State's attorney recoups overdue rent from IDES

McHenry County State's Attorney Louis Bianchi has been taking a lot of heat around the county courthouse -- and elsewhere -- for revelations last month that his office spent thousands on meals, snacks and candy since he took office in December 2004.

But the news out of his office hasn't been all bad.

Last week, for example, Bianchi announced that, through his attorneys' efforts, the county finally had collected more than $17,000 owed to it from the state of Illinois since March 2004.

The collection stemmed from a long-running rent dispute between the Illinois Department of Employment Security and McHenry County Job Training, a job training and employment agency.

Bianchi's office joined the fray in 2006 when the state refused to pay $22,443 for rent owed on office space it leased from Job Training in a Woodstock office building between January and March of that year.

The state ultimately relented on that matter after the county began eviction proceedings against it.

Case closed? Not quite. During those brief eviction proceedings, county lawyers learned that 2006 wasn't the first time IDES had skipped rent payments.

Between 2001 and 2004, IDES failed to pay the county $17,624 in rent, but the prior state's attorney's administration never attempted to recoup it.

Bianchi decided to give it a try, suing the state in what's known as the Court of Claims, a special court for litigation brought against the state of Illinois and its agencies.

The county ultimately prevailed and, with the help of State Rep. Mike Tryon (R-Crystal Lake), recently received long-awaited reimbursement from the state.

"It's easy in government to be passive and say 'It's not worth it,' " Bianchi said last week. "But if you treat it like a business, then that's money on the table and money that's worth going after."

A fee for offenders: The saying "Crime doesn't pay" could soon have even more meaning to it for sex offenders choosing to live in McHenry County.

The McHenry County Board's Law and Justice Committee last week passed a measure enacting a new fee on sex offenders.

Under the plan, a sex offender would pay $20 when first registering with the sheriff's office and $10 every year thereafter for however long they are required to register.

The fee, Undersheriff Gene Lowery said, will ease some of the department's costs of running its sex offender registry. Those costs include several thousands of dollars a year issuing quarterly reports on registered sex offenders to local schools, day-care centers and other interested groups.

The new fee would apply to only those living in unincorporated areas, which as of last week was 67 out of about 180 sex offenders registered in McHenry County.

Admittedly, the revenue collected through the fee would be a "drop in the bucket" of what it costs the sheriff's department to maintain its sex offender registry, Lowery said. But he believes there are other benefits beyond just monetary ones.

"Anything that continues to draw our attention to sex offender compliance is a good thing," he said.

The full county board is expected to vote on the fee later this month. If passed, officials believe the county would be able to start collecting before the end of the year.