DuPage election commission to comply with transparency rules

While asserting its autonomy, the DuPage County Election Commission has agreed to abide by whatever transparency and accessibility measures are eventually approved by the county board.

The county board is considering a bevy of initiatives intended to make access to documents and information much easier as well as limiting vendor influence. A preliminary report on the proposed initiatives was released last week.

Election commission Chairman Rick Carney said that although the commission is not bound by the county's ethics ordinance, the group has agreed to follow suit with any new measures implemented by the county.

"They wanted to alert any other agencies that are in the same position that the commission is going to be in sync with these recommendations," said commission spokesman Dan Curry.

County board Chairman Robert Schillerstrom appoints the three members of the election commission. It is one of more than four dozen county agencies whose members are appointed by the county board or Schillerstrom, but don't have to follow the county ethics code, according to an opinion from the DuPage State's Attorney.

The commission is often scrutinized by local government watchdog organizations who applauded the group's stance.

"If they follow through, this will go a long way in restoring public confidence," said Jean Kaczmarek, co-founder of the DuPage chapter of the Illinois Ballot Integrity Project.

Since all the openness proposals are in the early stages, no one is clear what changes will be made by the election commission.

"The end product could be substantially different than what's proposed," said Terry Pastika, executive director of the Citizen Advocacy Center in Elmhurst. "It's great news that an agency that isn't bound by these proposed rules is willing to voluntarily comply with the provisions, though."

The initiatives were cobbled together during about six weeks of work by the county board's transparency committee head by board member Jeff Redick. He hopes the election commission's decision will influence other agencies to follow suit.

"It's big and it's great news," Redick said. "It's clearly what we wanted, and anything under our appointment power should be under the same ethics rules."

Redick also suggested the election commission grant the county's ethics commission oversight instead of keeping their own ethics officer.

"We're asking these groups to come in and voluntarily fall under the governance of our ethics ordinance and ethics commission, and, quite honestly, that's the legitimate way to proceed with these types of issues," he said.

After receiving the preliminary report last week, Schillerstrom said the county's appointed boards should fall under all transparency rules the county board initiates and he would push for legislation that mandates compliance from those groups if they don't voluntarily adopt them.