District 4 GOP candidates question DuPage County Board budget

Neither Republican candidate seeking the DuPage County Board District 4 seat has much faith in the county's current budget.

Both remain skeptical about forecasts calling for a 4 percent growth in sales tax revenue this year. They differ on how they'd go about plugging any budget holes created by sales tax shortfalls.

Challenger Brad Webb is hoping to secure his party's nomination over incumbent JR McBride at the Feb. 2 primary. By his own admission, Webb isn't running for a seat on the board because he thinks McBride did anything wrong in his only term.

"What I am is a businessman who makes sound business decisions," Webb said. "What happens if our revenues are off 10 to 15 percent? Where do we go? The problem is there's not a contingency plan."

McBride agrees with Webb's assessment, arguing he's been one of several board members harping on the county's finance officials to be more conservative in the budgeting process where revenues are concerned. McBride said he likely wouldn't have voted for the budget in November if medical issues hadn't sidelined him the day of the vote. He would have been the only board member to vote against the budget had he been there.

"It's the same thing they called for last year and it didn't happen," McBride said. "We argued against it then and I do agree there's got to be an alternative. There's no actual plan other than to shift some money around. In two years, we could be back to a doomsday budget scenario."

McBride took aim at outgoing county board Chairman Bob Schillerstrom and Chief Financial Officer Fred Backfield for pushing the budget with sales tax revenue growth.

"They have not been on the dot before," he said.

Webb doesn't believe the county has seen the worst of the economy, saying the commercial real estate market hasn't "dropped yet." He believes the county should be looking at ways to economize its operations now, rather than when the need arises.

"The overlap of services is a great place to start," he said. "We need to review every program and take advantage of attrition down the road."

McBride said it's a great myth that the county board can just snap its fingers and reduce redundancies.

"The big problem is that these state mandates we have for the departments require many of these positions," he said. "A lot of positions we can't touch because of state mandates."

McBride suggested cutting back sheriff's office patrol positions and using the funds to pay municipalities to patrol unincorporated areas and act as first responders, which several do already.

Webb suggested reviewing and analyzing county programs for possible cuts.

"We can't be everything to everyone and maybe we should partner with private institutions," he said. "Human services is one area for sure where there are opportunities to partner with some private entities and we can use funds if they can provide services in a better fashion."

District 4 covers all or parts of Wheaton, Glen Ellyn, Glendale Heights, Lombard, Winfield and Carol Stream.

Whichever Republican candidate wins the primary will likely face Democrat Tom Wendorf in November. Wendorf is expected to win his party's nomination since his opponent dropped out of the race. However, it wasn't done before ballots were printed, so the opponent's name also appears on the ballot.