Will County Clerk Staley Ferry steps down Thursday, chief of staff to take charge

Lauren Staley Ferry leaves the Will County Clerk’s Office on Thursday, apparently putting control of the office into the hands of her chief deputy.

Chief of Staff Charles Pelkie is poised to become interim county clerk at least until September, when the county executive plans to recommend an appointment.

Staley Ferry is leaving to take a job as city clerk of Joliet, a move that was announced July 31.

“If there’s nobody put forward by the county executive tomorrow, my duties transfer to my chief deputy, who is Chuck Pelkie,” Staley Ferry said Wednesday.

The County Board will hold its regular monthly meeting Thursday, but there is nothing on the agenda for an appointment to the interim county clerk position.

Will County Executive Jennifer Bertino-Tarrant plans to make an appointment before the Sept. 19 meeting of the County Board, her spokesman Michael Theodore said. That appointment then would go to the County Board for approval.

Theodore said state statute provides for the chief deputy to take over the duties of county clerk when a vacancy occurs.

Staley Ferry is leaving in the middle of a four-year term. The county clerk’s position will be on the ballot in November for voters to select someone to fill the remaining two years of the term.

Staley Ferry said Pelkie is capable of running the office and overseeing the November election. Applications for mail-in ballots for the Nov. 5 election are now available.

“He’s my right hand,” she said. “He’s with me all the time. We share responsibilities. He works in and out with the election process.”

Pelkie has been Staley Ferry’s chief of staff since she was first elected in 2018.

“There’s no one more well versed to do the job than he is,” Staley Ferry said.

Before joining the county clerk’s office, Pelkie was the public information officer for Will County State’s Attorney James Glasgow. He previously was a reporter for the Herald-News.

Staley Ferry is leaving an elected position to one in which she is an appointed employee.

She will run a smaller office with a handful of employees, compared with a staff of 35 in the county clerk’s office, but she will get a $46,000 salary increase.

Staley Ferry is scheduled to start in Joliet on Aug. 21.

Joliet will pay her a salary of $139,510. The county clerk and most other countywide elected officials are paid a salary of $93,116.

Pay for elected county officials has not been increased in 16 years.

The County Board considered a pay increase earlier this year, but an apparent agreement fell apart in June when Democrats and Republicans accused each other of trying to change the deal just before it came up for a vote.