Kane County’s draft budget is set to include across-the-board cuts as compared to last year’s budget, whether the county’s elected offices have cut down their proposed budgets yet or not.
At Tuesday’s Kane County Board meeting, the board took the latest step in its budgeting process for fiscal year 2026, directing the county’s finance director to prepare a draft budget with expenses for all elected offices set at reduced levels from what they were allocated last year, in an attempt to close a looming budget gap.
This comes after the board last month approved a measure recommending that all of the county’s departments and offices cut their requested budgets by roughly 8%, according to past reporting.
This is not the first year the county has faced a budget shortfall in its general fund. But since 2023, the county has been dealing with gaps in its annual budgets by dipping into its cash reserves, according to past reporting. Last year the county balanced its budget with roughly $27 million in reserve funds. But, assuming revenue and spending remain level, continuing to do so would leave the county on track to dip below its required 90-day reserves in 2027.
Kane County Board Chair Corinne Pierog has previously estimated the coming year’s budget gap as being in the range of $25 million to $29 million, according to past reporting.
Now, after the failure of a referendum question in April that sought to close that gap by asking voters to approve a 0.75% county sales tax to pay for public safety expenses, the county board has been grappling with how to balance the budget for the coming year. The proposed expense reductions that will now be factored into the draft budget have been one of the main solutions touted by the board to help close the gap.
Per the figures attached to Tuesday’s county board agenda, several county entities had already found additional revenue or reduced their budgets to be in line with the board’s previous recommendation in advance of Tuesday’s vote.
The county board, for example, reduced its own budget to be in line with the 8% reductions, per the numbers included in Tuesday’s agenda, and the county’s Merit Commission budget was already well below its 2025 budget amount. And both the Treasurer’s and County Clerk’s offices had revenue increases that helped them remain in line with the county board’s recommended figures, though in the case of the County Clerk’s Office its revised budget was still above the amount it is expecting to be allocated by the county board.
This leaves a number of offices — like the Sheriff, Court Services and State’s Attorney — with proposed budgets that remain higher than the amount they are set to be allocated in the draft budget.
The county board’s budgeting process when it comes to allocating funding to elected offices has previously generated backlash from Kane County State’s Attorney Jamie Mosser, who last year said that elected officials must be allowed full control over their budget proposals, according to past reporting. The total budget amount those offices are given for the year, however, is up to the county board.
Tuesday’s vote by the county board essentially locks in the recommended across-the-board reductions as the figures the Kane County Finance Department will use as it drafts the budget.
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Also at Tuesday’s meeting, the board settled another budget question it had been discussing in recent weeks: how to spend money from the Grand Victoria Riverboat Fund.
The Grand Victoria Riverboat Fund provides a portion of the annual net operating income of the Grand Victoria Riverboat in Elgin to the county. The county typically uses those funds for both internal projects within the county and to fund projects by local organizations, and has a subcommittee that allocates the money.
The proposed allocation of those funds for the 2026 budget, however, has generated some discussion among the board and elected officials.
At the Kane County Board Executive Committee meeting last week, board members discussed which projects should and shouldn’t be paid for with riverboat funds.
Board member Chris Kious, who chairs the Riverboat Grant Committee, explained that the committee decided not to dip into its own roughly $4.5 million in reserves and proposed spending roughly $4.9 million on internal and external projects this year. According to figures from the committee, 83% of that funding is being allocated for projects within the county, and 17% is going to outside organizations.
In doing so, the riverboat committee decided to hold the Kane County State’s Attorney’s Office’s riverboat funding to the same amount as last year, which is about $1.1 million less than it had requested for this year. Per the committee’s budget numbers, the State’s Attorney’s Office uses riverboat funding to pay for expenses related to drug prosecution, victim coordinator services, domestic violence prosecution and its Child Advocacy Center.
The riverboat committee did recommend using riverboat money to fund several new projects from the county board, namely its strategic plan, a paid internship program and a planned commemorative garden project.
These allocations garnered criticism last week from Mosser, who said at the Executive Committee meeting that her office had applied for additional riverboat funding to ease pressure on the general fund, the fund that is facing the significant shortfall. She was also critical of the use of riverboat funds for “what appears to be pet projects of the board” over public safety expenses.
A measure to grant the full amount all departments and offices had requested from the riverboat fund failed in the Executive Committee meeting, and the committee ended up narrowly passing the riverboat committee’s original recommendation, which held the State’s Attorney’s Office funding at the same level as last year and funded the county board’s projects.
Then, at Tuesday’s full Kane County Board meeting, the board made several changes to these allocations, voting to not use riverboat funding to pay for the internship program, strategic plan and planned “Sesquicentennial Garden,” which totaled $165,000 in requested funding. Board members then approved allocating that amount, $165,000, to the State’s Attorney’s Office, but did not allocate the office the full amount it had originally requested.
The riverboat funding allocations, with those changes, were approved by the board, meaning the amount that will be spent on internal county projects from that fund are essentially locked in as the budgeting process continues.
The board has not yet finalized what revenue options it will use to close what remains of the county’s budget gap. That is set to be discussed at the county board’s Finance Committee meeting on Oct. 21, according to current committee chair Bill Lenert.
The board has until Dec. 1 to approve the county’s budget for fiscal year 2026, but must put a draft version of the budget on display for the public to see before then.
Lenert said on Wednesday that the plan is for the draft budget to be voted on by the Finance Committee at its Oct. 21 meeting and, if approved by the committee, be put on display after that. From there, the draft budget would need to be approved by the Executive Committee, and then receive final approval from the full Kane County Board.