McHenry County Blog

Ah.

The rumor mill.

Maybe there will be fewer fireworks at tonight’s McHenry County Board meeting than most folks think.

The rumor of the hour (just confirmed) is that McHenry County Chairwoman Tina Hill is reconsidering her resolution to replace McHenry’s Sandy Salgado with Spring Grove’s Robert Martens.

Both represent District 4.

Hill has argued that Salgado has a conflict of interest because the agency that employees her, Pioneer Center, receives money from the 708 McHenry County Mental Health Board, whose members are recommended by the Public Health and Human Services on which she serves.

Hill has put on the tonight’s County Board agenda a resolution that has Bob Martens replacing Salgado.

Generally the Northwest Herald is quite protective of establishment figures in McHenry County.

But Sunday’s editorial calls out McHenry County Board Chairwoman Tina Hill out in no uncertain terms for her 708 Board nomination bypass of the Public Health and Human Resources Committee.

The editorial says she comes off “as heavy-handed and power hungry, and the move raises questions about her motivations.”

And the NWH advises members to vote against Cathy Ferguson, Hill’s choice to fill a vacancy on the McHenry County Mental Health Board, because of Hill’s circumvention of the committee process.

With regard to Hill’s intention of replacing Pioneer Center Sandy Salgado with former Family Services Executive Director Bob Martens, the editorial writers conclude,

“If Salgado’s representation on the Public Health and Human Services Committee is a conflict, certainly Martens’ is as well.”

Tonight’s “Best Show in Town” begins at 7 in Woodstock’s McHenry County Administrative Center.

With McHenry County Chairwoman Tina Hill labeling Sandra Salgado’s service on the the Public Health and Human Services Committee “The Epitome of Conflict of Interest,” Fox River Grove Republican Precinct Committeeman has written a story entitled,

“The Epitome of Conflict of Interest” – Backroom Politics

Hill bases that characterization on the fact that Salgado works for Pioneer Center and Pioneer Centers gets financial support from the 708 Mental Health Board, whose Board members the Public Health Committee recommends.

[Of course, the last recommendation, Scott Summers was rejected by the Hill followers listed below on the County Board:

[Those opposing the nomination were

• Michele Aavang
• Yvonne Barnes
• Sue Drafkorn
• Joe Gottemoller
• Jim Heisler
• Tina Hill
• John Jung
• Ken Koehler
• Bob Martens
• Mary McCann
• Mary McClellan
• Anna May Miller
• Bob Nowak
• Nick Provenzano
• Ersel Schuster
• Carolyn Schofield
• Mike Skala
• Paula Yensen

In favor were

• Nick Chirikos
• Diane Evertsen
• John Hammerand
• Donna Kurtz
• Sandy Salgado
• Mike Walkup

[And the last recommendation of Donna Kurtz' Committee--after Hill announced that she would bypass the Committee--Jeff Thorsen, was not even placed on tonight's County Board agenda.  She has recommended Cathy Ferguson, a colleague of Thorsen on the Crystal Lake City Council.]

With that as background, Gasser’s conclusion might be of interest.  Playing off Hill’s “epitome of conflict of interest” statement, Gasser concludes

“The real conflict of interest is Hill’s nominee of former Family Services & Community Mental Health Center for McHenry County CEO and current board member Bob Martens (Spring Grove).”

Why?

He points to what he calls about a $140,000 “Golden Parachute” for Martens when he was listed as “Former CEO” of  the Family Services and Community Health Center for McHenry County.   (He found that information on the agency’s IRS Form 990.)

Gasser continues,

“This same year the McHenry Mental Health Board gave a loan to Family Services & Community Mental Health Center for McHenry County $719,981 when no other lending institution would do so because of the risk.”

Gasser then asks a series of questions that readers might find of interest.

One of them has to do with the August 2012 collapse of Family Services after Martens retired and while he was one of four GOP candidate for County Board in District 4.

Gasser asks,

“Should this person really be the liaison between the county board and the Mental Health Board?”

There is more, but, again, I suggest you go to the source of this story on Andrew Gasser’s blog.

As mentioned previously, replacement of Salgado with Martens will change the balance of power on the Public Health Committee.  It will put Hill loyalists in control by a 4-3 margin.

For 708 Board purposes, that means that Hill can name replacements for the two seats whose terms expire January 1, 2014, without bypassing the committee for a second time:

• Vice President Brett  Wisnauski
• Secretary Connee Meschini

Ferguson’s term, if approved, would expire at the same time.

