With little debate and even less fury, DuPage County Board members Tuesday approved the appointment of insider Donald Zeilenga as the county’s first-ever full-time administrator.
The vote was another in a nearly unbroken string of victories for County Board Chairman Gayle Franzen since his election in December 1994.
Zeilenga, 51, head of DuPage County’s Transportation and Data Processing Departments for the past 12 years, takes over formally next week as the $121,052-a-year administrator with responsibility for coordinating the day-to-day operations of county government.
Some board members had grumbled about the proposed job description or the choice of Zeilenga since Franzen began to push on the issue in recent months, but there were none of the histrionics that accompanied past efforts to fill the position.
On Tuesday, board members made some changes in the language of a revised ordinance that spells out the duties of the administrator and beat back other attempts at fine-tuning by votes of 19-3 and 20-3.
The appointment of Zeilenga was approved on what was essentially a voice vote.
The position was created by the board in October 1992–partly to undermine attempts by then-Chairman Aldo Botti, a political maverick, to wrest control of county government.
But efforts to fill the job ended in controversy in 1993 when the top choice of a special board committee, which had hired a Los Angeles-based executive recruiting firm to conduct a nationwide search, turned out to be an outsider and a registered Democrat from New York who was rejected in a 14-10 vote of the board in the heavily Republican county.
Zeilenga will report to Franzen and the 24-member board.
The revised job description approved by the board also will require that Zeilenga work as administrator without the protection of a contract. His only parachute is a provision for six months of severance pay.
Zeilenga will be prohibited from holding political office or participating in political fundraising activities during working hours or on his own time.
There had been concern about new language that will give Zeilenga the authority to fire, transfer or discipline county department heads who previously had answered only to board committees. During a discussion Monday at a meeting of the Finance Committee, board member Barbara Purcell (R-Downers Grove) voiced an uneasiness that board members were giving up some of their authority.
But the concerns appeared to evaporate after board members settled on language giving disciplined department heads the right to appeal for redress to the board.
Franzen had maintained that the appointment of an administrator will not alter the board’s committee structure.
Also Tuesday, board members:
– Authorized funding for an innovative program intended to offer jobs, training and mentoring to about 75 youths who otherwise might become involved in juvenile crimes. The county will allocate $110,000 for the program this year, most of which will be used to subsidize the wages of youths hired by private businesses. The program also will use youth mentors as role models.
– Approved spending up to $232,000 to purchase lap-top computers for County Board members and provide them access to e-mail and the Internet.
– Approved revised road-building plans for Stearns Road near Bartlett and for Madison Street near Hinsdale to reflect compromises with homeowners groups and municipalities that had opposed the initial proposals to widen the roads.
