County Auditor

A roundup of contested races locally, after yesterday's filing deadline. 

Ballot vacancies can still be filled by established Parties (Democrats, Greens & Republicans) after the Primary.

Petition challenges may still remove some of these candidates from the ballot.

I'll try to link to a district map when available.

If you know if any of these candidates have websites, please post them in comments - I'd like to clean this up and make it the candidate blogroll.

I've tried to list people in the order in which they filed, and therefore the order in which they'll appear on the Primary ballot.

Asterisks indicate incumbents.

Congress - 15th District

• Tim Johnson (R-Urbana)*
• Steve Cox (D-Urbana)

State House

• 104th District

• Terry Baldwin (R-Danville)
• Scott Eisenhauer (R-Danville)

• 105th District

• Dave Tomlinson (R-Champaign)
• Shane Cultra (R-Onarga)*

Countywide

• Auditor
  • Brad Jones (R)
  • Tony Fabri (D)*
• Circuit Clerk
  • Linda Frank (R)*
  • Kim Hooper (D)
• Coroner
  • Duane Northrup (R)*
  • Mark Medlyn (D)
• Recorder
  • Barb Frasca (R)*
  • Danis Pelmore (D)
• State's Attorney
  • Julia Rietz (D)*
  • Alfred Ivy III (D)
  • Janie Miller-Jones (R)

County Board

• District 4 (one full-term seat)
  • Ken Goodchild (R)
  • Steve O'Conner (R)*
• District 6 (one full-term seat)
  • Giraldo Rosales (D)
  • Wayne Williams (D)
  • Eva Jehle (D)
  • Pattsi Petrie (D)
• District 7 (two full-term seats)
  • Janet Anderson (D)*
  • Pius Wiebel (D)*
  • Walter Pituc (G)
  • Kostas Yfantis (G)
• District 8 (one full-term seat)
  • Samuel Jay Smucker (D)
  • Joe Futrelle (G)
• District 9 (one full-term seat)
  • Brendan McGinty (D)*
  • Devan Cowsen (D)

You can find a full list of County candidates here.  A full list of State and Federal candidates is here.  (GOP Presidential Delegate candidates file in about a month.)

I know I've certainly missed something, so correct me in comments.

UPDATE:  To re-emphasize - I have not listed any uncontested races here.  The News-Gazette's filing story is here.

County Auditor Tony Fabri and a County Board member both emailed me Fabri's memo from last week regarding contract nursing at the Champaign County Nursing Home, whcih was a topic on here last week.  I don't know much about the issue, so I'm just going to post it for discussion. 

The memo is here (converted to PDF).

Discuss.

County Board Member Brad Jones has announced that he's running for Auditor:

Brad Jones, a long-time financial advisor and current member of the Champaign County Board’s Finance Committee, will seek to become Champaign County’s elected auditor.
 
Jones’ first run for elected office was for the auditor’s seat in 2004.  Jones was subsequently elected to the county board in 2006, receiving more votes than any other county board member in the county.  “My goal in seeking public office has always been to help the county manage its finances in a more efficient manner” said Jones.  “During my previous campaigns for auditor and county board, people told me over and over that they were fed up with skyrocketing property taxes and that they wanted the county to be more frugal with our tax dollars.”
 
Jones (42) received a Finance degree from the University of Illinois in 1986 and an MBA from Emory University in Atlanta in 1988.  He has since worked within the financial services industry for 18 years. Jones will put his career as a financial advisor on hold in order to concentrate full-time on his campaign for auditor.   Jason Barickman, Chairman of the Champaign County Republican Central Committee, commented “We are fortunate that someone with Brad’s financial experience is willing to bring that expertise to serve the county.”
 
Jones is committed to making the elected auditor more proactive in analyzing spending on county projects.  Jones added “I want to see the County Auditor provide more analysis to help the county board make better spending decisions.”  Greg Knott, veteran county board member from rural St. Joseph agrees saying, “We really need an auditor who has the ability to analyze the effectiveness of the spending programs approved by the board.  The board has recently spent tens of thousands of dollars on technology, energy and nursing home studies.  We need someone with the capability to tell us if these studies are worth the money.  We don’t have anyone who can do that now.”
 