The meeting at which Hill’s replacement recommendation will be considered in tonight at 7 PM in the building north of the McHenry County Jail.

There will be a domino effect from Tina Hill’s pending removal of Sandra Salgado from the Public Health and Human Services Committee, reportedly because she has a conflict of interest resulting from her employer, Pioneer Center.

This is not a new situation for Salgado. That has been where she has worked for years.

When Tina Hill appointed Salgado to the post, she knew where Salgado worked.

There is even a conflict of interest waiver that the County Board has passed.

But Salgado’s removal also means that she can no longer chair the Senior Citizens Grant Commission.

The reason is that the chairman must be a member of the Public Health Committee.

Tonight at the 7 PM County Board meeting, virtually everyone expects Hill’s resolution to replace Salgado with Bob Martens, the former long-time head of Family Services on the Pubic Health Committee.

As previously pointed out, the replacement will put Hill loyalists in a 4-3 position to control the committee that Donna Kurtz chairs.

That means the type of reform appointments to the 708 Mental Health Board that the Kurtz majority helped put in office will be in jeopardy when the next two 708 Board terms expire.

It also means that any Board member is at risk similar “discipline” should he or she be perceived by Hill to have been in a conflict of interest.

If the McHenry County Board follows Chairwoman Tina Hill’s recommendation, McHenry’s Sandy Salgado will have been replaced by Spring Grove’s Bob Martens the night before the Board’s Public Health and Human Services Committee meets in Crystal Lake at 9 AM in the Public Health Department building where Woodstock Street intersects Route 14.

That makes it convenient for those in the southeast corner of McHenry County to see the committee to which Crystal Laker Donna Kurtz was appointed chairman after supporting Hill’s chairmanship on the second vote.

Hill’s argument for replacing Salgado is that she works for Pioneer Center, which receives funding from the 708 Mental Health Board whose members are appointed by the the committee.

Martens, of course, before he retired, ran the Family Services agency which the 708 Board pumped in upwards of $1.8 million in an unsuccessful attempt to forestall its going out of business.

With Martens on the committee, Kurtz will have lost the fourth vote needed to advance proposals and nominations to the County Board floor, if Hill disagrees with them.

There will be a public comment period.

McHenry County Board Chairwoman Tina Hill is planning to plug a hole in her power structure by removing County Board Sandy Salgado from the Public Health and Human Services Committee.

In her place Hill is recommending Robert M. Martens, Sr.

Salgado did not vote for Hill for Chairman.

Martens did.  Martens and Salgado are both from District 4, which covers McHenry, Richmond and Spring Grove.

Putting a loyalist on the Public Health Committee will allow Hill to neutralize its Chairman, Donna Kurtz, any time Hill wants to.

The margin is now 4-3, with Kurtz being able to rely upon support from Salgado, Hammerand, Walkup and herself.  All are Republicans with Salgado being from McHenry, Hammerand from Wonder Lake with Walkup and Kurtz from Crystal Lake.

The three loyal to Hill are

• Mary McCann (R-Woodstock)
• Anna May Miller (R-Cary)
• Paula Yensen (D-Lake in the Hills)

 

Below you will see McHenry County Board Chairwoman Tina Hill’s letter to Board members about her recommendation of Crystal Lake City Councilwoman Cathy Ferguson to the 708 Mental Health Board.

The County Board’s Public Health & Human Resources Committee, chaired by Donna Kurtz, voted to recommend Crystal Lake City Councilman Jeff Thorsen, but, immediately thereafter Hill said that she would not put Thorsen’s to a vote before the County Board.

Thorsen is a finance guy.

He is a banker who has a Master’s Degree in Business Administration.

Ferguson is a counselor who handles drug abuse, among other problems.

She talked a little about that when she voiced her opposition to decriminalizing marijuana in Crystal Lake (giving tickets where the city would get the money, rather than running criminal cases through the court system in which the city does not benefit financially.)

She said she thought the issue was important because marijuana was a gateway drug.

Fox River Grove Republican Precinct Committeeman Andrew Gasser was at mid-day the Public Health & Human Resources Committee meeting and wrote an article.

He ends his first paragraph with

“So much for transparency.”

Commenting on Crystal Lake City Councilman Jeff Thorsen’s nomination, he wrote,

“This is the second candidate put forward by the PH&HS Committee who has a strong business and financial background which is so desperately needed on the McHenry County Mental Health Board (McMHB).”

