If elected, Tirio says he will maintain offices of recorder, clerk at same time

If elected as McHenry County Clerk, Joe Tirio plans to simultaneously hold the recorder’s office without a salary.

In recent weeks, there have been rumblings that Tirio asked the McHenry County State’s Attorney last year for an opinion as to whether holding both offices would be legal.

He sent out a press release Wednesday confirming his intentions.

“I recently received a State’s Attorney’s opinion on the matter and it is their belief (as it is mine) that the offices are compatible,” Tirio said in the release.

“It stands to reason, as more than 85 percent of the counties in the state have a combined clerk and recorder. How could they be incompatible?”

Most of the state’s 102 counties have a combined clerk and recorder’s office. State law requires a county to have at least 60,000 people to separate them.

With the advance of scanning and computer storage technology, several of the handful of counties with separate offices have consolidated them as a cost-cutting measure.

Tirio plans to keep both jobs, if elected, and leave the recorder’s $105,000 salary on the table. The clerk earns $109,000 a year.

“If elected, I will work with the county administration to suspend my salary as recorder effective the day that I am sworn in as clerk,” he said. “In this way, the savings related to eliminating the role of Recorder can begin as soon as possible.”

In November 2016, voters elected Tirio, who ran on a platform of eliminating that very office and merging it with the county clerk’s office.

In a binding referendum on the March primary ballot, McHenry County residents voted in favor of eliminating the recorder’s office and folding it into the clerk’s office.

About 79 percent of voters voted yes, and 21 percent of voters voted no.

Voters in four counties since 2011 – Tazewell, McLean, Peoria and Cook – have consolidated their clerk and recorder offices.

If Tirio is elected clerk, he will run his new office and the recorder’s office as two separate departments until the recorder’s role expires in 2020.