Lauzen’s ideas lost in the shuffle

Last week Chris Lauzen held a news conference to discuss his concern for the office of the Kane County Board Chairman being able to raise more than a $1.2 million to fund a political campaign.

Many of these contributions have links to current county vendors, appointees and contracts.

The county board is debating a new ethics ordinance and its review is up this month.

After handing out some examples of his concerns, leaders who have endorsed his opponent and serve as township chairmen in the Kane County Republican Party began a letter-writing campaign that rivaled a Blitzkrieg type assault.

Karen McConnaughay began by calling Lauzen’s appeal for reform and using her campaign records “cowardly,” accusing him of “drive by” campaign attacks.

Her county board attorney brought Lauzen into a party meeting and confronted him.

Letters from Kevin Burns and McConnaughay supporters within the inner circle of the Kane GOP followed suit.

But here is the rest of the story — the one they had not investigated before their criticism.

In July of 2010 Pat Brady, Illinois’ GOP chairman, spoke out. He hosted a news conference calling out a concern of pay-to-play by Pat Quinn. He called the pay-to-play “despicable,” proclaiming that although he never took his concerns to a legal official it was appropriate because “he was doing his job by stating what was going on in government.”

For more information see abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=news/politics&id=7578351

So the pattern and terminology had been done before, in Illinois and throughout reform history. He was duplicating the process acceptable to Kevin Burns’ campaign chairman.

Unfortunately for Lauzen, the matters at hand — addressing a freeze of the county tax levy, campaign limits and disclosure, a computer link to a mortgage relief program for Kane County taxpayers (www.lauzenkanecountymortgagerelief.com) — never got the attention it may have deserved.

Karen Phillips

Geneva