Read Gasser’s whole article, as well as McHenry County Blog’s, as well as Kevin Craver’s in the Northwest Herald.

Chaired by Donna Kurtz a majority of four nominated Crystal Lake City Councilman, banker and holder of an MBA Jeff Thorsen to fill the vacancy on the 708 Mental Health Board.

A vacancy remains because an 18-6 majority vote on the McHenry County Board refused to ratify the nomination of former McHenry County College Board President and 2012 Democratic Party Board candidate Scott Summers for the post.

Voting for Thorsen were Kurtz, John Hammerand, Sandy Salgado and Mike Walkup.

The other three members of the committee–Paula Yensen, Anna May Miller and Mary McCann–boycotted the meeting.

Following the eighteen “No” votes, Chairwoman Tina Hill informed the Board that she would submit her own choice to fill the vacancy.

After the Public Health Committee vote Hill was asked by Mike Walkup whether she would put the nomination on the agenda for the County Board’s May 21st meeting and she said she would not be putting the name up for the County Board’s consideration.

Then Walkup said,

“The Chair promised us in her State of the County speech that this would be a new day.

“Instead she has now plunged us into darkness.

“I suggest that everyone make sure they have extra batteries for their flashlights because it will be a long, dark night.”

John Hammerand asked why anyone should attend committee meetings.

Others considered for the post by the Committee members were

• Danijela Sanberg
• Charles Wheeler
• Catheryn Perfetti
• Cathy Ferguson
• David Barber

After the vote Sandy Salgado said she was not leaving the committee voluntarily. Salgado is employed by Pioneer Center.

Those opposing the nomination were

• Michele Aavang
• Yvonne Barnes
• Sue Drafkorn
• Joe Gottemoller
• Jim Heisler
• Tina Hill
• John Jung
• Ken Koehler
• Bob Martens
• Mary McCann
• Mary McClellan
• Anna May Miller
• Bob Nowak
• Nick Provenzano
• Ersel Schuster
• Carolyn Schofield
• Mike Skala
• Paula Yensen

In favor were

• Nick Chirikos
• Diane Evertsen
• John Hammerand
• Donna Kurtz
• Sandy Salgado
• Mike Walkup

None of the opponents offered a word as to why they were voting against Summers.

Former Congressman Donald A. Manzullo was honored for his twenty years of service to McHenry County at a reception at Crystal Lake’s d’Andrea’s Monday night.

Sixty-some people, including the two Congressman who replaced him, gathered to offer laudatory comments.

A who’s-who of elected local elected officials were in attendance.

McHenry County Clerk Kathie Schultz, Sheriff Keith Nygren, Auditor Pam Palmer, Coroner Anne Majewski, County Board Chairwoman Tina Hill, Woodstock Mayor Brian Sager and surely others whom I’m forgetting.

Both Congressman Randy Hultgren and Congressman Peter Roskam thanked Manzullo for being their role model.

Although neither was there when the other spoke, their comments about how Manzullo had managed to balance family life, keeping his ideals and public service could have been interchangeable.

A third legislator, State Rep. Mike Tryon had a letter read which also pointed to the Egan Republican as a role model.  (I’ll try to get a copy so I can share it with you.  It really was quite insightful.)

The man Manzullo beat in the 1992 Republican Primary, former State Senator Jack Schaffer, mentioned that he watched Manzullo’s career closely and was not disappointed.

Former McHenry County Board Chairman Ken Koehler credited Manzullo with bringing $30 million in highway money to the area, including the Western Bypass in Algonquin, which he said would be finished next year.

He told of how the Postal System was convinced to yield a slice of its parking lot.  Manzullo was a good friend of the man who ran the Post Office and had him out for a hearing on closing a regional postal facility in Rockford.  As Koehler related the story, Manzullo said that he would find a way to get the Post Office honcho to Algonquin to show him the problem.

Roskam, coming late after a 5:30 event in Elk Grove Village, brought forth something Manzullo constituents probably had never heard.

He revealed that Don Manzullo’s nickname in the U.S. House was “Mad Dog.”

Manzullo took the podium after that revelation and explained that only two Members of Congress had nicknames.

“There was a Congressman nicknamed ‘Doc’–and he wasn’t even a physician–and me,” Manzullo explained.

It was because of the intensity with which Manzullo pursued the issues about which he cared, for example, manufacturing in America.