Jones currently resides in northwest Champaign with his wife, Jerilynn, and their two children Aaron (12) and Kaleigh (10).

Jones ran for Auditor against Mike Frerichs in 2004 and was defeated.  Frerichs won a seat in the State Senate in 2006, and Democratic Party Chairman and County Board Member Tony Fabri was appointed to fill the Auditor vacancy in January.

I'm glad that County Auditor Tony Fabri is being proactive about things like this:

Champaign County Auditor Tony Fabri has issued a memorandum to all department heads in which he makes clear the county's Purchasing Policy (Ord. #323) makes no allowance for employee meals. The county's Travel Policy makes an exception to this rule, but only when county employees are traveling on business.

Of course, he's hoping that nobody ever asks him for oversight for the County Nursing Home construction project, or the County Courthouse construction, or the County staff's difficulty in compying with FOIA, or the County's technology plan, or the minority contracting plan.

But I'm glad we're being clear about the lunches.

There's been discussion of this for a few days, but I wanted to post the full email before posting, and I didn't get it until this morning.

In the wake of the firing/resignation/payoff of Champaign County Supervisor of Assessments Curt Deedrich, Champaign County Democratic Party Chair (and County Auditor) Tony Fabri is looking for a permanent replacement, and he is looking for options from outside of Champaign County: 

I'm writing trusted friends to ask your help in finding a candidate to fill an important position here in Champaign County.  Recently, our County Board terminated our County Supervisor of Assessments.  The position will be filled by our County Board, which has a Democratic majority (in theory, at least).  Our County Board Chairman has asked me to send this email.

The previous SoA was the first Democrat ever to hold the position here in Champaign County.  The opposition he faced was largely partisan, although a small number of Dems joined the GOP mob in fighting to have him removed.  County Board leadership is hoping to find someone who was not involved in that controversy to fill the vacancy.  Unfortunately, all of the local candidates (both D and R) were among the group who fought so hard to see the outgoing SoA fired, which is why we're looking outside Champaign County for a candidate with "clean hands."

You can read the whole email here.

A few points:

• The most qualified candidate for this position remains Paula Bates, whom the County Board Democrats passed over to appoint Deedrich in 2004.
• I wonder if Fabri thinks that Deedrich's behavior had anything to do with his dismissal?  If I were the County Board, my first requirement for SoA would be to find someone who can repair the relationships with the other Assessors and taxing districts that Deedrich ruptured so badly, not to blame his removal on a "mob," as if Deedrich bears no responsibility.  (Granted, this email is from Party Chair Fabri and not Board Chair Pius Wiebel - see my third fourth point below...)
• In the wake of GOP County Board members supporting a Democrat for the GOP seat on the Board of Review, it's a shame that the County Board Democrats won't consider Bates simply because she's a Republican.  I appreciate the importance of Party loyalty as much as anyone, but if the local Democrats have no qualified candidates, I see no reason to pass over a very respected, professional person like Bates and start soliciting for outside-the-County candidates.  I was also hoping that the bi-partisanship on the Board of Review appointment would have been a small step towards curing some of the poisonous atmosphere on the County Board.  The SoA appoint could have been another step, but instead will apparently be more political hackery rather than genuine good government.
• This letter is a great example of why it's a terrible idea to have the Chairman of the Democratic Party serve as County Auditor.  Even if Fabri, as Auditor, were willing to provide any oversight over how this appointment process has worked, Fabri is now clearly unable to provide it.  How would he ever be able to objectively evaluate a process in which he was involved, as a Party Chair, in finding candidates?

Over four million dollars worth of mismanagement hasn’t turned many heads at the County.  So it’s unlikely that a few hundred dollars worth of graft is going to change anyone’s mind about Denny Inman.  But here goes.

Recently I learned about a little behind the scenes battle behind Inman and then County Auditor Mike Frerichs in early 2005.  It looks like Frerichs was doing a little more than sitting on his rear in this particular instance and he deserves some credit for standing up to Inman.  Here are the details as I’ve learned them so far

In 2004, Denny Inman attended two conferences for the Public Risk Management Association (PRIMA); one in Ft. Lauderdale and one in Colorado.  I can’t speak to the merits of the conference for his particular job responsibilities.  What is apparent from the documents provided me by our current Auditor, Tony Fabri, is that Inman tried to bill the taxpayers of Champaign County for over a thousand dollars in personal expenses.  He ended up reimbursed for none of his expenses, including those which appear valid.  Here is the packet of information.

