McHenry County Blog

What might be characterized as thinly-disguised bribes to keep county officials running for the Illinois General Assembly have come under attack in the Daily Herald in an article by Jack Griffin.

The Daily Herald promoted its stipend article on its web page.

Called “stipends,” they are payments to county officials for doing the jobs for which county taxpayers compensate them.

Who gets the money?

County clerks, court clerks, sheriffs, auditors, recorders, coroners and treasurers.

The so-called justification is that the county officials do work for state government, so state government should be paying the officials.

I can’t remember voting on the issue, so I assume they were passed in the 1980′s when I was in elective office remission.

Back in the late 1960′s when I was McHenry County Treasurer our office actually collected the inheritance tax for forwarding to the State Treasurer’s Office.  County Board member Tina Hill’s father John Licastro served as an Assistant Attorney General and brought such deposits into the office.

As I mentioned above, I think the reason is that state legislators want to encourage county officials not to challenge them.

The Daily Herald reports that the annual cost of these $6,500 stipends is $3.4 million.

The BGA’s Andy Shaw is quoted as saying, “…public officials in big counties around Chicago are very well compensated by county taxpayers and don’t need or deserve a bonus from the state, especially when the bonuses are also used to boost pensions, which adds millions of additional dollars in pension obligations.”

There was a time when neither Illinois sheriffs nor treasurers could succeed themselves.

In some counties two people traded off.  Treasurer one term, sheriff the next, etc.

At an Illinois County Treasurers Association in the late 1960′s, I asked about the logic of the 1870 constitutional fathers’ not allowing those two county officials to run for re-election and got a startling answer.

One of the older county treasurers told me that the writers of that constitution figure that if a county treasurer or a sheriff couldn’t get rich in four years, they shouldn’t be in office or something pretty close to that.

The back of the Old McHenry County Courthouse.

One can understand how that logic could be applied to a sheriff back in the mid-1800′s, but how did it apply to the county treasurer?

Not a lot of discretionary power in the collection of taxes when I was in office.

I can remember one instance.  The owner of a large nursery came in a day after an installment of the tax bill was due and wanted me to waive the 1% penalty.

He was pretty disturbed when I wouldn’t.  (“Do you know who I am?!”

Later, when I started looking into real estate assessments, I discovered that the county treasurer played the role of Supervisor of Assessments in the 1800′s.  The treasurer was the top assessor in addition to being the collector of taxes.

The office of supervisor of assessments was created in order to take politics (and corruption, I gathered) out of the assessment process. It was a major county government reform effort in the 1950′s.  Optional for years, the transition took decades and still doesn’t apply to Cook and a couple of other counties.

The power to set assessments, of course, has a lot of discretion that could temp an unscrupulous county treasurer to lower assessments in return for, well, use your imagination.

Found this little item on “Boone County Watchdog.”

How would you like to be a Boone County resident and read in a county management letter accompanying the annual audit:

“We noted the Collector held over $1 million in savings as of January 2009, which was after the final distribution related to the 2007 tax levy.

“At that point in time, Collector’s accounts should be minimal as distributions have been made for the prior levy and amounts are not being collected on the upcoming levy.

“We suggest the Collector why these large balances exist and determine who this money belongs to, whether it is the County, other taxing bodies, or the state as unclaimed property.”

That’s from the management letter to the Boone County Board. It was dated July 14, 2009.

It was brought to my attention by former Cary resident Bill Pysson ‘s
Boone County Watchdog

This article stimulated my interest.