Was Kane board member frozen out of committee assignments as political payback?

Republican Mark Davoust has been on more than a dozen Kane County Board committees and named a chairman three times during his 18 years representing a St. Charles-area district.

He had also been a president pro-tem for the forest preserve commission and served on three of that body's committees.

But after the board's Dec. 13 meeting and a failed bid to become the forest preserve commission president, Davoust found himself without a current committee assignment.

Davoust speculated, without proof, that it was political payback from commission President Chris Kious for challenging him for the presidency and negotiating with the Kane County Cougars about the organization's unpaid license fees.

"I am, for the record, very disappointed," Davoust said in a telephone interview. "I think that in 18 years of faithfully serving the forest preserve district in many capacities - chairing all the different committees and as president pro-tem and having helped spearhead the most recent successful referendum - I still have a lot to contribute to the effort. I'm disappointed to be shut out this way and it feels like punishment for challenging the current president."

Davoust was reelected last year to represent the board's 14th District. County board members have a dual role, also representing their districts on the forest preserve commission, whose members elect one of their own as president.

Kious, a Democrat from Algonquin, wrote in an email that he uses his judgment, as well as input from other board members, when selecting candidates for committees or offices.

"I do not use the politics of quid pro quo to guarantee my selection as president. I do not offer positions on committees or offices prior to the election. I run on my merits alone," Kious wrote.

"I consider myself a part of a team, a team that is made up of commissioners who are willing to work together," he said. "On this team, each member abides by the same set of rules. Rank has no privilege here. Including the president."

Kious wrote that he values the opinions of his fellow commissioners and that he is "committed to making sure that every point of view is heard at every meeting, whether they are appointed to that particular committee or not."

At the commission's meeting Tuesday, Davoust questioned not being appointed to any of the panel's four committees - executive, finance and administration, land acquisition, and planning and utilization.

"My name doesn't seem to appear in any assignment on there," Davoust said. "I can't agree to that."

The commission voted 17-5 to accept Kious' committee appointments, with Rick Williams, a Republican from Geneva, abstaining and Monica Molina, a Democrat from Aurora, not answering and being marked absent - though she was present remotely for other votes that day.

While vying for the commission presidency at the Dec. 13 meeting, Davoust said he talked with Kane County Cougars owner Robert Froehlich and took credit for the Cougars owner's delivering an additional payment of $325,000.

In November, the commission voted unanimously to send Froehlich a demand letter for unpaid license fees, threatening to cancel the 2024 season if they remained unpaid.

The fees are still under discussion, Davoust said.

Kious privately chastised Davoust for talking to Froehlich because he went against a longtime understanding that individual commissioners were not to negotiate on their own, Davoust said.

"He reached out to me," Davoust said of Froehlich. "I never negotiated with him, but I took the call. ... Before we got to this Tuesday's meeting, he (Kious) took that opportunity to admonish me and said I should not have taken the call or said no comment or hung up or discussed the weather. To have taken the call at all was wrong."

Davoust said he would still attend committee meetings and participate.