:quality(70):focal(2676x1086:2686x1096)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/shawmedia/ZDPTHMOCT5HCXKUEXZXQUAG7NE.JPG)
The man on track to be the next DeKalb County Administrator has rescinded his application for the job, DeKalb County Board Chairman John Frieders announced during a special executive committee meeting Wednesday.
Corey Rheinecker was appointed as the next DeKalb County administrator during a June 18 DeKalb County Board meeting. His tenure was going to begin in August, but Frieders said that’s no longer the case.
”Our County Board administrator candidate has informed us he will not be accepting the position," Frieders said.
Rheinecker said his decision not to accept the job offer had nothing to do with DeKalb County.
”The information came out down here a few weeks ago, and I just have gotten a ton of public support, and council support to try and stay,” Rheinecker said. “We were able to reach an agreement to stay. No, nothing due to any treatment or any actions of DeKalb County. This is all on me, 100%.”
Interim DeKalb County Administrator Derek Hiland also did not respond to a request to confirm Frieder’s announcement.
Wednesday’s meeting had initially been intended to vote again on Rheinecker’s appointment as the next county administrator.
If Rheinecker had stayed and the board approved Wednesday’s updated resolution, Rheinecker would have been paid a $179,000 annual salary with a total compensation of $222,576, according to the meeting agenda. He was also expected to accrue 37.5 days of time off each year.
Those details were not included in the June agenda, and their omission was noted by William Heimbigner, a Lee County resident who lives in a village on the Lee-DeKalb county line, during the June board meeting.
The county’s administrator candidate notified the DeKalb County Board that he was withdrawing his name from consideration immediately prior to the Wednesday executive board meeting, documents from the DeKalb County State’s Attorney’s Office show.
Frieders said Wednesday that there will be “announcements as to the position in the near future.”
On the same day Rheinecker was initially approved as DeKalb County’s next administrator, Heimbigner sent an Open Meetings Act complaint to the Public Access Counselor’s Office of the Attorney General, alleging that the county board had failed to comply with a section of the Open Meetings Act.
Heimbigner argued that the county had failed to post a timely notice of the potential approval of an employee’s total compensation package that is equal to or in excess of $150,000 per year.
On Friday, the DeKalb County State’s Attorney’s Office confirmed that the complaint was filed against DeKalb County and shared its latest response to the complaint, which was sent to the Attorney General’s Office.
David Berault, the DeKalb County State’s Attorney’s Office Civil Bureau chief, argued in the response that the agenda item was on the special executive committee meeting, and would have been on a subsequent special DeKalb County Board meeting, remedying the complaint.
“This activity would have solved the underlying issue with the prior vote, which is in contention presently,” Berault wrote before noting the administrator candidate had withdrawn from consideration. “As such, we are of the opinion that this does in fact make the matter moot for all practical purposes.”
Before receiving that response, Heimbigner said he didn’t like the manner in which the county went about conducting the business of hiring a new administrator.
“Regardless of what the law allows, it feels like they’re trying to sweep things under the rug, more so than they ethically and morally should,” Heimbigner said. “There’s nothing that says you can’t do it that way, but it’s still the wrong thing to do in a practical sense.”
In a proposal submitted Thursday, Heimbigner asked the DeKalb County Board to agree to adopt a clear procedure for all future hirings of employees with a total compensation package of $150,000 or more and Frieders to make a speech acknowledging that Open Meetings Act regulations were not met for the June 18 board meeting.
In his latest response to the complaint and the proposal for resolution, Berault wrote that the DeKalb County State’s Attorney’s Office does not recommend that Frieder and the County Board agree to Heimbigner’s proposal. He argued that the Open Meetings Act is itself a measure of compliance, and not something that can be used to influence government bodies “by threat.”
“Lastly, we would remind Mr. Heimbigner that it is for our Board to determine what they wish to legislate and speak on, and if he should like to draft ordinances or speeches, it would behoove him to run for office in the County within which he lives,” Berault wrote.
Heimbigner said he thought the state’s attorney’s response was “condescending” and he thinks the DeKalb County Board committed an “undeniable” Open Meetings Act violation.