McHenry County Blog

Carolyn Schofield

At election night’s Crystal Lake City Council meeting, City Councilwoman Carolyn Schofield, elected last year, took the lead in getting a resolution on the agenda at tomorrow night’s meeting asking for recognition of the city’s Watershed Ordinance by county government.

You may remember that both Ellen Brady Mueller and Donna Kurtz made something of that issue during their campaigns for a District 2 slot on the fall county board ballot.

From a resident of the watershed’s perspective, it is so, so difficult to understand that the McHenry County Board has thus far not figured out how important protection of our lake’s watershed is to local residents.

You would think they might have figured that out when a citizen uprising killed the minor league baseball stadium at McHenry County College.

After all, half (that’s right, half) of the entire county board represents parts of Crystal Lake. With all residents of the Crystal Lake Park District having access to the lake, how can one explain why the board has not taken action already.

Ellen Brady Mueller

Donna Kurtz

My prediction is the resolution will pass without dissent Tuesday.

If that doesn’t convince the county board to follow the not-as-strict-as-it-could-be watershed protection ordinance, the next step, it would seem to me would be to invite those twelve county board members to a meeting of the city council.

Who are they?

District 2

• McHenry County Board Chairman Ken Koehler (R)
• McHenry County Board Vice Chairman Jim Heisler (R)
• Lyn Orphal (Lost the primary to Donna Kurtz) Both R’s.
• Former Lakewood Village President and Crystal Lake Park Board President Scott Breeden (R)

Crystal Lake Avenue is the dividing line between District 2 and District 3.

District 3

• Barbara Wheeler (R)
• Kathy Bergan Schmidt (D)
• Ed Dvorak (retiring) (R)
• Mary Donner (R)

District 5

• Tina Hill (R)
• Virginia Peschke (R)
• Jim Kennedy (D)
• Paula Yensen (D)

District 5 comes into the Crystal Lake area from the Northwest (Ridgefield) and the Southeast.

So, what’s the resolution ask for?

“That the Mayor and City Council request the Regional Planning Commission include the Crystal Lake watershed and its regulations in the list of watersheds that exist within McHenry County in the 2030 Comprehensive Plan document.”

The resolution points out that the lake’s watershed is 6.39 square miles of which 3.69 square miles are within the City of Crystal Lake.

McHenry County Board members Nick Provenzano and John Jung lost their seats two years ago in District 3 and District 5.

Joint sign for Mary Donner and Nick Provenzano for county board showed up for the first time the night before the election around polling places. Provenzano lost the election to Democratic Party challenger, now central committee chair, Kathy Bergan Schmidt.

It wasn’t that Provenzano and Jung didn’t have signs up supporting their re-election.

In retrospect, I believe it was because they did not run joint campaigns with their Republican running mates.

There was nothing but being next to each other on the Republican Party ballot to encourage supporters of their running mates to vote for them as well.

This causation factor hit me the night before the election when I saw this joint yard sign for Mary Donner and Provenzano.

It turned out to be too little, too late,

Provenzano lost to Kathy Bergan Schmidt and Paula Yensen beat Jung.

Yard signs for John Jung running mate Virginia Peschke began showing up two weekends before the election in which Democrat Paula Yensen picked off Jung. Peschke ran first.

Jung’s running mate, Virginia Peschke, put on no discernible campaign until yard signs appeared about two weekends before the fall election.

So, here’s my unsolicited advice to Republican county board candidates.

Convince your running mates to have joint yard signs.

Even if you don’t like them and they don’t like you.

Consider it a self-preservation move.

Right now, most GOP candidates don’t have Democratic Party opponents.

It is legal for the Democratic Party to slate candidates. They’ve done it before.

Certainly, it is difficult to find candidates like Yensen and Schmidt, people who will put shoe leather into a campaign.

Campaigning is boring work.

But, there are personal benefits. Candidates who are serious tend to miss meals and, because of that and the energy required going door-to-door, lose weight.

Nevertheless, odds are good that the Democrats won’t find vigorous candidates and, without “fire in the belly” opponents, Republican ballot holders probably aren’t in much trouble in this year of the backlash to corruption so evident among the Democrats’ high profile politicians.

But, it’s always better to do more, rather than less, in an election campaign.

If I were running for county board, I’d want a joint sign campaign.

And joint literature.

Especially, if I came in second in the primary election.

