DeKalb mayor Cohen Barnes is hoping to become the Democratic candidate in this month’s primary election for Illinois House District 76 representative. In his introductory statement during a candidates’ forum, Mayor Barnes said, “We’ve hired over 20 police officers in the last year alone — and firefighters.” The statement is unusual in at least two…
Category: State Watch
“A way to harass poor people”
I’ve been talking to people familiar with DeKalb’s administrative hearing system to try to understand the point of it all. (One of the responses became the title for this piece.) At heart it’s theater, but hardly entertaining. What’s collected probably doesn’t cover the costs of putting on the show, and the performance contains the threat…
DeKalb must overhaul ordinances if it insists on prosecuting kids
***2nd Update 10/7/2022: This week in the DeKalb Municipal Code I’ve found a provision for “court supervision” that includes community service, but am leaving this recommendation in the post because at this point I don’t know if or how it’s used. ***Update 9/15/2022: Pro Publica is hosting a virtual event on the subject of police…
DeKalb’s discussion of lead service line replacement leaves out key provision of new law
City of DeKalb appears to be unaware that a new state law changes the rules for how lead water service lines are replaced. During its regular meeting Monday, the city council discussed whether to use grant money to offer incentives to property owners to replace the portions of lead service lines that lie within their…
We could strengthen open meetings laws by plugging the ‘walking quorum’ loophole
I decided to find out more about Sycamore’s new city manager (who comes to us from Wisconsin) and ended up adding to my vocabulary. A ‘walking quorum’ is a series of gatherings among separate groups of members of a governmental body, each less than quorum size, who agree, tacitly or explicitly, to act uniformly in…
Elements of a sound policy for automated license plate readers
The Daily Chronicle covered the October 11 city council discussion that led to approval of the purchase of 12 automated license plate readers. The newspaper purports to know how DeKalb PD plans to use the ALPRs, but that is not entirely true. They talked about some aspects, but as yet DeKalb has no formal policy…
Public officials’ ill-advised campaign contributions
We’ve talked about ethics issues and Bill Nicklas before, in the context of his outside employment, which — shamefully — the city council has so far failed to address. Now we see Mr. Nicklas, DeKalb city manager since the beginning of 2019, has been making political contributions to Illinois Representative Jeff Keicher. (“Report Received Date”…
Elmhurst Hooplah leads to new “Right to Garden” state law
The Illinois General Assembly has passed and sent the Garden Act, aka “Right to Garden Law,” to the governor for signing. I first wrote about this situation in 2018. Hooplah started when Nicole Virgil and her family decided to take their raised-bed organic gardening to the next level by growing as close to year-round as…
Municipal theft protections are not ‘set it and forget it’ and theft can happen here
When it comes to theft of public money in Illinois, Rita Crundwell probably comes to mind for most folks in DeKalb. At one time, however, the name was Orville Enoch Hodge. Hodge, as Illinois auditor of public accounts, stole $6 million in 1950s dollars, the equivalent of about $57 million today – and he accomplished…
Going deeper on DeKalb Public Library’s expansion and promises
The main thing you need to know is that DeKalb Public Library made promises to DeKalb property taxpayers in 2015, and now is considering breaking its promises. But I couldn’t resist putting together some FAQs for anyone who might like more details. How much did the expansion cost? Total cost was $25.3 million. At center…