Honeymoon last about 12 hours for re-elected sheriff

It was a short honeymoon for newly re-elected Kane County Sheriff Pat Perez. A kick in the wallet greeted Perez the morning after his re-election as the county board's Executive Committee rejected an end-of-the-year supplemental budget request. The request specifically asks for $635,000 to pay contractually-obligated salaries owed to jail employees.

Five members of the committee voted “no” on the request. With committee member Robert McConnaughay absent, that was enough to kill the request, at least for a few days. County Board Chairman Karen McConnaughay guessed the vote was more symbolic than substantive. With a contract in place, the county has no obvious legal route to not paying the salaries.

Committee member Cathy Hurlbut said she voted against Perez' request because there's no excuse she can see for Perez not handling the salaries within the budget the county board set for him.

“I still have some concerns. With all the lead time the sheriff had in order to bring his budget more in line ... I really think he needs to keep within budget,” Hurlbut said.

After the meeting, McConnaughay said she's not quite sure how to handle the committee's rejection of the request. She said she needs to investigate why the additional money is needed. That said, McConnaughay indicated she believe the committee was trying to send Perez a message for his new term.

“There was some underlying unresolved issues with the sheriff,” McConnaughay said. “No matter what we've done, he never quite deals with the issues in a way that truly addresses the challenges that we're facing. He needs to help us understand where are we going to create some efficiencies. This idea that we need more patrol because we've got more people to take care of, that just isn't happening.”

Perez' request has nothing to do with salaries for patrol officers. Perez said more than half the request will be taken care of with federal grant money his office received. Only about $259,000 is needed from the county's contingency fund. Perez explained the cost overrun stems from miscalculations in the arbitration over raises for jail employees the county recently lost.

“Other than that, there is nothing left to explain,” Perez said. “As far as patrol staff, we've scraped by as best we can. We're working with much fewer people than we're authorized to have, and we're getting killed on overtime because of it. So what is symbolic about saying ‘no' to this? I don't understand the logic.”

McConnaughay said she'll attempt to figure out some solution to the problem in time for the full county board meeting next week.