Longtime Arlington Heights village clerk set to retire next month

After responding to thousands of Freedom of Information Act requests and recording minutes at hundreds of public meetings, Arlington Heights Village Clerk Becky Hume is set to retire next month.

The longtime Arlington Heights resident has spent 14 years as the municipality’s records management officer and local elections official. She’ll call roll for the final time at the village board meeting July 7, and staff the clerk’s office window on the first floor of village hall for the last time July 18.

Hume’s successor will be Maggie Mattio, who is currently an administrative assistant in the finance department.

Hume is overseer of Arlington Heights’ records request system — a massive operation that involves nearly every department at village hall and ensures public access to documents. She estimates the FOIA process encompasses about two-thirds of the job these days, especially with the proliferation of digital records about everything from email communications to police body camera video.

“It used to be people would write a memo and attach it to a letter,” Hume said. “But now with the advent of email, there’s so much back and forth and interchange that way, there’s so many more records than there used to be.”

The village typically receives as many as 200 records requests each month, though topped out at 250 last month.

“It’s a great way for the public to get information, and it’s being well used,” she said.

Hume has championed transparency since taking the helm of the clerk’s office. The 1983 Arlington High School graduate — part of the second to last class before the school’s closure — went on to major in journalism at Indiana University.

It’s also no wonder she’s a big Hoosiers fan; Hume was a senior in 1987 when the men’s basketball team won the NCAA tournament.

“It was fun being there when that was going on,” she said. “It was a special time.”

Hume had a business career in merchandising and moved around the country with her husband when he was in the Navy, but said she had to reinvent herself when they returned to Arlington Heights in 2000. She worked at Friendship Village in Schaumburg to develop curriculum for lifelong learning programs, then got a job as volunteer coordinator for the Arlington Heights Senior Center.

When then-Village Clerk Edwina Corso was retiring after 35 years with the village in 2011, Hume applied for the job and was chosen by then-Village Manager Bill Dixon. The clerk had been an elected position in Arlington Heights until a 1974 referendum.

Hume said her favorite part of the job has been handling election duties, including preparing and accepting candidates’ nominating petitions before ballots are certified with Cook County.

“When local election time comes around, that’s a busy time,” Hume said. “That’s when I feel like I’m the most helpful … to the candidates in navigating that path.”

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