The first trip was in June, 2004 to Ft. Lauderdale.  The conference ran from June 14-16, 2004.  Despite the three day length of the conference, Inman attempted to bill the County for six nights of hotel rooms, plus accompanying meals.  He also billed the county for laundry services.  The receipts for his meals include liquor on a couple of occasions.  Two expenditures stand out most.  A $43.99 bill for Sloppy Joes, which is known as an inexpensive bar and eating establishment in the Ft. Lauderdale dining guide.  That bill was rung up at 11:42 P.M. Another receipt was for Rush Street which is listed on line as follows:

Dual sided dance club with 70's disco on one side and more modern progressive stuff on the other, it doubles as a Martini bar with tasty coctails like the Sour Apple at $10.75 a pop. A bit expensive, but good fun.

The receipt unfortunately doesn’t tell us on which side Inman chose to display his moves.

The second trip was to Copper Mountain, Colorado.  The conference ran two days, August 2nd and 3rd.  Inman decided to bill the County for 5 days.  Interesting highlights for this trip include the fact that the extra hotel rooms are in Louisville, Colorado, just outside of Boulder, where I believe Inman went to college.  Inman also charged the County for two bags of ice on Sunday morning, no doubt to keep his laptop from overheating from all the hard work he was putting in for taxpayers.

Inman of course has no defense on charging the county for nights on the town and alcohol.  He tries to defend his extra days by suggesting that he’s meeting with other county officials.  He gives no details about those meetings, and why those county officials would be so much better to meet with than, say, county officials in Joliet.  Of course, one of the extra nights was for a Saturday night in Colorado.  Does he really want us to believe that he met with other County officials on a Sunday?

There is no doubt that county officials can gain valuable knowledge and insight by meeting with officials in other counties.  It generally happens at conferences, but a special trip for such a meeting would not necessarily be wrong.  For example, I am taking a trip to the vacation hot spot of Lake County on some technical issues in preparation of designing a new voter registration system.  Under Mr. Inman’s vague premise, I could travel just about anywhere to meet with local officials on elections. 

Thankfully, for taxpayers, Inman's attempt to stick the county for his vacation expenses was rebuffed.

When Tony Fabri was appointed Auditor, a number of people questioned his qualifications for the position.  Well, I bring a counter to that charge to all you doubters.  I walked into Tony's office today and found him digging into the task of stuffing checks into envelopes for delivery to all the vendors who the County is paying this week.  When Tony was first appointed he was far too humble to mention his nearly two decades long experience stuffing envelopes for Democratic candidates but today we are seeing the fruits of that experience.

Lest you think I'm being critical I have two points.  First, I've done quite a bit of envelope stuffing in my office.  Second, I think Fabri did more work today than his predecessor did in four years.

I wasn't able to confirm whether Tony was going to deliver the checks by hand.  If he's doing that, it could explain his, well, less than consistent presence at his office since he's been appointed.

Board Member Matt Gladney has blogged about the Tony Fabri-as-Auditor appointment.

For any job, you can only hire from the pool of applicants that have come forward. The situation with the Democratic candidates for the auditor's position was no different and, to my knowledge, none of the candidates were CPAs. The Democratic Central Committee put forth who they thought was the best candidate. The board voted for that candidate. It has been the custom (some us the word "tradition") for the board to vote for whomever the nominee is in these cases. I voted for Tony, and think that he will do a good job in the role.

Now, we come to the nitty gritty. I'm curious to know what you all think of the way things are set up. Should the auditor's office be a partisan position? Does that encumber the appointment process, or even the election process? Or are "non-partisan" politics truly feasible in a county where there is definite partisanship? What about the "tradition" of voting for the nominee? Just because something is a tradition, does that make it ok? What should we do to try and generate more candidates coming forward to vie for positions needing to be filled? Would removing partisan labels help to that end?

Fabri and Gladney ran together in November 2006, so finding a replacement for Fabri will mean finding a district colleague for Gladney as well.

Head over to his blog and give him some opinions.  And thank him for blogging about it while you're at it.

