Jack Franks in front of his 2012 County Fair Tent with petition in hand. Photo Credit: Friend of McHenry County Blog.
First it was a petition seeking an advisory referendum in 2012 on whether the County Board Chairman should be elected at-large.
State Rep. Jack Franks started that campaign at the McHenry County Fair.
This year he is gathering signatures on petitions asking if voters want to cut the size of the County Board in half.
Of course, if such a petition gets on the ballot, the answer will be. “Of course.”
Remember what happened when citizen activist Pat Quinn got the Cutback Amendment on the ballot in 1980?
That cut the size of the Illinois House of Representatives by one-third and abolished multi-member districts.
The result was the Illinois House began looking and acting like the Illinois State Senate.
Under the multi-member, proportional representation system, anyone who could get 25% of the vote, plus 1, ended up a State Representative.
That usually meant there were two members from the majority party and one from the minority party.
The new single-member districts almost always elected Establishment figures.
So, based on the public’s disenchantment with politicians, I’d predict such a referendum would pass.
I haven’t looked at the petition, but I believe I remember Franks’ having passed a bill over ten years ago that allowed such advisory referendums. (Would someone attending the Fair please send me a photo of the petition?)
His promise then was that if such a referendum passed and the County Board did not follow its recommendation he would sponsor another bill that would allow mandatory cuts in the county board’s size.
What voters won’t figure out until it’s too late is that the new County Board members will think and, I predict, vote to double their salaries.
Since they earn $21,000 a year now, plus very generous health insurance (some getting health insurance valued about the same as their salaries), plus pension benefits, expect the salary and pension part of the new compensation to be about twice what it is now.
Those new, fewer County Board members will probably vote themselves staff and become virtually full-time employees, instead of the part-time gig they now have.
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Funny how Franks didn’t think this was an important issued until now.
How can you claim Franks had no interest in reducing size of county board until now?
You must be forgetting Franks asked the county board two years ago to reduce their size.
They had one meeting where the GOP dominated board determined that cutting the size of government was not something they were interested in.
And now, after a new petition surfaces, they want to study consolidation of townships…
Well come on, get with it, there would be less people to have to bribe!
With a massive budget and pension problems, Jack has the time to ignore them and stick his nose into local gov’s business?
I would support less board members have you attended a board meeting lately they do not even know what they are voting on
Cal: Your prediction that the Board members would double their salaries applies to the current proposal to Consolidate Townships.
Does any person honestly believe that Township Boards of Consolidated Townships would NOT double their salaries plus increase their benefits?
The law allowing the referendum, if my memory serves me correctly, was passed early in Jack Franks’ career as State Representative.
It lay fallow until now.
Cal, who’s the guy on the left side of the picture?
Just received a robo-call from Jack himself!
He invited me to visit his booth!
Is he positioning himself to run for Board Chairman?
Does the robo-call receiver live in Jack Franks’ district?
What was the content of the robo-call?
Jeff Thorsen
Yes. I live in Franks’ district.
Paraphrasing:
He had a little more detail but that was the crux of the message.
He did leave his phone number but I forgot to write it down.
Gosh Jeff, you stooped really low this time.