Modernizing operations an issue in Kendall County Circuit Clerk’s race

Modernizing the Kendall County Circuit Court Clerk’s office and making information more accessible are among the issues in the race for Kendall County Circuit Clerk.

The Circuit Clerk is responsible for maintaining and preserving all the official records of the court filed in Kendall County. Kendall County Circuit Clerk Matthew Prochaska faces a challenge from Oswego Village Trustee Kit Kuhrt in the March 19 general primary election.

Prochaska has been in the office since December 2020. Prior to that, he was on the Kendall County Board.

Kuhrt was elected to the Oswego Village Board in 2021. Both Prochaska and Kuhrt are Republicans.

“We’ve already made great strides in modernizing the office,” Prochaska said. “What needs to be done further is just increasing public accessibility. On Jan. 1, we went completely e-record in my office, meaning the electronic record is now the official court record of the court system. That is a huge leap forward and a huge time saver for my staff and for the public.”

Prochaska said his office is now working on scanning all court files dating back to 1841 into a publicly accessible system.

“Unfortunately, the individually scanned documents are behind a viewing wall by Supreme Court order, but we have definitely increased public access in the courthouse and in the terminals there,” he said. “And we’re also going to be working on making copy requests much easier. So if someone needs to get a copy done, my goal is that they can go on to my website and select what documents they need copied and they’d be able to download it within minutes instead of putting in a copier request and having my staff pull it and have to make the copy manually, even digitally. So there’s some projects we’re working on right now that will definitely help with the public access to the office.”

Because the Circuit Clerk’s Office is part of the judicial branch of state government, it is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act. However, the documents are open to public inspection.

There is a proposed bill in the state legislature that would make the court system in Illinois subject to the public records law.

Kuhrt, who is also a business owner, said he wants to work to make the information in the Circuit Clerk’s Office public “as much as legally as permissible, instead of presuming all the information is private.”

“I know that it belongs to the taxpayers and it’s legally permissible for me to give it to you,” he said. “I’m not going to hide behind that FOIA law. Anything that’s legally permissible to put online can go online. Everything belongs to the people. The taxpayers are paying for it. It should all be on there.”

He also talked about the role of government.

“The government’s supposed to be for the people, not for the government,” Kuhrt said. “The government is not supposed to rule the people, the people are supposed to rule the government. It’s the way our country was founded.”

Kuhrt also criticized the office for being “outdated.”

“You have to go in there to get files,” he said. “You shouldn’t have to go in there and show your face so people know you’re doing it. There should be anonymity there. The files should be online that you’re trying to access.”

Turnover rate

Prochaska said his office previously had a high turnover rate because of low pay. But a new union contract that went into effect Dec. 1 increased the pay rate.

“Since that rate of pay increased, we have seen only one person leave the office,” he said. “The biggest complaint that everybody had was the pay. Starting salary in my office was $26,000 a year when I started. Now we’re at about $33,500 for starting salary in the office. We worked with the Kendall County Board to make sure we could afford that contract.”

He has about 25 staff members.

“Since we’ve implemented higher salary, things have gotten much more stable and we’re paying people what they should have been paid to begin with,” Prochaska said.

Kuhrt said the Circuit Clerk’s Office needs better management.

“It’s all in your management skills,” he said. “I’ve been in business for over 20 years. You’ve got to be a good manager. It’s all how you manage your staff, take care of your staff. Clearly there is a problem with management there. You have to get in there and address the problem. There clearly is an issue that hasn’t been addressed in the four years that he’s been there.”

Employee mistakenly paid after leaving office

One of Prochaska’s former employees is repaying about $32,000 in wages and benefits mistakenly paid after leaving the office.

The deputy clerk resigned in April 2022, but it was discovered in February 2023 that the person’s name was still listed as active in the county’s computer system.

“They have been making their payments and making the county whole,” Prochaska said. “They are repaying the amount in full. They’re about one-third of the way done paying it back. They’ve been making the payments on time. My office worked with the State’s Attorney’s Office to get this repayment agreement in place.”

The error resulted from a miscommunication between his office and the county treasurer’s office, which handles payroll.

“What had happened was the person in charge of payroll intended to send a personnel action notice to the treasurer’s office and that got caught in their outbox,” Prochaska said. ”Subsequently, my office had sent five additional communications to the treasurer’s office saying that employee was no longer with my office. And even the state of Illinois sent something to the treasurer’s office saying that employee was not with my office. But because the personnel action notice got caught in an outbox, they did not take that employee off the payroll.”

Since then, a system of checks and balances has been instituted to ensure such an error does not reoccur, Prochaska said.

“We’ve put in checks and the treasurer’s office has put in enough checks and balances to the system to make sure that something similar does not happen again,” he said.