The News-Gazette article is here.

Fabri said after the vote that he thought Republicans were already working to tarnish him before the 2008 election. He indicated he will seek a four-year term as auditor then.

As for his attendance, Fabri said that during his six years on the board, his attendance was over 95 percent. He admitted that it slipped quite a bit in 2005 after a leadership struggle put Wysocki in the county board chair's position after she struck an alliance with board Republicans. He also had a death in his family that year, he said.

Democrat Democratic Party Chair Tony Fabri is the new Champaign County Auditor, having won appointment last night on a 19-7 vote.  Five Republicans (Jay, Hunt, Doenitz, Moser & James) and two Democrats (Beckett & Wysocki) voted against his appointment.

I must say that I too wish the Democrat Democratic Party could have recommended a nominee with at least some sort of financial and/or auditing qualifications.  But they didn't.  They nominated their Party Chair instead. 

That said, this is the very definition of a patronage appointment, required to be given to the Party which held the office, and traditionally based on the recommendation of the Party.

Unfortunately, seven County Board members ignored that tradition voted against the Democrat Party's chosen candidate.  I can understand their frustration, as I originally advised voting against him.  But I realized (and was reminded) that the recommendation process exists for a reason, and I changed my position.

However great the disappointment that the County Democrats insisted on appointing someone wholly unqualified, I'm just as disappointed that Republicans didn't respect the traditional process.  I hope that this is the last time that such a recommendation is ignored.  But I fear that it won't be, and vacancy appointments will become much more contentious in the future.  And this vote will be used to justify that contentiousness.

UPDATE:  Someone finally asked me to fix the "Democrat Party" thing without being insulting about it, so I have.  I'll try to be more careful in the future.

It's already being discussed in the Open Thread, but Tony Fabri was the choice of the Democratic Committeemen for the position of County Auditor to replace Mike Frerichs.

1.  Should Republicans vote for him?
2.  Is he a good candidate for election?
3.  Will he do a good job as Auditor?
4.  Does anyone care about 3?
5.  Is there merit to eliminating this office?

Champaign County Democrat Party Chair and District 6 County Board member Tony Fabri has received the endorsement of the Champaign County Democrat Party for the vacant County Auditor's position.

The Champaign County Democratic Central Committee voted 2,777 to 506 to support Fabri, the party chair and county board member, over challenger, Kevin Sandefur.

The numbers are so large because each precinct committee member gets a weighted vote, based on population.

The current auditor, Mike Frerichs, is stepping aside to take his seat in the Illinois General Assembly this month.

Since he's a Democrat, that party gets to put forth a candidate for board approval.

Sandefur, who lives in Royal, has had a long career in not-for-profits and labor organizations. He said he'll be pleased to support Fabri.

Sandefur said he hoped the Republicans, who hold 12 of the 27 votes on the board, will respect the Democratic choice.

I originally argued that County Board Republicans should vote against Fabri as a protest for filling the office with another unqualified partisan, but Mark Shelden and Matt Gladney persuaded me that I was wrong. 

Fabri is the choice of his party, and he deserves the unanimous support of the County Board.  I say that not as an endorsement of Fabri as a candidate for the position, nor as an endorsement of his qualifications.  I, for one, sincerely hoped that the Democrats would nominate someone less partisan and more qualified.  But now that the Democrats have made their selection, Republicans must recognize that, honor the tradition of filling such vacancies by deferring to the respective Parties, hold their noses, and vote for him.

You'll have to hold your nose of course.  But you should vote Yes.  Here are an assortment of reasons why.

First, this has always been the tradition.  The party who holds a seat has the ability to select the replacement through their respective central committees.   It's happened many times (including every Democrat voting for me when I was appointed in April 1997) and Republicans would be ill advised to not do it this time.  The Democrats being the majority party makes it even more critical.  What if I take a precipitous and mortal fall down Mt. Princeton this summer.  Do Republicans really want to put the next County Clerk entirely in the hands of the Demcratic County Board Chairman?  Imagine the havoc they could create.

