Bowing to the political wind, County Board Chairman Warren Kammerer (R-St. Charles) has given up his stated intention to have a newly hired finance director in place before he leaves office in December.
Kammerer had insisted during a board committee meeting last week that the subject of bringing a director on board in time for the 1997 budget process would be on Tuesday’s County Board agenda, but he later withdrew the motion.
“It has become abundantly clear that the issue has become a political football, and I am very much afraid that the fundamental issue will become lost in all the posturing,” Kammerer said in a statement.
As chairman, Kammerer was instrumental in hiring Kane’s first finance director in 1992. But Tom Walter often was at odds with county officials and presided over an increasingly controversial department whose budget nearly quadrupled to about $500,000 before he resigned under pressure this year.
Before Walter was hired, financial figures for all county departments were crunched by the county auditor, an approach that Auditor William Keck wants to see returned.
But board member Mike McCoy, an Aurora Republican who is running unopposed for the board chairmanship in the November election, has said he favors some separation of functions. However, he said he wants to study the Finance Department’s past shortcomings before embarking on a new regime.
Kammerer said that the budget process will continue with the current finance staff and that no additional interviews for the director’s post will be conducted during the remainder of his term.