Franks: “I want to run McHenry County.”

Jack Franks and WGN's Justin Kaufmann

Jack Franks and WGN’s Justin Kaufmann, who grew up in Wonder Lake.

Hard to believe, but that’s what State Rep. Jack Franks told WGN talk show host and former Wonder Lake resident Justin Kaufmann last night.

(You can listen to the 36-minute recording here.)

Franks clearly has a fragile grasp on the role of McHenry County Board Chairman.

He has pledged to cut McHenry County government’s property taxes by 10% his first day in office.

He apparently doesn’t understand that before votes can be taken on a measure it has to be put on a meeting agenda.

Franks will not have the power to put an item on the agenda until he takes office.

And County Board Rules say days notice are required.

Let me also share something that current McHenry County Board Chairman Joe Gottemoller told 18-year back bencher Franks would happen, if he won the election to replace Gottemoller:

“You’re not going to be a bomb thrower.

“You’re going to be the bomb catcher.”


Comments

Franks: “I want to run McHenry County.” — 20 Comments

  1. He’s inflicted enough damage already by voting for unfunded and underfunded legislation while 63rd District State Representative representing western McHenry County, the whole time claiming he’s never voted for a tax hike.

    Isn’t it amazing that although Jack Franks claims he’s never voted for a tax hike, property taxes are high.

    So he was part of Springfield that produced all sorts of unfunded and underfunded mandates on local, but Jack apparently doesn’t call that a tax hike.

    The state mandating that local do this or that is a big reason we have high property taxes.

    Unfunded and underfunded legislation typically eventually results in tax hikes, although other avenues are possible, such as service cuts, taxpayer IOU’s, or the recipient of the legislation becoming more efficient (only so much of that is possible).

    But that’s all swept under the rug when passing such legislation.

    State legislation is a big reason for high property taxes that Jack Franks now wants to reduce as a local politician.

    The Governor Rauner administration had some ideas how to reduce property taxes in the Turnaround Agenda.

    But Jack Franks has never voiced support for the Turnaround Agenda.

    A lot of that likely has to do with his support for unions who are major contributors to his political campaigns.

    Jack Franks is not alone.

    Just about every state legislator was in on the unfunded or underfunded mandate party.

  2. After listening to the interview, I draw the following conclusion:

    the little liar actually believes he can become King of McHenry County.

    To paraphrase a portion of the interview, when he puts an item on the agenda and he does not get the vote he wants, he will simply put it on the next agenda and the next agenda and the next agenda until he gets the vote he wants.

    Solution: Take the power of creating the agenda away from the Chairman.

    If this does not happen, McHenry County will be just like Springfield – Madigan only brings bills to the floor that he knows will be voted on the way he wants.

    The little liar wants to clone that practice in McHenry County.

    Listen to the interview – he wants to become a clone of Madigan operating in McHenry County.

    Wny?

    He knows he will never be elected governor or ever become Speaker at the state level.

    BTW he makes the statement that Valley Hi is for the ‘indigent’.

    I would like to know how many people stay at Valley Hi and the facility receives zero dollars from Medicare or Medicaid or some private insurance company?

    Any Board member interested in continuing to do the positive work they have started – lowering our property tax – needs to jump on board the Walkup campaign!

    The little liar is scary!!!

  3. The voters in the U.S. placed the most divisive force in history in the White House.

    I pray they do not repeat that mistake for McHenry County.

    A vote for the Democrat is a vote for divisiveness – just listen to the interview and take to heart what Mark has written.

  4. How can you support Walkup?

    He says one thing and does another!

    He ran in 2012 and said he opposed pension and healthcare benefits, then took them anyway when he was elected!

    Also, how can you support a guy who claims to be disabled and is collecting disability, but is running for two offices?!

    Hello!!!! Wake up!!!! Walkup is pulling he wool over your eyes!!!!