Second, the talk about qualifications is one appointment too late.  Next to Mike Frerichs, Tony Fabri Looks like alan Greenspan.  In four years in office Frerichs questioned all of two spending decisions;  $600 from the State's Attorney for  a dishwasher and about $890 from the Public Defender.  That was his first couple months in office.  After that he let overspending on the courthouse, the nursing home and a millions of other dollars worth of waste go without comment.  He bragged about telling the board about the dwindling fund balance at the nursing home, but didn't do anything about it.  Fabri could do more in one day than Frerichs accomplished in four years.

Third, the bar for this office has been set so low that a two year old could hurdle it.  When the News-Gazette endorsed Frerichs in 2004 over the much more qualified Brad Jones, their reason was basically, he hasn't messed anything up, so  why change.  Fabri will likely be able to accomplish that as well.  I think Greg Knott's comments on the issue in Kacich's column yesterday pretty much summed it up.  "[H]e doesn't know any more about the auditor's office than the last guy." 

Fourth, Beckett's opinion on this is biased.  He helped raise money for Frerichs and could count on Frerichs not saying a single bad thing about the biggest public works disaster in the history of this county.  It's no surprise that Beckett would want Satterthwaite who will no doubt step in line with Beckett and Rietz in covering up the numerous faults on the nursing home project.

I agree with Republicans who enjoy watching the Democratic infighting.  And there is no reason that Republican votes for Fabri can't be accompanied by comments with justifiable indignation that the Democrats couldn't find a more qualified candidate.  But I really hope that we give him the votes he needs in January.

And beat him soundly in November 2008.

In a few weeks, the Champaign County Board will appoint a Democrat to be the new Champaign County Auditor.  At least two candidates have expressed interest (former Urbana Mayor Tod Satterthwaite and current Board member and Democrat Party Chair Tony Fabri).  Former Board member Nancy Greenwalt is also rumored to a potential candidate.

In yesterday's paper, Steve Beckett said that he, Barb Wysocki and Brenden McGinty would not support Fabri, calling him "inept."  I hope that none of the County Board Republicans would vote for Fabri - I just don't think it's appropriate for a Party Chair to be an oversight position like Auditor.

I don't know how much support Satterthwaite has among the Board's Democrats, but 18 months ago, many of the most active County Democrats were working to defeat him as Urbana Mayor, a campaign which became both nasty and personal.

I can envision a deadlocked vote with neither Fabri nor Satterthwaite getting the required 14 votes necessary for confirmation.  Will one of the factions break towards one of the candidates, or will a compromise candidate (Greenwalt?) emerge and be able to unify the Democrats?

UPDATE:  True Blue and Mark Shelden have persuaded me.  If Fabri is endorsed by the Democrat Central Committee, I agree that he deserves the unanimous support of the County Board, including the Republicans.

Now that the County Chairman has been selected, who will the County Board Democrats name to replace current Champaign County Auditor Mike Frerichs when he ascends to the State Senate in January?

The current scuttlebutt is Tod Satterthwaite. Will Democrats support him for Auditor when less than two years ago so many were campaigning against him for Mayor of Urbana?

I have not heard a peep from anyone about who will be the new Champaign County Auditor after Mike Frerichs enters the State Senate in January.

I suppose much depends on who will be Champaign County Board Chairman (the vacancy will be filled by the Chair) in January.

Let me just toss a name out there without any basis whatsoever:  Patricia Avery.

Any other ideas or gossip?

The News-Gazette has Supervisor of Assessments, Curt Deedrich on the front page today. This story has been brewing for quite some time. There are many township assessors upset with his actions, and local taxing districts are weighing in as well.

I'm sure the News-Gazette will have this in their on line edition later.

UPDATE: Story is here.

Mike Frerichs might be the most insignificant of Champaign County's 800 or so employees. And at the September County Board meeting, a bipartisan majority went a long way to agreeing with that.

One of the Auditor's most important functions is to administer the payroll system. At the September County Board meeting, by a 13-9 vote, County Board members voted to remove the payroll functions from his office and put them in the Administrative Services Department. The obvious question is why.

Two years ago, Champaign County embarked on a plan to upgrade our archaic payroll system. Ironically, this was one of the issues raised by Brad Jones in his race against Frerichs. At the time, Frerichs claimed that there was nothing wrong with the system. I don't think Mike was lying about that, it's just that he's so disengaged from the activities of his office that he probably was just unaware.

