WOODSTOCK – McHenry County Board members compromised Friday morning to adopt new rules that try to strike a balance of power between the board and a popularly-elected chairman.
Board members approved the changes after almost three hours of debate, much of it centered around altering proposed changes by the Management Services Committee to adjust for the fact that voters will choose the chairman starting with the 2016 election.
While critics alleged that the committee's proposed changes gave the chairman too much power, they were countered by board members warning that giving the chairman little or no authority would be an affront to voters who decided that the power to choose the chairman should rest with them. Voters last year approved a referendum to elect the chairman themselves, rather than continue to let the 24-member board do so.
Under the most significant change, the chairman will have a voting seat on the seven-member Committee on Committees convened after every November election to decide committee assignments. However, the power to assign people to that selection committee will go to the members of the individual board districts themselves. And in a related change, the power to nominate the board vice-chairman reverts back to the board itself rather than the chairman as Management Services had recommended.
The compromise measure, which dominated much of the almost three-hour meeting, came from Ken Koehler, R-Crystal Lake. Koehler, who served eight years as chairman, made the proposal to bring back the Committee on Committees – the Management Services Committee had recommended scrapping it and giving the chairman the power to appoint members to the committees, with the County Board having the final vote. But after member Michael Walkup, R-Crystal Lake, sought to amend Koehler's original idea of having the vice-chairman select its members, Koehler altered his proposal to allow each of the board's six districts to caucus to nominate their delegate.
“If you have a leader coming in, elected at large, who has no clue as to how these committees work, you’re bringing forth a problem,” Koehler said.
Walkup was among the members who cautioned that giving the appearance of stripping the chairman of any authority would give the appearance that the board was trying to negate the will of the voters, who first rejected a referendum to create a county executive with broad powers and later approved a referendum for a popularly-elected chairman.
“Implicit in that is the idea that [voters] do not want someone with the sweeping powers that the county executive would have, but they wanted somebody with some powers,” Walkup said.
The chairman will be a 25th member who calls meetings and can only vote to break a tie, but has little added authority under state law.
The membership of the County Board’s dozen or so standing committees is a big deal, given that most of county government’s work gets done in them. And perhaps more important politically is who gets the chairmanships to set the agendas for those committees. Critics of internal election of the chairman alleged that the power of incumbency was very strong because the chairman could promise those committee chairmanships in exchange for votes.
Friday’s board vote does not end work on the rules. As a result of the compromise, the Management Services Committee has to develop a mechanism by which individual districts caucus to appoint their delegate to the Committee on Committees.