Our Minds are on Our Money And Our Money is on Our Minds.

A referendum on the March 20, 2012 ballot will allow the voters to decide if the office of the Recorder shall be eliminated and the duties of that office continue to be performed by the Clerk.

The Recorder’s records are the official records of property ownership.  We have to have a Recorder; otherwise no one could own real estate here. State law allows the County Clerk to act as the Recorder as long as the county population is less than 60,000. We are nearly twice that size, so the offices should have been separated years ago.  But the county board has allowed the Clerk to continue as the Recorder and continue to collect the salary for both offices.

But, the Clerk is obviously overwhelmed with running both offices.  In 2008, the Clerk acting as the Recorder put the social security numbers of THOUSANDS of Kendall County citizens on a free public access website. She admitted a year later, in a 2009 interview, that her website put people at risk for identity theft but she did not take it down.  She left the information on line and instructed her staff to start removing the social security numbers in their spare time.  She said in that same 2009 interview that it would take until 2015 to get all the social security numbers removed from the website.  You can read the interview here.

Despite the Clerk’s recent statement to the County Board that she has removed all social security numbers as far back as documents recorded in 1988, I found hundreds still remained on the website, some on documents recorded as recently as 2002.  The Clerk finally took the documents down just a few weeks ago in response to the publicity I brought to this issue.  But the damage has been done.  Social security numbers don’t change and because the Clerk’s website had no security or tracking, it is impossible to know how many people’s social security numbers have fallen into the hands of identity thieves. My wife’s social security number is one of those numbers.

It is obvious that we need a separate Recorder in charge of those records.  I’ve talked to a lot of people and they all agree that it was wrong for the Clerk to deliberately compromise the identities of thousands of Kendall County citizens. 

But, the biggest concern they have when I ask them to vote NO on the referendum (which will take the Recorder’s job away from the Clerk) is….what will it cost? Will my taxes have to be raised? The answer is simple, NO.

Taxes will NOT have to be raised.

The Recorder’s office space, staff and equipment already exist so no new taxes will be required for that.  Even though the Clerk is currently in charge of both offices, the Clerk and Recorder’s offices have been physically split for decades.  The offices aren’t even located on the same floor.

A couple other things you may not know - the Recorder's office is self sustaining!  Fees set by state law and local ordinance are collected on every document that is recorded.  By law, some of those fees can ONLY be used for the operations of the Recorder's office. 

A list of the fees that are collected in Kendall County for the recording of documents can be found by clicking on this sentence.  

This link contains the statutory fees and uses pursuant to the recordation of a document. 

As for the salary, the county board set the salary for running both the Clerk and the Recorder’s office at $85,321 (2011).  That salary is for BOTH offices.  If the Clerk is no longer doing the Recorder’s job, the Clerk should not continue to collect the entire salary.

$85,000 per year is plenty to cover both offices and portion of that Clerk & Recorder’s salary does belong to the Recorder.  I will do the job for $30,000, which would leave  about $55,000 for the Clerk. And, the Clerk would still make about the same as another elected official, the Kendall County Coroner.

The reality is, Kendall County is in great financial shape.  As a matter of fact Kendall County has a surplus of $47,000,000! Let me be clear, I do not believe that just because we have a 8 figure surplus we should spend it. But insiders crying poor is simply a scare tactic to protect the status quo! Some people have said to me that the county should consider some sort of abatement for this over-taxation. 

On March 20, 2012, the voters will pass judgment on the Clerk.  Should the Clerk be allowed to continue as the Recorder? I believe the answer is clear. 

NO!  Vote NO on the Recorder Referendum and eliminate the Status Quo!

I am holding four town halls to discuss this important Referendum:

• February 15 from 7-8 pm at Timber Creek (Best Western) in Sandwich (for Plano are residents)
• February 16 from 7-8 pm at Sunfield Restaurant in Yorkville
• February 22 from 7-8 pm at Newark Fire Station
• February 23 from 7-8 pm at the Oswego Legion

Bring your tough questions and get no-nonsense answers!

www.jerrybannister.com

P.S.  You get an A if you took the time to read all those statutes!