Candidates for county auditor share views

From the Saturday, Oct. 11, 2008 edition of the Northwest Herald:

Candidates for county auditor share views
By DIANA SROKA - dsroka@nwherald.com

The challenger in the McHenry County auditor's race is advocating transparency and simplified financial reports that residents can more readily digest.

Meanwhile, the incumbent touts more than a decade of experience in the auditor's office, and says she is proud of the detail in her reports, which have helped the county garner praise from the Government Finance Officers Association.

Republican incumbent Pamela Palmer is a conservative with more than 11 years experience in the county auditor's office.

Her opponent on the Democratic ticket, Kerry Julian, owns an insurance and financial services business. He, too, is a self-proclaimed fiscal conservative.

Voters will choose between the two Nov. 4.

"I don't see that being fiscally conservative is Republican or Democrat," Julian said. "It would be better if the auditor's race were nonpartisan, because if you have partisan politics involved you introduce the possibility of favoritism."

Julian is running on a three-tiered platform: to make county government more transparent, develop county-wide expense policies and to force county government not to spend outside its budget.

If elected, one of his chief goals is to make the financial information available on the county Web site easier to understand.

"They're not really readable to the average person," Julian said.

He added that he advocates releasing a single-page report summarizing the financial state of the county.

Meanwhile, Palmer acknowledges the reports are long and complicated, but prides herself on their quality and thoroughness.

For the past nine years, the auditor's office has been commended by the Government Finance Officers Association for the thoroughness of the reports, which often comprise hundreds of pages.

"There's no way you could report this on a single sheet," Palmer said.

But she does acknowledge the difficulty of reading the long reports available online to residents. So for the past four years, she's been working to release a shorter report format, called the Popular Annual Financial Report.

Both candidates stressed the need for a better reimbursement policy, which became a hot topic after it was revealed that State’s Attorney Lou Bianchi charged thousands of dollars worth of expenses to the county, including candy for parades, in 2007.

Julian said the incident highlighted how county government was not looking out for taxpayers.

"They're meeting the letter of the law but the taxpayer is being shorted," he said. He stressed the need for a more thorough policy that says county government should not reimburse for entertainment at all.

Meanwhile, Palmer has insisted since the incident that she felt the expense reimbursement policy was weak, and raised the issue to others within county government.

Neither Palmer nor Julian believe it's the auditor's job to write policy. However, Palmer said county government wasn't responsive, so she recently completed a 22-page policy she wrote herself. That is presently under county administration review.

"I only did it out of extreme need," she said. "This is a one-time occurrence."