  5. Here is how county government and the county chairman position works in a broad sense.

    The county government does basically four things:

    (1) provides the justice system, ie courts, sheriff, jail, states attorney, public defender, probation;

    (2) maintains and improves county owned roads (not township roads, state roads, or federal roads);

    (3) provides a health department which does such things as restaurant inspections and tries to prevent or control outbreaks of infectious diseases;

    (4) does planning and zoning for the unincorporated areas of the county and enforces zoning regulations for those areas (not inside of municipalities).

    This is obviously not all inclusive and there a many areas where the county government can interface with other units of government, such as providing Motor Fuel Tax and RTA funds for road improvements, serving as a conduit for state and federal grants and the like.

    There are an number of ancillary services such as mental health, conservation district, housing authority, animal control, nursing home, veterans affairs etc.

    The County Board provides oversight but does not directly run any of those things, all of which are independent to varying degrees.

    Departments such as Planning and Development, and the Department of Transportation are managed by staff who do answer to the Board, but most of the others are independent and somewhat free standing.

    The Health Department, for example, is overseen by the Board of Health, not the County Board. The same is true of the Mental Health Board, Valley Hi Operating Board, Conservation District, Housing Authority,. Fire Protection Districts, Drainage Districts etc,.

    Other offices are led by directly elected public officials such as the States Attorney, Sheriff, Clerk etc. who do not answer to the Board but only to the voters.

    The Board’s role in most of those is limited to appointing members of their governing boards when their terms expire, and saying yea or nea to their overall budgets each year.

    Municipalities, school districts, library districts, park districts, etc have nothing to do with county government and County Board has no more control over them than if they were on Mars.

    Insofar as the County Chairman is concerned, his or her powers are limited by the Board and the Board Rules, which can be changed at the will of the Board.

    County government is not a corporate monolith with a CEO. It is more like a bowl of jelly beans. Each jelly bean is separate from every other jelly bean and has varying degrees of independence and interdependence. The Chairman is not Willy Wonka.

    In the last revisions of the Rules, moreover, the Board removed the most significant aspect of the Chairman’s power, which was the appointment of the committee members who would recommend chairs and vice chairs for the various Board committees.

    A Chairman who is not also a Board Member cannot even vote on that committee to break ties, nor can he vote on anything else.

    There is virtually nothing that the Chairman can do without the Board’s consent.

    The Board can also further revise the Rules and reduce the Chairman to someone who just chairs two meetings per month. They don’t even have to allow him to have an office in the building.

    The County Board Chairman is not a dictator, but a facilitator. His/her job is to try to build consensus around issues.

    To do that the Chairman must have the support of the Board, not be it’s antagonist.

    An example on point is the recent vote on non dedicated roads. Chairman Gottemoller spent several days on the phone with Board members this past weekend trying to convince them that there were too many legal and financial pitfalls in the proposal that came out of the Transportation Committee.

    The Board was supposedly evenly split going into the meeting.

    The final result, however, was to approve the Committee’s plan, and even the Chairman was forced to change his vote in the face of the overwhelming Board sentiment.

    That’s the way it works.

    The Chairman is at best the first among equals, and if he is not a Board Member and doesn’t have a vote, he is not really even an equal.

    If the Board is so inclined, it can render the Chairman essentially superfluous.

    You catch more bees with honey than with sulfuric acid.

  6. Typical Progressive comment:

    “Also, how can you support a guy who claims to be disabled and is collecting disability, but is running for two offices?!”

    Progressives claim to support people with disabilities and then denigrate them at the every opportunity.

  7. Walkup receives a disability pension from a private insurance company.

  8. Jack Franks is a pathological x#?=@. . . . .

    Seriously, everything he says or does,
    He has done the opposite of before for
    Any political advantage he can get !

    Need time to process all the reversals
    Of things he said on the broadcast
    Before I post on them.

    Franks is egomaniacal as well,
    As I’ve said before numerous
    Times before.

    Listen to this broadcast, it is beyond
    ‘Scary’, it frightened the bejezus out
    Of me !

    Wake up people, vote gainst this
    Manipulative career POLITICIAN
    & send him PACKING !

