Daily Herald opinion: A plea for mature judgment: Court must act promptly to break DuPage standoff over unpaid bills

DuPage County Clerk Jean Kaczmarek may be the root cause behind hundreds of creditors waiting for more the $1.2 million in payments they are due, but the experience of one of those creditors this month emphasizes the compounding role of two other contributors — the DuPage County Board and the county court system.

Last week, Brenda Baird-Watterson appeared before the DuPage County Board to complain that it took months of waiting and a special appeal to the county board president before she received $200,000 her company Truly Engaging was owed for election-related printing and mailing services.

“Please pay your bills,” Baird-Watterson begged, and not for the first time.

The issue is not quite that simple. But it is not excessively complicated, either.

For two years or more, the county board and Kaczmarek have been at odds because the clerk refuses to abide by county policies related to bidding and accounting practices. The county board, auditor and state’s attorney say that sound accounting practices and state law require that department heads submitting invoices to be paid must include the line-item account that is to be charged. The bill cannot be paid if the account does not have sufficient funds, they argue, so in such cases, the clerk must provide documentation to show that adequate funds have been transferred from another account.

Kaczmarek scoffs at that reasoning. She says that as long as her overall budget has adequate funds to pay a bill she has approved, the county should pay it, regardless of what account is involved.

With the two parties at loggerheads, the county auditor refuses to authorize payment of invoices from the clerk’s office when funds in an account cannot support them, and a county judge has had to intervene three times to order that certain bills be paid.

Did we mention that this has been going on for two years?

The county filed suit last September in order to get some resolution. Nine and a half months later, they’re no closer to that than they were at the start. The bills have soared to that $1.2 million and counting, and the clerk and county election officials are trading “I know you are but what am I” playground political insults.

Last week, the county petitioned the court for a summary judgment without a trial. Even that action, if approved, won’t break the logjam soon. Kaczmarek’s office has until mid July to respond, and the first hearing won’t take place until Aug. 19.

Thus, hundreds of businesses large and small that, in good faith, entered into agreements to provide goods or services to the county find themselves pushed to the curb, able to get the same good faith from the county only by applying strategic public or political pressure.

Observers may quibble over who has the stronger argument. We tend to side with the county board, the statutes we’ve read, the financial officers and the attorneys who believe the county is legally prohibited from paying bills the way Kaczmarek wants them paid. But we, like Kaczmarek, are not attorneys, so we must satisfy ourselves with waiting for the creaky wheels of justice to break through the petty political detritus.

Of course, either Kaczmarek or the county board could help matters by shrugging and saying, “OK, I’ll provide the accounts” or “OK, we’ll pay the bills” while we await the court’s ruling, but that sort of adult behavior seems too much to hope for — and, to be fair, if county officials are correct that they would be breaking the law to pay the bills, they face a difficult quandary.

The whole mess is painful and pathetic to have to watch. But for all those creditors, it takes on an added immediacy. On their behalf, if not that of anyone who cares about good government, we plead with the court to waste not a moment in providing the mature judgment that is desperately needed here.