So in November of 2004, shortly after the election, county Co-Administrator Deb Busey began the process of bringing in a new payroll system. If you read the minutes from the February 2005 Finance Committee meeting you'll see just how out of touch with this whole process Frerichs was. He complains about being left out, while it is obvious that his staff has been in attendance at the meetings.

Now, as the new system has been implemented, the County Board has seen fit to strip Frerichs of the responsibility for the system. The reason is simple. Frerichs simply can't handle a task of this magnitude. As Auditor, he's been a mere caretaker. Allowing his staff to do the work, but never ever implementing anything that would remotely be termed innovative and certainly nothing that would require effort on his part.

The County Board saw the importance and size of this undertaking and knew that Mike Frerichs couldn't handle it.

To look at the campaign commercials coming from the Frerichs campaign, you might think that Frerichs will be the knight in shining armor to save the state pension system. What Mike doesn't tell you is what he did to the pension system in Champaign County.

When Frerichs took over as County Auditor, the County IMRF funds had a total fund balance of 6.4 million in the positive. Today, after four years of Frerichs being our IMRF agent, the funds are in the hole by 4 million. A ten million dollar free fall.

Why the dramatic plunge? Well, the primary factor is the early retirement incentive offered by the County in 2003. Frerichs proposed this program at the same time that other counties were preparing for increased IMRF costs due to stock market drops in prior years that would show up in 2003 and 2004.

One might wonder why Frerichs would propose a multimillion dollar raid on the County's underfunded pension system. But then you look at April 2004 and see that one of the results of Frerichs ill-timed and underfunded plan was the elevation of Frerichs' campaign manager, Curt Deedrich, to the post of Supervisor of Assessments.

Two developments since the early retirement debacle merit attention. First, the County borrowed $2 million to pay off some of our unfunded liability to the pension system. So when you look at the $4 million shortfall, it really is closer to $6 million.

Second, just this month, the County Board, in a bipartisan move, voted to remove Frerichs as the IMRF agent for the County.

No one involved in County government believes that Mike Frerichs responsibly managed the County's pension system. No one in the 52nd district ought to expect him to manage the state pension system any better.

First, it was me.  Then it was Barb Wysocki.  Then today, I walk into the auditor's office and look up and see our County Auditor looking much more like a candidate for State Senator, with about four Frerichs for State Senator signs in his hands.

Ooops.

Mike Frerichs likes to brag a lot about being the watchdog. As evidence, he points to one item; a News-Gazette article in which he points out that the account balance for the nursing home is running low. That article is from April 2005 and is prominently displayed on the front page of his campaign website (interestingly listed under "Campaign News"). Of course, this was merely a factual observation by Mr. Frerichs, one that had already been made by numerous people prior to him. But it in no way was an analysis. There was no indication from Mr. Frerichs as to why the problem existed and what should be done about it.

Now look at the last year of County Board Finance Committee meetings (linked to below). If you read them you'll note that Mr. Frerichs rarely speaks up to note anything. Each of the meetings had Mr. Frerichs presenting purely perfunctory computer generated reports of "purchases not following the purchasing policy" and "monthly auditor report". Neither of these is more than a perfunctory report. The fact that Mr. Frerichs never commented on them attests to that.

Additional comments from Mr. Frerichs over the last year are limited to just a few items. At the November meeting he recommended the County cast a ballot for Thomas Ross for IMRF trustee. At the September meeting he recommended that his administrative secretary have her job reevaluted. Apparently she was taking on more responsibilities than in the past (perhaps she's had to handle more things than when Ms. Parr was Auditor). At the June meeting he praised the outside auditor and his staff for their work on the County's annual financial report.

That's it. The County's financial condition is spiraling down. Our fund balance after paying for the various issues with the nursing home construction will shortly be under $1 million and will continue to dwindle as the nursing home operates a deficit.
We have an Auditor in the face of all this who has never once come to the County Board with analysis, recommendations, or guidance. The watchdog is not barking, and I can't figure out why.

Here are the meetings:

• June 9, 2005
• August 3, 2005
• September 8, 2005
• October 6, 2005
• October 26, 2005
• November 10, 2005
• November 17, 2005
• January 12, 2006
• February 9, 2006
• March 9, 2006
• April 6, 2006
• April 20, 2006
• May 4, 2006