Click to load video of this recently recorded Kendall County Board event, scroll to 3:54 minute mark of 29:02, and watch how the Kendall County Board was kept in the dark for months by Kendall County Coroner Ken Toftoy.
(55 ILCS 5/3-3040) (from Ch. 34, par. 3-3040)
Sec. 3-3040. Appointment of deputies. Each coroner may appoint one or more deputies as the coroner, in his or her sole discretion, determines necessary and appropriate, subject to county board appropriations. The appointment shall be in writing and signed by the coroner. A deputy's compensation shall be determined by the county board.
(Source: P.A. 88-281.)
On 4-1-2012 the Kendall County Coroner’s Office went to a new deputy coroner compensation schedule, something that State Attorney Weis’s office and ASA Leslie Johnson said needed to be changed to comply with current IRS Rules and Regs. In doing so, it appears that the county board was never consulted by Kendall County Coroner Ken Toftoy for his proposed changes to the compensation schedule for his Deputy Coroners. Nor did Mr. Toftoy ever discuss his proposed new deputy coroner compensation schedule at any Kendall County Board Committee meetings. No Kendall County Board Open Meeting presentation was held by Mr. Toftoy to submit his new Deputy Coroner compensation schedule to our full County Board for their consideration.
Ken Toftoy unilaterally decided how he was going to pay his deputy coroners. Only on 8-28-2012, during the Kendall County Coroner Office’s Budget Hearing did this subject of deputy coroner compensation finally come up (5 months later) and only when the question was asked by Board Member Nancy Martin inquiring about “per diems”.
Always, Coroner Toftoy’s first defense for his extravagant spending and the other wasteful spending I documented and found in his office is to claim, “He operates his office under the state statutes.” (Video discussion on this new compensation subject ends at 9:09 of 29:02, about 5 total minutes to view this event)
Why Coroner Toftoy was unwilling to consult our county board on this critical subject of Deputy Coroner compensation and did so only when he was forced to at the 8-28-2012 Coroner’s Office Budget Hearing remains an unanswered question.
This unilateral decision for deputy coroner compensation was made by an arrogant elected official who is presently our Coroner. Mr. Toftoy’s attitude is based upon the fact that he thinks it is his money, not our taxpayer funds that are given to him to manage. Kenny always knows best, no matter what any state statute decrees and who cares what the county board thinks, I just do it my way, as I always have.
One of the county board’s primary functions is to watch how Constitutional Elected Officials spend county property tax funds, which are budgeted to them, and if that elected official needs to change something, that elected official needs to come before the county board and get the county board’s approval to do so. That did not happen here, Mr. Toftoy just decided he do it his way without any outside input or discussion.
You do not have to wait for Mr. Toftoy to comply, you have a chance to vote for a new coroner now, one that is ready to work with the county board and actually do real work for his pay, one that will listen to us taxpayers. You can refuse to accept business as usual and the status quo of self-serving/wasteful spending.
Maybe Kendall County needs a little more “Truth in Business,” the Question I want to ask Mr. Toftoy is, “How many deputy coroners do we actually have in the Kendall County Coroner’s Office?” If Ken Toftoy will not tell you, I will, next week.