Two more county board candidates have filed their conflict of interest forms with the Alliance for Land, Agriculture and Water.

That brings the total to 20 out of 27 candidates who have answered the ALAW questionnaire.

74%.  Pretty amazing.

McHenry County Board Distrist Map

District 1 incumbent Yvonne Barnes is one of the recent filings. She has a contested primary election with three candidates—fellow incumbent Anna May Miller, Algonquin Township Highway Commissioner Bob Miller’s wife, and Robert Nowak, neither of which have filed. At the Patriots United County Board Candidates’ Forum, Nowak was the only one of the three to attend.

The second new filer is unopposed District 3 Democrat Lori McConville. District 3 is where the Democrats picked up a seat two years ago when Kathy Bergan Schmidt beat incumbent Nick Provenzano. Provenzano is trying to regain that seat this year. All five Republicans previously filed forms.

That means both non-incumbent Democrats have filled out the form. The other is District 4 candidate Jeff Thirtyacre.

However, the Democratic Party incumbent who is up for re-election, District 5’s Jim Kennedy, has not yet done so. He will be on the ballot this fall whether or not he decides to reveal his potential conflicts of interest. His Democratic Party colleague from District 5, Paula Yensen, not up for re-election this year, has also voluntarily filed the form.

Twenty-seven people want to be elected to the McHenry County Board next fall.

Twenty-one are Republicans, three are Democrats and one is a member of the Green Party.

Although the February 2nd election will decide who will be on the GOP ballot, the Democrats and Greens could appoint people to the ballot after the primary to challenge Republicans in Districts 1, 2 and 6, where Republicans currently face no fall contest.

100% of the Greens have filed (Frank Wedig, running in District 5).

Two-thirds of the Democrats have filed.

Of the twenty-one Republicans, seventeen have filed. That’s over 80%.

So, which Republicans haven’t told us what land they own and what business interests they have?

• District 1 – Incumbent Anna May Miller of District 1 and challenger Robert Nowak.
• District 2 – McHenry County Board Chairman Ken Koehler of District 1. ( All of his opponents have filed their ethics forms with ALAW.)
• District 4 – Incumbent Pete Merkel
• District 5 – Challenger Dave Frederick
• District 6 – Incumbent Dan Ryan

Two-thirds of the non-filing Republican candidates are incumbents.

Of the ten Republicans and Democrats now in office running for re-election, sixty percent have now filled out the conflict of interest forms.

There’s still time to file and I’ll more than happy to write an article if addition people decided to reveal their potential conflicts of interest.

Paula Yensen

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.

Victor Narusis

Karen Tynis

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.

Thursday, McHenry County Blog told of the conflict of interest and economic interest ordinance proposed by the reform group ALAW.

Short for the Alliance for Land, Agriculture and Water, the group ALAWproposed wide-ranging conflict of interest notification for McHenry County’s elected and appointed officials.

Think about knowing what real estate planning and zoning people have an interest in.

And, who owns land near what highway improvement.

Information like that might begin to explain otherwise really hard to understand county government decisions.

What was it that Deep Throat advised Woodward and Bernstein advised?

“Follow the money.”

I believe I told you last night that the Management Services Committee of the CB was meeting on Thursday morning and the ordinance is on that agenda for discussion.  I need to correct myself, the meeting is Tuesday morning, 8:30 am, and yes the ordinance is on the agenda.

Here are the committee members:

Ersel Schuster, Chairman
Pete Merkel, Vice Chairman
Yvonne M. Barnes
Paula Yensen
Kathleen Bergan Schmidt
Tina Hill
Lyn Orphal

The organization has called for passage before the primary election in the first week of February.

As expected, incumbent Jim Kennedy, he who broke the Republican stranglehold on the McHenry County Board four years ago by defeating incumbent Republican Perry Moy in District 5, has filed for re-election.

A new entrant, Burton’s Bridge )with a Crystal Lake address) resident Lori McConville, has filed in District 3. District 3 comprises all of Nunda Township, which is north of Crystal Lake Avenue, into southern McHenry Township with one Algonquin Township precinct in Oakwood Hills.

District 3 is where McHenry County Democratic Party Chair Kathy Bergan Schmidt scored one of two Democratic Party county board victories last year. She knocked out Nick Provenzano at the same time that District 5 Democrat Paula Yensen beat John Jung. (Both Provenzano and Jung are seeking to regain seats on the county board this year.)

