Sheriff's budget divides DuPage County Board candidates

The DuPage County Board's dealings with its top cop are a divisive issue for two Republican candidates seeking their party's nomination for a District 4 seat on the board.

While Sheriff John Zaruba is endorsing Tim Elliott, Michelle Moore says she has the backing of rank-and-file members of the department.

County board members and Zaruba have sparred over the department's budget and his absence at meetings on the spending plan. The sheriff's office is now operating under a roughly $40.8 million budget, up from $40.4 million. But the county rejected his bid to outfit deputies with body cameras and replace squad cars in the new fiscal year.

"I wish the sheriff had shown up to those meetings. I wish the county board had given him the money he needs for those body cameras and for the police cars," Elliott said. "But I'm very, very pleased to see that he has invited an audit of his department ... and to me, that's a dramatic step in the right direction."

Zaruba asked county Auditor Bob Grogan to complete the financial audit of the department's books. He also determined that previous inquiries conducted by outside firms weren't as thorough as he wanted, a spokeswoman said last month.

Elliott, a Glen Ellyn village trustee and College of Dupage attorney, expects the audit will show "his (Zaruba's) department is doing the best with the equipment its got and that it has more equipment needs."

"I would note that over the past few years, the lion's share of the head count that's been reduced in DuPage County has been reduced at the sheriff's department, so of all our departments, that's a place where they're doing more with less than they were four or five years ago," he said.

Moore, an attorney who works as a municipal prosecutor, paints a different picture of the department's equipment needs.

"I don't believe there's an issue with the sheriff's department not being properly staffed or not being properly equipped," she said.

Moore said there are other issues that "certainly deserve deeper dialogue" between the board and Zaruba, citing the "affordability for the body cameras and the necessity of the body cameras."

Zaruba petitioned the county to replace all the existing dash cameras in vehicles, to buy body cameras and to purchase equipment to store the video footage - an integrated system estimated to cost more than $1.1 million.

Leading up to the countywide budget's approval in late November, board Chairman Dan Cronin said Zaruba stopped communicating with him since a September letter in which the sheriff claimed Cronin was "knowingly and intentionally attempting to interfere with the internal operations of my office through your power of appropriations."

"From my perspective, there's 19 members of the county board," said Moore, who's endorsed by Cronin. "There's one sheriff. When 19 people are in one place, the one ought to go to meet with the other 19 to have those discussions."

Zaruba didn't immediately return a message seeking comment Wednesday.

The winner of the GOP March 15 primary will face Khizar Jafri, a Wheaton Democrat, in the November general election. District 4 covers all or parts of Addison, Bloomingdale, Carol Stream, Glen Ellyn, Glendale Heights, Lisle, Lombard, Wheaton and Winfield.

• Daily Herald staff writer Robert Sanchez contributed to this report.