He has yet to understand anything. If you listen to how the deputies were paid before, on the video, maybe he would understand. Cannot wait for our good friends, of a candidate that is unelectable, will support next. Just waiting for the last article of this joke of a blogger to get over. *READER BEWARE* Mr. Milliron will never state any of his activities and the biased view he is presenting in any of his articles. The reason he writes(types) this articles or FOIA's the information from certain offices is due to him being directly involved politically and supporting a certain candidate. Always present questions due to his inability to be straight forward on truth. He likes to give only half stories. (Why do you think he asks the readers only to go to a certain spot on the video and not the whole thing.) Now we will wait for all of the parrot heads of the Milliron camp to come out and praising his article for exposing these corrupt individuals. Get ready to laugh on how true this is... :)
The readers of this blog are welcome and encouraged to view the entire video posted, then come to their own conclusions. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXWTw54tWYo&feature=vmdshb The segment referenced in the video pertains to a specific five minutes, where for the first time the Kendall County Finance Committee was initially first informed of the complete overhaul of the Deputy Coroner’s Compensation schedule from the old “per diem” arrangement to the current per hour understanding. During this 5-minute period referenced, the Kendall County Finance Committee tries to comprehend just how it all works for the first time, including Toftoy Ally, Bob (H. D.) Davidson. Voters should remember Mr. Davidson as THE county board member who tried to push through a $9000 raise for Mr. Toftoy this spring. That $9000 raise was to be funded with collected property tax monies. Mr. Toftoy was mandated to discuss this new compensation package for his deputy coroners with the full county board and it still needs to be presented the full county board for their approval. Mr. Dabney, the Independent Candidate for Kendall County Coroner has his own Deputy Coroner Compensation Plan. It reduces the current coroner budget by more than 20%. The Dabney 20% Coroner’s Budget Reduction plan involves dissolving the fulltime position of Deputy Coroner. This Dabney proposal will remove the taxpayer burden of paying one fulltime ($36,000 annual salary) county employee from county payroll.
What happens when your supported candidate fills out a form wrong, and the county is sued? You sell insurance, so surely you know what E&O insurance covers. For those that don't know, it is 'Errors and Omissions' insurance. It covers the liability caused when mistakes are made. Todd's supported candidate has freely admitted that he doesn't understand how to fill out forms from the fire department. Just like when you get in a car accident, your insurance goes up. And the exact same thing will happen if someone who doesn't understand the job is constantly making costly mistakes. That money doesn't come from leprechauns Todd, it comes from taxpayers. What is the counties current expense for E&O insurance Todd? And why are you willing to open up such a large financial liability for every single taxpayer, just for your own political agenda? Care about the taxpayers? Who do you think you are fooling? The only person who could possibly think you have any good ideas, is a HS dropout. For once your ideas are looked at in the context of reality, it becomes obvious that there are gaping holes that cause more problems and liabilities than you claim they 'might' solve. But hey, thanks for pointing out those 'extravagant' cell phone calls, that cost the taxpayers a grand total of $0.00.
Toftoy’s Cell Phone expenses were cut from $5000 to $2500, only after Mr. Dabney declared his candidacy for Kendall County Coroner. Funny how a little competition promotes efficiencies, which were long overdue. Oh, we taxpayers got another cut of $3000 in training expenses in Aug. That was after some additional research I brought forward in Feb. 2012 about some of Mr. Toftoy’s creative names he used for his extravagant spending, that did not happen until there was a candidate to challenge Mr. Toftoy and his arrogant attitude. http://www.todd4kendall.org/resources/toftoyexpense.pdf Page 6 to 43 of 43 Moreover, Mr. Toftoy's assertion it was all false. http://www.todd4kendall.org/resources/ls022312toftoy.pdf I think I am making progress, you & Jake do not like it, but we taxpayers are already money ahead. There is much more on the table to be saved if Mr. Dabney is elected. Let us make this election about the issues, the issue of how to better and more efficiently run the coroner's office and other local governmental units. We do not need a manager of the coroner’s office. We need a coroner to be the coroner and do the actual coroner’s workload, not farm it out to an administrative deputy coroner and fleet of deputy coroners. Let us talk about the Dabney 20% Coroner's Budget Reduction Plan, which is based upon the Coroner, being the Coroner and doing the work of the Coroner. Real work, for real pay, a very simple concept that Mr. Toftoy has forgotten.
