The following information about McHenry County Board Chairman Jack Franks’ seeking a new patronage employee to be called an “Inspector General” was gleaned from the audio of the last Internal Services Committee meeting by former Board member Ersel Schuster.  Nothing in writing was in the Committee’s agenda packet:

Jack Franks Seeks Another High-Priced Employee for Bloated County Government

Here we go again.

After several moves to accomplish the County Board Chairman’s goals to concentrate power in himself, he is now injecting what will become another level of government.

His new “want” is an “inspector general” position.

At the county’s Sept. 9, 2018, Internal Services Committee meeting, (at 2:33 of the audio recording); Administrator Austin made the following statements:

The highest paid McHenry County Employee is County Administrator Peter Austin.

“I need to point out that in the Supplemental requests, that I put on everyone’s desk, that is the ‘inspector general’ position that the chairman referenced before and I believe it was referenced again at the COW and we need to talk about that a little more… this is kind of an effort to put this on paper so what this would know what this means… so, one of our interns spent a lot of time researching the “Inspector general” positions at the state level and some of the larger counties and pulled those ideas together and created this with the job description… but we, we took it another level and we filled out this position CPQ, the form that they use in HR to kind of grade this position so that works out to a Grade 14.”

He continued by saying: “This position is not worked into the budget at this point. I did want to put this on the table.”

Committee Chairwoman Yvonne Barnes, responding to the proposed job description asked: “…right away it starts off with fraud and waste abuse. Right now, in theory our auditor should be doing this… they have a hot line and all that kind of stuff. Would that not be redundant responsibilities?”

Admin. Austin responded: “… it would not be redundant. The two partner and work summarily together and elevate that program.”

In other words, it is redundant and the slippery slope heading straight into the chairman’s goal of eliminating the “voter-elected” county watchdog, the auditor’s position, in exchange for what can then be his chosen person.

From all indications, this high-priced position [cost over $98,000] is being slipped in the 2019 budget without so much as a whimper.

Our county “prince (county board chairman),” prances along, knocking down one elected/appointed office holder after another; thus concocting one more government position after another.

In his wake, he is able to install those he can control.

Prior to taking office December of 2016, Franks started his march to take over county government by putting his foot on the backs of McHenry County board members.

Personal threats, intimidation and proposed lawsuits quickly cowed members into submission.

McHenry County has just begun seeing the consequences of the decision of “electing a chairman at-large.”

He is out of control and members are either complicit, in-over-their-heads, or uninterested in taking control of the situation.

So much for our “reducing” and “consolidating” government champion.