The Morgan County Commissioners are reorganizing.
Ginny Fanning and Brad Zeller will be swapping roles in the upcoming year. Zeller will be returning the chairman role, with Fanning as vice chair.
Zeller says that the reorganizing was mandated by state statute: “Every year, the county boards are obliged to reorganize by state statute. It’s traditionally been done the first board meeting in December – that would be the first month after the last General Election. We made sure and looked [the statute] up and it stated that we were obliged to do it by law on the first meeting of December. We would have liked to have waited until we had a full board, because when Ginny and I reversed our roles, then with just the two of us here, we had to make the votes and nominations for ourselves. We really would have loved to waited, but we will get the new board member. The Republican committee will get us a new potential board member, and we look forward to working with them.”
In other board business Monday morning, bills were approved in the amount of $24,375. A resolution to approve the annual State’s Attorney’s Office agreement with the State Appellate Prosecutor’s Office for various services was approved for $14,000.
State’s Attorney Gray Noll told the board that the cost is down this year compared to last year: “Without this agreement, I have always been of the opinion that it would necessitate the county to hire at least one other attorney, if not, two to handle the appeals alone for our criminal court cases, let alone the other things that the Appellate Prosecutor’s Office brings to the table – including help with prosecutions under the Illinois Controlled Substances Act, the Illinois Cannabis Control Act, and tax objections should we need their services for those things. The county contribution for this would be $14,000. That is $1,000 less than it was last year. The reason for that is basically the Appellate Prosecutor’s Office brought in some money on their own end; because of that, they were able to pass the savings for this year onto the county. It probably will not stay in the amount of $14,000, but as of this year at least, it was $1,000 less.”
The county holiday schedule was also approved with the inclusion of Juneteenth as a new holiday. Zeller also noted during Chairman’s Remarks that a tentative agreement had been reached with the the county’s bargaining units, which includes a 3% Cost of Living increase. Zeller says that signatures on the new agreements are expected in the coming days and will be approved at the next commissioners’ meeting.