to be “on the square.”

That includes me. My 1990’s legislative seat mate Tom Johnson once told me, probably after some outraged speech,

“The problem with you, Skinner, is that you think this is on the square.”

So, let me list below the candidates for McHenry County Board who are willing to take ALAW’s step toward convincing local voters that county government is “on the square.” I’ll list them alphabetically by district. All the candidates are Republican, unless indicated otherwise.

• District 1 – None
• District 2 – All but Ken Koehler, that is, Sandra DePaul, Donna Kurtz, Ellen Brady Mueller and Lyn Orphal
• District 3 – Everyone of them! Veronica Armstrong, Nick Provenzano, Craig Steagall, Barbara Wheeler and Karen Tynis
• District 4 – Sandra Salgado and Jeff Thirtyacre (Democrat)
• District 5 – Tina Hill, John Jung and Frank Wedig (Green).  Incumbent Jim Kennedy and challenger Dave Frederick have not yet filed the form.
• District 6 – All but incumbent Dan Ryan, that is, Richard Draper, Diane Evertsen, Mary McCann, Vic Narusis.

Tynis and Narusis have filed most recently.

In addition, all the candidates for sheriff, except incumbent Keith Nygren, have voluntarily submitted their conflict of interest forms.

The three willing to “bare all” are (in order of filing)

• Zane Seipler
• Gus Philpott
• Mike Mahon

Here is where you can find the statements.