County Executive Form of Government Still Lacks Rules

The top items from the Committee of the Whole County Board meeting was the preliminary budget information and the new County Executive form of government rules not being approved (yet?). Full video of the meeting from the County Clerk's YouTube here. From the News-Gazette last Wednesday:

County looks for balance in 2019 budget
Following years of financial concerns largely stemming from the troubled Champaign County Nursing Home, the Champaign County Board plans to begin the next fiscal year with a balanced budget.

On Thursday night, the board held a public hearing on its proposed fiscal year 2019 budget, which was followed by the board's Committee of the Whole voting to place the tentative proposal on file.

While the budget predicts $120,775,667 in revenues versus $123,006,313 in expenses, County Administrator Deb Busey said it is considered balanced under county policies because the difference is money the county set aside in advance in previous budget years to be spent this year.

The biggest change in the budget involves the nursing home, which is slated to be sold at the end of this month.

More budget details at the full article here. What caught my attention was the failure to approve the new Champaign County Board rules designed by the County Executive Transition Committee. Video of the discussion and the vote starts here and runs 30 minutes. The rules presented are available in the agenda packet with a short introduction on page 53 (page 56 of the PDF file) here.

New member Pranjal Vachaspati argued that it would make sense to have rules for the new board to work within before they change or adopt their own desired rules. Member Anderson argued that there are default rules from the State they could follow, but Weibel noted that the 8-10 transition committee meetings were attempting to do that very work of applying the basic state guidelines to do that. There seemed to be disagreement on how smooth or chaotic the situation would be if the incoming County Board after the election would be if no rules were approved here for them to start with. Member Patterson suggested seeking the counsel of the State's Attorney on the legal ramifications of not having rules in place.

The vote failed with no alternate plan or consultation. It appeared from the discussion after the vote that the next County Board will just have to figure it out by the seat of their pants. Perhaps it's not as dire as that. I imagine all of that work in the 8-10 sessions of the County Executive Transition Committee being thrown out in the end had to be frustrating and added to the gloom.