At the Kane County Board’s regular meeting on Tuesday, current District 9 board member Gary Daugherty announced that he intends to resign from the board before the end of the month.
Daugherty, at the meeting, thanked the board and cited illness as the reason for his departure.
“If I had known that this illness would have been so debilitating, I never would have run for office,” Daugherty said at the meeting. He did not specify the illness. “I’m just not capable of keeping up at all, and I don’t think it’s appropriate for me to hang around and just take up space.”
He was also recognized by the board at Tuesday’s meeting.
“I’ve learned something from each and every one of you,” Daugherty said at the meeting about the board, “and I appreciate all of you.”
Daugherty, in an interview with The Beacon-News on Wednesday, said during his time on the board, there was “a strong appetite to raise taxes,” and that he was “one of the people leading the charge to try and prevent that,” which he felt was successful.
“That’s what our people wanted, and so we … having high integrity, did what the people wanted,” Daugherty said.
He said he is tentatively planning to resign on Dec. 20, and reiterated his reasons for stepping down.
“I have to have my own integrity to deal with, and it’s the right thing to do,” Daugherty said. “I could stay on the board and keep collecting (a) little tiny paycheck and (do) the bare minimum … and it wouldn’t be appropriate. I would not be doing enough for the constituents.”
Daugherty was elected to represent District 9 — which encompasses the northwest corner of Kane County — in 2022, and his term is set to expire in November 2026. Three candidates have filed to run for the seat in 2026, according to the Kane County Clerk’s Office: Republican candidates Jennifer Abbatacola and Jeffrey R. Magnussen and Democratic candidate Marc A. Guttke, all of Hampshire.
Daugherty said on Wednesday that Abbatacola had reached out to him about the seat, and expressed support for her succeeding him in the role.
In the meantime, the first step that the board would have to take to fill Daugherty’s seat until November 2026 is to declare the seat vacant, which has not yet occurred.
Daugherty’s stepping down will be the second vacancy the board has had in recent months, after former District 2 board member Dale Berman died in October at the age of 91. The board declared his seat vacant later that month, with plans to fill the seat by Dec. 1 as outlined in state statute.
The board considered multiple individuals who applied to fill the seat until the November 2026 election, but ultimately failed to approve a candidate, with some board members criticizing the transparency of the selection process.
The board’s most recent appointment, which occurred in January, of Alex Arroyo to the District 7 seat also garnered some criticism regarding the board’s process for filling vacancies at the time.
But with the District 2 seat still unfilled, Daugherty’s impending resignation means that the board could soon have two of its 24 seats left vacant.
Kane County Board Chair Corinne Pierog did not immediately return a request for comment about the board’s next steps.
According to state statute, a vacancy on the board would need to be filled within 60 days of it occurring, appointed by the county board chair with “the advice and consent of” the county board.
Kane County State’s Attorney Jamie Mosser previously indicated, with regards to the District 2 vacancy, that the board could bring up a resolution to appoint a candidate outside of the 60-day timeline and before the election, but that the law doesn’t state what happens if an appointment is made outside of the 60-day timeframe. She has also noted that the board can opt not to appoint someone at all in that situation, in which case the seat would remain vacant until filled via the 2026 election.
mmorrow@chicagotribune.com