McConville led the successful fight against a commercial business servicing contractors on Route 176 near her neighborhood.

In a 2007 web site statement she described the group she head, Nunda Neighbors, as a “small (but powerful) civic committee.”

This past spring McConville’s name surfaced as a leader of the Nunda Township Open Space Committee referendum. She is listed by the State Board of Elections as the political action committee’s current chairman and treasurer.

Tax fighter Gerry Walsh and his allies fought successfully against the referendum. Later he noticed that the political action committee did not file its campaign disclosure report on time and filed a complaint. No one from Nunda Neighbors showed up for the hearing.

In the case “Gerry Walsh vs. Nunda Neighbors for Open Space,” the State Board of Elections ordered:

“No further action is required other than referral to SBE staff for the assessment of the requisite civil penalty for delinquent filing…”

Filing on the first day was Jeff Thirtyacre. He is seeking election to the county board for the second time for the board in District 4, which consists of most of McHenry Township and all of Richmond and Burton Townships.

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Above is one page of the proponents’ Open Space mailing last spring.

The candidacy of veteran Cook County Deputy Sheriff Mike Mahon for the Democratic Party nominee for McHenry County Sheriff started my thinking about how Lake in the Hills village government and politics is an incubator for Democratic Party partisan campaigns.

If you ever wonder the importance of village office, consider the upward mobility of those involved in McHenry County Democratic Party politics from Lake in the Hills.

One could consider it the powerhouse of McHenry County Democratic Party politics.

And, it’s all “non-partisan.”

First Paula Yensen ran for state representative against Republican Mike Tryon in 2004.

Then, Jim Kennedy ran for county board against Tina Hill and Perry Moy, unseating Moy.

Next, Paula Yensen ran for county board against Virginia Peschke and John Jung.  She beat Jung (or is up for a re-match this year, if he wins what could be a four-way GOP primary).

And even prospective Democratic Party sheriff’s candidate Mahon gained his electoral baptism by fire by running for village trustee.  He lost but it looks like he is running for something much bigger, where, if victorious, Democrats would be in control of one of the most powerful courthouse offices.

22-year Cook County Deputy Sheriff Michael Mahon is apparently running for McHenry County Sheriff on the Democratic ticket.

I say “apparently” because I haven’t seen his petitions, as did Woodstock Advocate’s Gus Philpott last Sunday, and I haven’t yet made contact with him.

Ironically, Philpott is an announced candidate for the Green Party candidacy for McHenry County Sheriff.  As such, he could drain votes from the Democratic Party’s choice.

Mahon must have politics in his blood.  I found he had been a candidate for Lake in the Hills trustee two times–2003 and 2005.

Both times he finished fourth.

He received 1,273 votes in 2003.  Running ahead of him were Ray Bogdanowski, James Kennedy and Joe Murawski, in that order.  Murawski beat Mahon by 58 votes.

In 2005, Mahon got 932 votes, losing to Paula Yensen, Elizabeth Wakeman and Steven Harlfinger.  Third place finisher Harlfinger bested Mahon by 278 votes.

Having more than twenty years in his pension system, Deputy Sheriff Mahon is eligible for retirement.

Confirmation has been received that Woodstock’s Frank Wedig will again run for the McHenry County Board in District 5.

That district covers Dorr Township, which covers most of Woodstock and Bull Valley, plus the eastern part of Grafton Township, including parts of Huntley, Lake in the Hills, Lakewood and Crystal Lake.

Wedig ran two years ago. You can find out how well he did here.He then ran for Dorr Township Trustee.

Wedig was competitive, running 158 votes behind the lowest Republican, Joseph Evanoff.

Wedig received 84% of the votes of the lowest Republican vote getter. (That is the margin prior to adding in absentee and early voting results, which were not tremendous in this election.)

Most recently,. the Green Party came out against the Woodstock baseball stadium’s being allocated $15 million in Federal Stimulus Recovery Zone Bonds.

There are four Republicans who have taken out primary petitions in District 5:

• Tina Hill (incumbent)
• John Jung (who lost to Democrat Paula Yensen last year)
• Dave Frederick
• John Vrett

The winners will face Democrat Jim Kennedy and Wedig.

Thanks to the First Electric Newspaper for alerting me to McHenry County Board member Paula Yensen’s opposition to video gambling. I’d call it shot machines, of course, because that’s what it really is.