  9. Comment of the week: “Listen to this broadcast, it is beyond ‘Scary’, it frightened the bejezus out
    Of me !”

    Pay attention folks, the wolf is at the door and he has brought paid assistants!!

    You really think the WGN interview was not a ‘planned’ and ‘staged’ event?

    The Franks family and the unions have boat loads of your money to use against you!

    Listen and take notes!!

  10. Talk about the pot calling the kettle!

    He refers to cronyism as if he NEVER tried to get members appointed to various positions in State government.

    He was successful in getting the current candidate for his district appointed to highly paid do nothing position!!

  11. I have asked repeatedly for Patronage Jack’s lemming supporters to provide a list of tax reducing accomplishments of Patronage Jack.

    Crickets.

    That has been the response.

    Zero, zip, nada, nothing.

    Patronge Jack has been in office for 18 years and the
    taxpayers have nothing positive to show for it.

    As I see it, he has a couple of accomplishments.

    1. He voted for Madigan 9 out of 9 times. That crew has destroyed this state financially. Thanks Patronage Jack. Madigan has done more damage than a series of spring tornadoes.

    2. He sent a blatant patronage request letter to disgraced Ex Governor Blagojevich. The letter included family and political friends.

    One of Jack’s patronage job recipients is now running for the seat Patronage Jack is vacating.

    Thanks for being the shining example of Chicago and Springfield Dem machine patronage politics.

    The Dems are clearly proud of their patronage and nepotism.

    Not a dime of real tax reduction in 18 years in office can be attributed to Franks.

    Walkup and the current County Board have actually reduced the County portion of our real estate tax.

    If, after 18 years of lackluster performance in a job that appears to be over his head, why would any thinking person support him to invade our county with more Chicago and Springfield politics and the financial ruin that comes with it?

    Look at the shape of Chicago and the State.

    If you elect Patronage Jack, that is what McHenry county will look like.

    Vote for Walkup and tell this uncontrolled ego to go back to the private sector where he can be dictator of his gback yard.

  12. Lying Jack Franks drops his pants for the world to see his true self.

    Such ego has this man that he dares to say that one of the reasons he is running for Chairman is to ‘Term Limit’ the Board.

    We’ve heard that before ‘Lying Jack’.

    You promised to term limit yourself years ago but it never happened.

    You say you want to cut the size of the board ….. and limit our representation thereby.

    You call yourself a reformer, but you voted for the dictator Madigan every time in Springfield.

    You said in the interview that “soaking the rich is bad public policy”, yet you voted for a massive tax increase on farms in McHenry County and elsewhere.

    We see you for what you are and it makes our stomach churn.

  13. Everybody on this blog attacks Franks for voting for Madigan.

    Well guess what?

    If you are a Democratic elected to the Illinois House, you have two choices:

    (1) vote for Madigan(who will win anyway) ;or

    (2); bring home NO money to your district.

    Chris Lauzen represented Kane County for 12 years (he too advocated term limits until his time had passed) and refused to abide by the Republican party leaders.

    As a result, Kane County received no funds from the State.

    Kane County actually hired lobbyists to try to obtain discretionary funding projects.

    How effective would our Republican Rep be if he refused to go along with Jim Durkin?

    The answer is that nothing would be accomplished, and important State and federal funding for infrastructure would be non-existent.

    People on this blog continually attack Franks and others for the incredibly high taxes in McHenry County.

    This is, at best, ignorance.

    At its worst, it is thoughtless partisian politics.

    The reason McHenry County taxes are so high is, in large part, the result of the local school boards, which have rum amok without any oversight by the local citizens.

    It is simple math.

    You can rant about Obama, the unions, Madigan, Hillary or Jack Franks, but the direct relation to your outrageous taxes are generated by your local school boards, the vast majority of which claim to adhere to the Republican Party.

    Maybe it is time to turn off Rush Limbaugh (who is laughing all the way to the bank on your fears of Muslims and unions) and do the simple math. The equation leads directly to your local school board.

  14. Stop with the Walkup disability garbage.

    He is paid out of a private policy that he took out on himself and paid for himself.

