The Numerological Hotline forecast is unequivocal this week: the auspicious number is 300,000. So while searching for Internet lottery tickets, your LakeCountyEye noticed a related news item in the Northwest Herald. State Rep Jack Franks filed a Bill that ...would require counties with more than 300,000 residents to directly elect the county board chairman. McHenry County has 308,760 residents, according to the 2010 U.S. Census. If approved, the law essentially would apply only to McHenry and Lake counties, because Cook and the remaining collar counties – the only other ones with more than 300,000 people – already make the chairmanship popularly elected. Franks said his sole motive was to empower citizens, and is not aimed at longtime McHenry County Board Chairman Ken Koehler, R-Crystal Lake.The Northwest Herald doesn't like the idea of making voters directly elect their County Board Chair. However they do like the idea of making the voters pass a referendum that will make them directly elect their County Board Chair:
Bill aimed at allowing voters to elect County Board chairman
While we favor having McHenry County voters directly elect their County Board chairman – we’ve taken this position in the past – we’re not in favor of state government mandating it from Springfield. County voters should decide themselves, via referendum, if they prefer to elect their board chairman rather than having County Board members do it themselves.Conspicuously absent from online the discussion is the Northwest Herald's arch nemesis: the McHenryCountyBlog. To date, there has been nary the peep from the public sector pensioners at the McHenryCountyBlog about this vital issue of public policy.
Our view: Allow voters to decide on board leader
Typically when there is a story about empowering citizens and sticking it to the politicians; and when a story is about Jack Franks; then the McHenryCountyBlog is all over it. Like half-baked beans are over, well, franks.
It is a well known sociological fact: as goes the McHenryCountyBlog, so goes the nation. Their silence over this substantive issue is deafening. Lake County wants to know who will be choosing its next County Board Chair.
3 comments:
I have now weighed in on McHenry County Blog.
Perhaps you have not noticed that countywide elected chairmen/women have a great deal of power.
I favor decentralization of power, not its concentration.
Gee Cal, you weighed in with nothing but slurs about Franks. But in fact, the real heart of the republican Party in Northern Illinois, DuPage County, has an elected county board chair, and it seems to be working fine. And this decentralized power thing is utter nonsense. Your county and Lake County are controlled by the bare majority of the board as opposed to the majority of the elected voters. Get a clue, Cal. The at-large elected board presiding officer would have no more power than the current officers elected by mere handfuls. This way the leadership has to account to the people. That's centralized power? Earth to Cal!!!
hi Cal,
I also have a preference for Democracy over other forms of government.
-BB-
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