Dan Hunt Addresses McHenry County Board on Towing Again

If you will read the purpose of this blog, found under the masthead, you will see that I want to encourage people to become active in public affairs. Sometimes it is ideology that spurs people into the public arena. Other times, it is seeing government do something that does not make sense to you.

I think it was the latter that convinced Anchor Towing’s Dan Hunt to fight the McHenry County towing ordinance.

Think of coverage of this crusade as a case study of how to work with public officials.

Today, he said the following to the board members. They responded, as you can see above, by setting a special meeting on October 14 at 11 AM to repeal, it appears the ordinance that they passed in February.

His comments follow:

Members of the McHenry County Board

I approach you yet again about your new towing law.

I think most members now agree that the all-or-nothing state law you invoked went too far.

Personally, I am disappointed that you have not yet decided to repeal your ordinance. It is going to cost my company $1,150 to register, if no action is not taken before October 15th. Other companies will also have to pay the Blagojevich administration the non-refundable licensing fee.

The problems with your new ordinance remains the same.

Regardless of what the Illinois Commerce Commission representative told your Law and Justice Committee yesterday morning…the law is what it says, not what he wants it to say.

People with car trouble this winter are going to have to stay with their cars to provide positive identification and to sign something saying they have been informed of all the possible costs.

Mr. Provenzano’s advice to wait and see what happens in Springfield may indicate more optimism about the legislative process than is warranted.

Bills don’t seem to get passed very quickly in Springfield.

It takes time.

Maybe Rep. Franks and Senator Althoff will get something passed in the veto session; maybe they won’t.

And, then, of course, we have the governor. No one ever knows what he will do or when he will do it. If he gets indicted, he probably won’t be paying a lot of attention to his governmental duties.

So, I’m not counting on a quick resolution of the problem on the part of Springfield.

By allowing this admittedly defective ordinance to go into effect, it is going to cost local businessmen literally thousands of dollars.

I would be less than forthright if I didn’t tell you I was disappointed that nothing is on the agenda today.

I know that there are people on this board who do not want to take a “wait and see” approach. Some are downright angry at having made a mistake, but not being afforded the opportunity to undo it.

If they had the chance, many, perhaps a majority, would vote to repeal the ordinance until the General Assembly passes a law to allow this board to do what it thought it was doing when all of you voted for the proposal.

Maybe there is some way to vote to repeal the towing ordinance. Most organizations have such a way to act in the case of an emergency.

And, although not all of you can imagine what an emergency is to a small McHenry County business like my own, I can assure you, in this less that robust economy, the prospect of being force to throw $1,150 in that snake pit called state government is an emergency to me.

You voted for oversight on rates charged by towing companies removing illegally parked vehicles, not safety towing and all of its glorious attributes.

Thank you for allowing me to vent my frustrations.


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