One of the rule changes voted down by the McHenry County Board was a proposal that would have had staff report quarterly on how much each board member spent of the allowed $1,000 per year expense account.

John Hammerand argued for the making the data more public.

“We don’t see the check register from the Finance Department,” her pointed out. “Ten years ago we used to be able to do that. Looking at the expense report is a source document.”

Someone, I believe Nick Chirikos, made the argument that it would take a lot of work to which

Diane Evertsen replied,

“Somebody already is tracking that now.

“How difficult can it be?

“Sally Snowflake could do it.

“If we are not interested in transparency, who’s spending what, hey, take it out.”

It had not occurred to me to ask for that information lately, but as soon ask the Board voted 12-11 to defeat the measure, I wrote “Check – FOI” on my notepad.

The results came quickly and are presented below:

As you can see, most board members spent nothing.

District 1 Democrat Nick Chirikos turned in about $400 in expenses in February and March.

The only other one to spend anything from the $1,000 was Ken Koehler.  His total was about $260.

So, who voted how?

A “Yes” vote was to suppress the information.  A “No” vote was one for more transparency.

Voted to make the expense information more public were

1. Yvonne Barnes
2. Diane Evertsen
3. John Hammerand
4. Jim Heisler
5. John Jung
6. Donna Kurtz
7. Robert Martens
8. Nick Provenzano
9. Ersel Schuster
10. Mike Skala
11. Mike Walkup

Voting for less transparency were

1. Michele Aavang
2. Nick Chirikos
3. Sue Draftkorn
4. Joe Gottemoller
5. Tina Hill
6. Ken Koehler
7. Mary McCann
8. Mary McClellan
9. Anna May Miller
10. Robert Nowak
11. Carolyn Schofield
12. Paula Yensen