Kane Co. ethics overhaul won't come easy

A Kane County Board committee meeting tasked with generating a list of ethics reform topics to research Thursday quickly broke into both subtle and overt finger-pointing.

County board member Jim Mitchell introduced an ethics reform proposal modeled after changes DuPage County recently approved to its own ethics ordinance. In introducing the nuances Thursday, Mitchell told members of the Human Services Committee he voted against the ethics laws the county currently follows.

"It didn't go far enough," said Mitchell, of North Aurora. "It was a cursory, passive, let's get it done (law). We never talked about some of the key points people are talking about today."

Board member John Fahy, of West Dundee, then asked how many violations county board members have been cited for under the current ordinance. The line of questioning seemed to be an effort at finding the flaws in the current ethics laws and the reasons to support any changes. But Fahy then directed a statement at Mitchell that touched off some heated discussion.

"If we're here on a committee because there's one (board) member who thinks there's been some unethical activity and wants to reinvent the wheel, I don't think that's what we, as a county board, are here to do," Fahy said.

Fahy also said any discussions about changes must include a grandfather clause freeing board members from citations for old actions once new rules are in place.

Mitchell responded that, to his knowledge, there have been no infractions to the current rules.

Mitchell said the changes he's proposing are based on discussions he's had with as many as 11 other board members concerned with some of the behavior of their fellow elected officials.

"This is about what type of behavior do you want to condone for the county board and the county board chairman," Mitchell said. "This isn't geared toward getting somebody. I believe there's a small portion of the board that's involved in the activity that we're trying to ban. There's no way in hell they want (the reforms)."

Committee Chairman Mark Davoust, of St. Charles, then tried to cool tensions by saying references to unnamed "small groups," "innuendo" and "mystery" had no place in the discussion.

But Fahy then pressed Mitchell on the 11 board members he had discussions with about the ethics proposal. Fahy wanted to know if the conversations constituted a violation of the Open Meetings Act.

"Maybe we need to talk about the ethics of that," Fahy said.

Board member Jackie Tredup, of Elgin, headed that question off by asking if Fahy was changing his mind about ethics reform after suggesting earlier this month that there should be limits on hiring family members of elected officials.

"I guess you found something in here that you really don't like," Tredup said.

After the meeting, Fahy said the concern behind his questions is about board members trying to ram a new law onto the books without properly vetting it and adding in reforms designed to attack individual board members.

"You don't understand it at all if you think I don't want to look at this," Fahy said of reform. "But I want to look at the big picture. There are several changes to the DuPage ordinance added onto this proposal. Why would you do that if you didn't have a personal agenda? It seems like there's 10 or 11 people who are trying to circumvent the process."