I found my first slot machines right inside the back door of the Miles River Yacht Club in St. Michaels, Maryland. We didn’t have much of a boat, but there were these nickle slot machines and sometimes I had some money to put in a slot. Sometimes I won 35 cents. It was quite a thrill.

There was this sign I didn’t understand. “No Minors Allowed.”

I knew there were no mines on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, so I didn’t understand why the sign was up there.

That was my introduction to gambling.

I asked Paula Yensen if she would be willing to share her comments before the Lake in the Hills Village Board about the subject. What she said follows:

“Good Evening. My name is Paula Yensen. I live at 971 Brittany Bend. I am here this evening to oppose the amending of the ordinance to allow video poker in Lake in the Hills. I can say from personal experience that this is a very bad idea. My ex-husband impoverished our family because of his addiction to gambling.

“I can assure you that many people who can least afford it will lose their life savings to video poker.

“Currently, 7,000 gambling addicts have voluntarily placed their names on the self-exclusion list which prohibits them from entering any of the state’s nine closely watched and controlled casinos in Illinois.

“A concern is that gamblers who have banned themselves from casinos will find machines in bars and restaurants, which would be a tempting substitute for casino gambling.

“Professionals who specialize in gambling addiction agree that video poker provides an exceptionally fast track to addiction.

“For example, among the 5% of all gamblers who develop a problem, it takes those who bet on horses 20 years to hit bottom.

“By contrast video gamblers get to that stage in two years.

“The attributes that make it addictive are speed, built-in ability to keep on playing (credit card readers on the machines), false perception of skill, and the hypnotizing effect of the video screen.

“State Gaming Commissioner Aaron Jaffe said the legalization of video poker and other electronic games is a ‘completely different ball game,’ than regulating the state’s nine casinos.

“Currently there is not an infrastructure to provide oversight of this new venture. It is estimated that it will require 75 additional staff members and $10 million just to implement the program. The state gaming board still must draft rules to implement the legislation. The legislature gave them 60 days to write the regulations.

“The state has not set aside money to study the impact of a gambling expansion and it doesn’t have a publicly funded treatment program.

“The Illinois Family Institute indicated that video poker is the most addictive form of gambling.

“Some experts call it the crack cocaine of gambling.

“Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart said that poker machines are some of the most insidious gambling devices out there.

“In South Carolina a poll conducted by Mason-Dixon indicated that 47% of the respondents said video gaming should be eliminated, and an additional 24% said they favored regulating it more tightly.

“Even Las Vegas’ Mayor has asked a panel to consider removing video poker machines from neighborhood businesses.

“Thank you for your time this evening.”

The First Electric Newspaper reported additional details from Yensen’s person life:

“My ex-husband impoverished our family because of his addiction to gambling,” Yensen said. “Professionals agree video poker is a fast track to addiction,” Yensen told trustees. “I can only tell you the problem has had a profound impact on our family.”

I was listening to an NPR piece between 2 and 3 Wednesday afternoon about a mother whose daughter’s insurance would lapse if she dropped out of college. The daughter continued in school, despite undergoing chemotherapy. It was tough on all concerned.

The mother started contacting legislators about the insanity (my words) of such an insurance policy rule. Again and again and again. You might call it the Chinese water torture approach to public policy change. She got a lot of publicity along the way. After her daughter died, the committee voted unanimously for the legislation and it became law in New Hampshire.

The problem with such insurance mandates is that most people don’t have true insurance policies. They have a health plan administered by a third party administrator and governed by the Federal government under ERISA. And the more state mandates that are imposed, the more companies decide to escape them and provide health coverage under the much less strict Federal rules.

Well, the woman decided to change the Federal law, too.

Impossible, right?

But it wasn’t.

She got it passed both houses and then remembered that she had no clue how the President stood.

While teaching, she got a call from her U.S. Senator John Sununu tellig her the President had signed the bill.

I know this is off the subject, but Paula Yensen reminds me of that woman.

When I talked to her after Wednesday’s meeting about her comments to the Lake in the Hills Village Board (which were completely ignored, by the way, even though she was on the same board before being elected to the McHenry County Board), I could relate to the unpleasantness she was enduring re-living and sharing the problems in her former marriage.

I wonder if Yensen’s presence on the McHenry County Board will have an effect similar to that of the New Hampshire mother who wanted to make sure that other families didn’t have to undergo the problems that hers had.

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The photo was taken at the McHenry County Democratic Central Committee meeting Thursday.