Champaign County Board rejects resolution to put auditor, coroner question on ballot
Dec. 22—Submit your Letter to the Editor here
URBANA — After more than an hour of public comment and board discussion primarily regarding proper meeting procedure, the Champaign County Board shot down a proposed resolution that would have asked voters to decide the fate of the positions of coroner and auditor.
The resolution would have placed two questions on the primary ballot in March addressing whether the roles should remain as elected offices or be made into appointed positions.
On that same primary ballot, voters will be asked to nominate candidates for those positions.
Twenty-one members of the public — from county residents to former elected officials, and including candidates for Champaign County coroner and coroners from other counties — weighed in, causing the board to extend the public-comment period in the interest of hearing from everyone.
The consensus: Not only was this resolution rushed and the public left uninformed, but the offices of auditor and coroner should also remain independent elected offices no matter what.
After this input, board member Jeff Wilson felt strongly enough in opposition to the resolution that he made a motion to postpone it indefinitely.
Other board members questioned whether he was correctly following Robert's Rules of Order, and Wilson stood firm, reading from his guide sheet of the rules.
"'I move to postpone the motion indefinitely' equals killing the main motion," Wilson said. "I want to kill this thing."
This opened a half-hour discussion that culminated with enough board members seeking further time to deliberate or opposing the resolution that it was voted down.
While a similar motion to have the public vote on the status of the two offices could be created in the future, Thursday's action effectively ended the chance of the question appearing on the March primary ballot, because the deadline for that is Jan. 2.
There was no question of the public's opinion on the proposed resolution.
It was perhaps put most plainly by resident Jeremy Chase, who said he wanted to come to the meeting to learn more and put in his comment as someone without government ties.
"It does feel very rushed. I just learned about it on Facebook in the last couple days," he said. "I as a citizen didn't know, so I believe it would be hard to vote on something like that without proper information. On top of that, I think the accountability issue is a big one for voters."
That was the primary argument against having an appointed auditor or coroner: Voters don't want whoever is in those positions to be swayed by other officials behind the scenes.
Multiple speakers — including current Democratic Auditor George Danos — weighed in on how independence is important for the auditor's office, as that individual deals with a lot of the county's finances.
Dr., Susan Mantell offered a similar perspective for the coroner's office.
"One thing you have to think about is that coroners collect a lot of data and they send that data to nationwide databases," she said. "All of this data is on morbidity and mortality. As a physician, I have to rely on that data to be accurate to make decisions about my patients."
