The Lake County Board’s Rules Committee this week discussed possible changes to who controls the content of member newsletters, whether board members should be allowed to self-administer polls and whether the County Board chair or county administrator gets final say over adding items to a committee agenda in cases of disagreement.
Members of the board’s Democratic caucus, which holds a newly reaffirmed 14-5 supermajority after elections, occasionally faced pushback from a few Republicans over more than four hours of discussion about an array of proposed changes, which are set for a full Lake County Board vote on Friday.
Early on in discussions, District 17 member Michael Danforth, R-Fox River Grove, expressed his general frustration with how many changes to the rules were being proposed, saying he was “taken aback by how much red I saw.”
An early sticking point revolved around how bimonthly county newsletters should be regulated closely and mostly pertain to countywide issues, or be customizable to board members who wish to focus on their constituents or particular issues.
Some members said they wanted to be able to address their constituents about issues that pertain to their districts.
District 9 member Mary Ross Cunningham, D-Waukegan, said she occasionally hears from residents who say that the newsletters aren’t updating them about their own district.
“I get emails back from the newsletter saying, ‘Where is that? I’m in the 9th District, and I would love to see what we do in the 9th District,'” she said.
District 3 member Ann Maine, R-Lincolnshire, said she frequently links to other reliable sources of information in her newsletter updates, including sources like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or to state and federal sites, and said her district’s newsletter gets a “very high click through rate because I know what my residents are interested in.”
“I think each of us should be able to tailor our newsletter to our constituents, because otherwise, it’s a monolith,” she said. “Otherwise, just have one Lake County newsletter that goes out to everybody. These districts are different.”
As the newsletter back-and-forth neared its conclusion, Danforth remarked that he perceived changes this year and after the 2020 election to be a “wholesale redo” of the board’s rules.
“I think (this) is kind of killing a fly with a sledgehammer,” he said.
Perhaps most impactful was a rules specification clearly giving the County Board Chair Sandy Hart, D-Lake Bluff, the definitive say over whether a potential item can be added to one of the board’s standing committees in the case of a disagreement between the chair and the county administrator.
Hart and County Administrator Gary Gibson did not indicate that disagreements over such matters are common, but Hart laid out a case that current rules are unclear as they stand, and Gibson agreed.
“As (members) noted accurately, I defer to the board chair, but it’s not clear in the language,” Gibson said.
Danforth also railed against proposed rules which would forbid board members from issuing “any self-created poll or data-gathering mechanisms for individual districts and use,” something he suggested was a response to a poll he asked constituents to fill out in the fall.
“What are we, (the) ‘1984’ Ministry of Truth? We can’t send out polls to our constituents? I know exactly where this comes from,” Danforth said.
He said he got over 300 responses, and that he thinks it shows he is listening to constituents.
Member Kevin Hunter, R-Ingleside, also said he believed County Board members should be able to poll residents, adding he thought being able to poll some of his residents this year was a good thing.
The Rules Committee, chaired by District 11 member Paul Frank, D-Highland Park, opted to remove the proposed prohibition on outside links in newsletters and modified the proposed ban on polls and surveys to say that they must be drafted by county staff with member input allowed.
The committee also discussed whether changes should be made to the County Board’s chair elections.
With the chair position up for grabs again in 2024, Danforth said he wanted board rules to give board members the opportunity to vote on any competing chair candidates at the same time, with a roll-call vote where members would say the name of the candidate they support instead of voting ‘yes’ or ‘no’ on candidates separately.
When board members reelected Hart as chair last week, members were asked to vote yes or no on her election first, with a vote on Hunter’s long shot candidacy set to follow if she did not win a majority. Each of the board’s present Republicans abstained, and Hart won a comfortable majority of the votes from the board’s 14 Democrats.
Lake County Board newcomer Adam Schlick, R-Wauconda, agreed with Danforth, but the committee opted to keep the chair election rules as they are.