I guess your idea of saving money is to make the county a liability with your candidate? Are you planning to offer an insurance contract to the county, is that why you are pushing for Dabney? To offer insurance to the county of liability? Does the sheriff go out on the calls every time to make arrests or write tickets? Does the Recorder do all of the work that the clerks do? Does the Circuit Clerk do all of the paper shuffling for the court records? Does the State's Attorney prosecute every trial that is in court, personally? Milliron you are ridiculous for stating such stupid notions, it is unreal! All of these people elected have individuals under them to make a department functional. It's called delegation of authority. Wake up buddy, there are to many things going on in today's world, just to have one guy do it all! And ask Dabney who will cover him when he leaves his job and no one is there to cover him? I guess no vacations for 4 years! Sure that's realistic. Or what if it's not a vacation and it's a family issue or health issue? who covers then, santa claus, the tooth fairy or the easter bunny? If you look at the 20% Dabney cuts, you just need to look and find out about the office of Coroner before Dabney would make it a liability that would cost us all.
There you go again, claiming you know who I am and what I do. I doubt you know any of the people I do. So as for your fishing excursion or your Mighty Casey at the Bat moment, just imagine that you don't have a clue who I am. Once you get to this notion, then you have just met reality and you can stop being delusional. You have no clue who I am and nor will you ever know. Matter of fact, you have even walked by me and I never cared to waste my breath on you. Let's just put it this way, I'm much younger than you and better looking. but this is not about me. It's about a bunch of guys posting stuff on here. One group claims lies by writing stories and having others back him up on his lies and another group which sees truth and let's the sunlight cut through the lies and confronts those liars. November 6th. See you at the polls. Hope you enjoy your loss. Still waiting to see where to send the sympathy card to Dabney. Game over.
I also see the situation that Todd referenced which is Toftoy explaining to the board what his compensation policy is. They should already understand it because they were the ones who should have approved it months ago. Your comments pretty much prove Todd's point. There should be no misunderstanding between the board and Toftoy regarding compensation except for perhaps the first time the issue is discussed PRIOR to approving the compensation rules.
http://heraldnews.suntimes.com/15814906-417/kendall-board-members-split-over-hiking-county-employee-pay.html Again, the board has NO SAY in the compensation policy of the coroners office. They approve the budget as a single line item, and once that it done it is completely up to the coroner to decide how to structure his internal pay. This is Illinois state law, it is not an opinion, and it does not matter how incompetent the board is in understanding this. The coroner has much better things to do than attempt to educate those on the board who couldn't be bothered to educate themselves as to what their job is. However, the incompetence on the board is also shown in this video, with one of them(Nancy Martin?) not even knowing what the IRS is, or why they would be involved! Todd, the bums are already getting voted out; Anne Vickery lost in the primary. You lost in the last election. Nancy is leaving in December of 2012. YOU and your groups childish political games are the problem, not the solution. The voters have already spoken, but you just haven't listened.
Nobody has pushed through anything yet, the county budget needed to be put on public display so it can be voted on for the date scheduled for final approval. Nothing has been approved yet. SEE this quote from the news story you referenced. "After cutting about $300,000 from the budget requests, officials anticipate actually cutting more before the final budget is approved Nov. 20." The vote for the county budget will happen on Nov. 20th. The 4 raises discussed is a small drop in the county budget bucket. The 800# Gorilla on the back of county taxpayers is escalating county employee benefit expenses, which costs increased by 10% last year and another 6% again this year. That employee benefit cost expense was compounded again this year. It has been going on for years and years, compounding the employee benefit costs each year on top of the last increase approved. This is the first year in a long time it was not a double-digit increase, and the board felt lucky that was all it was. County employees only pay 10% of the actual cost of the employee medical insurance rate. Chairman Purcell even publicly agreed with me on this issue at the 10-16-2012 KCB open meeting. Tim, ask for the audio recording of that meeting since you were not there. Yes, you will find Purcell actually agreed with me in public and on the record. If you were not always the anonymous mouthpiece for certain entrenched interests and did not live out of the county you would know these things.
Or. Your apart of the Todd Milliron's school of understanding of laws in the state. That school was never accredited for putting out good students, just ones that could only sell insurance.
Oh! No political points there to antagonize people with. Now I understand.