Daily Herald opinion: Cornered DuPage board deserves answers on clerk’s election-spending needs

Backed into a corner, the DuPage County Board appears poised to give County Clerk Jean Kaczmarek’s office $665,000 of the $2.5 million she claims to need in order to operate safe, accessible elections in November.

Kaczmarek already has said that $665,000 is not enough, thus insulating herself from any blame for the “unprecedented disaster” she predicted will befall the elections. What she hasn’t said is why she needs the full $2.5 million, or why she shouldn’t be blamed for being unable to cover the costs of the election with the 14% increase, $7.47 million, the county board gave her over the amount she spent on the last gubernatorial-election year in 2022.

Without the $2.5 million extra, she says, early voting will have to start later than in the past, offer fewer polling places and employ fewer election judges.

The lame-duck clerk has been at odds with the board for years because she refuses to operate according to its accounting rules and believes she should be able to move funds around at will to cover whatever costs her office faces. On that score alone, it is impossible to understand why she needs more election money. By her own reasoning, shouldn’t she just be able to move it from somewhere else?

Even discounting such a question, County Board Chair Deb Conroy noted in a story this week by our correspondent Alicia Fabbre that Kaczmarek has $2.7 million sitting in her election division budget, including $1.19 million for election judges, $60,000 more than she spent for the spring primary.

Although far from surprising given her behavior throughout the entire debacle of the past few years, Kaczmarek’s reasoning is all the more unnerving due to the fact that she has not cooperated in the least in the development of her budget. She refuses to attend county board meetings and refuses to respond to requests for specific information on why she needs more money. She points out that she told the board last October of her need for $2.5 million more for elections, but she did little to show why she needs the amounts she seeks and county officials respond that she has provided no information according to the county’s normal budgeting procedures.

Thus, the county had to prepare her budget for her, with the 14% elections increase that included a 201% increase in postage costs compared to 2022 and a 15% increase in printing costs.

Conroy said she reached out to the clerk two weeks ago to discuss this year’s budget, but Kaczmarek refused to meet.

“I know we both recognize the value of voter access and election integrity,” Conroy wrote in an Aug. 13 email. “Therefore, if you find yourself in need of finances or other resources to print and mail ballots, or to operate all of the expected polling places in DuPage County, please just ask.”

Kaczmarek has not asked. She has demanded, all the while refusing to explain why she can’t manage with substantially more resources than she had previously or to cooperate with county officers in developing the funding plan for elections or her office as a whole.

Any reasonable observer would consider the county board more than generous to be offering the clerk any money at all under such conditions, let alone $665,000. If she really needs $1.835 million more than that, she ought at minimum be expected to explain, specifically, why.