  15. Re: “the vast majority of which claim to adhere to the Republican Party.”

    AND “Kane County received no funds from the State.”

    Is Taxrate 62 actually the ‘little liar’?

  16. @taxrate Ever hear of prevailing wage?

    Ever hear of the taxes the state impose on businesses?

    How about all the taxes the state get from surrounding collar counties and 70% goes to Chicago.

    Why does the schools and other governing bodies have to have such high taxes?

    In a large part is because the way the State is run!

    Not saying that local governing bodies don’t need to look in the mirror but understand that what the State does effects all other governing bodies in the State.

    They have to react to what Springfield does and Jack Franks is part of the problem!

  17. Taxrate62

    You are correct on the impact of school boards on our re taxes.

    But Franks is the one calling himself a tax reformer and promising to reduce our taxes.

    So how is Patronage Jack going to reduce our taxes?

    He has no control and almost the same influence over the school boards.

  18. Ask yourself:

    Did Franks opt out of running for the State Legislature because his polling showed he had good chance of losing the seat?

  19. Dear Questioning; Taxrate 62 is me, Tim Dwyer, an attorney that files tax objections in McHenry county, and hopefully elsewhere in the near future.

    It is not surprising that with regard to anyone who “questions” your point of view, you would resort to name-calling, the lowest form of criticism available.

    The fact of the matter is that I live in Kane County and I have no vested interest in McHenry County politics.

    I am just an objective observer.

    With respect to “Live on” I am very familiar with the Prevailing wage law.

    This law has almost no effect upon your real estate tax bill.

    It does affect federal and state funding of construction projects, and therefore has a marginal effect upon your federal income tax.

    A very marginal effect.

    To adhere to the principle that unions and the Prevailing Wage Law is the problem with our State finances simply cannot be justified.

    The math does not add up.

    States like Virginia and California have the same laws, and those states have surpluses in the billions of dollars.

    Those states also have pension requirements similar to Illinois.

    If anyone on here can show me how your County real estate bills are bloated due to the Prevailing Wage Law or “unfunded mandates”, I will buy you a steak dinner.

    The fact of the matter remains that McHenry county has an average tax rate of around 12% because nobody is watching the local store.

    Prior to citizens such as Cliff Leegard and Bob Anderson questioning the Wonder Lake school Board and actually running for office to effectuate change, many residents in Wonder Lake school District paid a tax rate of 14.95%!

    This was for residential property that had no sewer and water service!

    There can be no justification for a rate like this.

    The bloated tax rate, and the levies from which they were derived, were directly attributable to the school (District 36), the Township and the County, in that order.

    With sewer and water, my tax rate in Kane County is less than 10%.

    District 36 levied 1,808,000 for “transportation”, a service which was contracted for and cost $337,000.

    Objectors who filed suit received a refund of about 21%.

    This is nothing short of public theft.

    Again, I am neither a Republican nor a Democrat, but any objective citizen doing the simple math must reach the same conclusion.

    The real estate bills incurred by McHenry County residents is approximately 65% generated by the school districts.

    In McHenry County alone, the school districts, last year had over 700 MILLION in surplus funds.

    Being a School Board Member remains a difficult job, and entails countless hours to understand all of the issues.

    Not surprisingly, Board Members rely upon staff to educate them (no pun intended).

    The problem is that with very little time on our hands while raising families and attending to other aspects in our life, we do not actively involve ourselves in local school board politics.

    That does not change the fact that the school districts are, by far, the largest local tax issue in McHenry county, and elsewhere in this state.

    There is no question that Illinois is in a state of political chaos.

    Likewise, this does affect us locally in many respects. But if anyone in this County is truly concerned by the outrageous taxes in McHenry, any real relief begins with the school districts.

    Donald Trump, Bruce Rauner or your County Board Chairman cannot fix this problem.

    The excessive and scandalous tax rates in this County will only be remedied by local citizens and local politicians challenging the spending habits of the school districts, the townships, the library districts, the fire districts and the County.

    Tim Dwyer

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