Aurora considers past, future of separate election commission

The future of the Aurora Election Commission may be in jeopardy, even as it prepares to oversee its portion of Tuesday’s primary.

Critics say the 78-year-old independent election body is becoming increasingly costly to operate and may be an unnecessary unit of government. In short, they say, its time may have passed.

“The Aurora Election Commission was (created) in a day when you would have to go to the county seat to vote, which would have been arduous for a lot of people,” said Carie Anne Ergo, chief management officer in Aurora Mayor Tom Weisner’s office.

But now, she said, “the mayor thinks there’s a better and cheaper alternative to providing election services.”

Finding that alternative would involve asking voters via referendum whether the commission should be disbanded. But exactly when such a question may appear on a ballot is unclear.

The state statute that allows cities to form election commissions makes it difficult to eliminate them. Aurora Election Commission attorney Pat Bond said anyone who wants to do away with the panel will face an extremely difficult task.

A history of voting

The Aurora Election Commission was created by referendum in 1934. It’s one of only a handful of municipal election commissions in Illinois; others are in Bloomington, Chicago, Danville, East St. Louis, Galesburg, Peoria and Rockford.

When the commission began running elections, “it was the first time voters had been registered anywhere in Kane County,” according to news articles in the archives of the Aurora Historical Society.

“Municipal election commissions were created in general to encourage voting and to stop corrupted activities,” said Michael McCoy, who was appointed to the commission’s board in 2009.

The group was set up to be governed by a three-member board appointed by the chief judge of the 16th Judicial Circuit. The board has to include at least one Republican and one Democrat.

Executive Director Linda Fechner, the ninth top staffer to run the commission, said its role has remained consistent since it was formed.

“We still have a bipartisan board, we still answer to the chief judge, and we’re here strictly for the voters of Aurora,” Fechner said.

Cost of autonomy

City officials and aldermen who want to disband the commission say they’re concerned about how much it costs to operate.

The city’s share of the cost was $345,903 in 2010 and $367,560 in 2011, Assistant Chief of Staff Rick Guzman said. This year, that amount is expected to rise to $529,041.

The contributions cover commission operating costs, which the city is obligated to pay, while Kane County funds the salary and benefits of the executive director, Bond said.

Neither the city nor the county can approve or deny the commission’s expenses. That responsibility lies with Chief Judge Robert Spence of the 16th Judicial Circuit. Once the chief judge approves the commission’s expenditures, they are listed in city budget documents.

“The city has no control or recourse if they (commissioners) spend over their budget. We have no say in their budget,” Ergo said.

That’s the way it should be, Bond said. If the city council’s 12 elected aldermen “control the purse strings” of the election commission, city politicians could potentially affect the fairness of elections by slashing funding, he said.

While the city’s costs to fund the election commission have increased, the panel’s overall budget has decreased from $1.6 million in 2010 to $842,560 in 2011, according to Spence’s office. This year, the budget is expected to rise, but remain under the 2010 amount and come in at $974,041.

Is it necessary?

In the minds of some in Aurora — even election commission board member McCoy — the question remains whether an organization separate from city and county government is necessary to run elections in Illinois’ second-largest city.

“With the way elections are changing, I think some of those things make it less needed than it was in the 1930s,” McCoy said.

Transferring election responsibility to Kane, Kendall and Will — three of the four counties over which Aurora is spread — counties would fix inequalities in whose taxes support the Aurora Election Commission and who receives its services, said Alderman Lynda Elmore, who since July has been pushing to disband the commission.

All Aurora homeowners contribute to the commission’s funding through taxes they pay the city, but DuPage County residents don’t receive its services; they register and vote through the DuPage Election Commission, the state’s only countywide election body. That’s because countywide election commissions supersede municipal commissions, Fechner said.

Homeowners in portions of Aurora in Kendall and Will counties pay once for the election commission through city taxes. But because municipal commissions supersede county clerks, they also are being taxed for services they don’t receive from their respective counties.

Ergo said Aurora homeowners in Kane County effectively are taxed twice for election commission services — once through property taxes that go to the city, and again through taxes they pay to the county.

Counties may be able to handle elections cheaper in the long run, after the initial costs of coordinating systems are factored in, McCoy said.

But the prediction of savings presumes the Aurora Election Commission is providing redundant services, which Bond said is not the case.

“The work has to be done,” Bond said. “Whether it’s done with the autonomy and expertise of the election commission or whether it’s done by someone else, those tasks will still have to be performed.”

Election commission board member Lillian Perry said the organization has another vital function — to ensure the Voting Rights Act is followed and minorities have equal opportunities to cast ballots.

The city’s black community has “no qualms with the Aurora Election Commission,” she said, adding the level of service wouldn’t be the same from a county as it is from the city commission.

“Losing it would be a catastrophe to the population of this city,” Perry said.

A future vote?

To eliminate the election commission, a petition would need 1,000 signatures in favor of putting a referendum question on the ballot. To have the question included in the Nov. 6 general election, the signatures must be filed by Aug. 6.

By statute, the question would have to ask “shall the city election law be rejected?”

A 1986 referendum asking that same question was rejected, with about 40 percent of voters indicating they wanted the election commission to be disbanded, according to archived articles.

Bond said the 1,000 signatures and the tricky wording are required “by design to make it very difficult for someone to just randomly disband an election commission.”

McCoy said he thinks the commission’s future should be in the hands of voters.

“Our goal is to keep costs down, of course, and to run fair elections,” McCoy said. “There’s pluses and minuses to it for the city of Aurora and (voters) can decide on their own.”