By John K. Collins, McHenry County Board Member, District 2 Administration Services Committee | Finance and Audit Committee | Valley Hi Committee
If you’ve lived in McHenry County for more than a few election cycles, you know the script. Come October, Republican candidates line up at every door, every forum, and every chicken dinner to deliver the same sacred promise: no new taxes. It’s as reliable as the changing leaves. And for over fifty years, it has worked.
So imagine my surprise when the Republican-dominated McHenry County Board placed not one but two resolutions before the Administration Services Committee, where I serve, proposing to give county government the unlimited ability to raise your property taxes without your approval. That’s what Home Rule does. And that is exactly what Resolutions 6.1 and 6.2 would set in motion.
Let me be direct: this is not a good-faith governance proposal. It is a political distraction, timed to November, built on contradictions, and insulting to the intelligence of McHenry County voters.
The Unlimited Tax Problem
Home Rule sounds benign — even empowering. Local control. Less Springfield interference. Who could object?
Here’s what they won’t put in the brochure: Home Rule eliminates the Property Tax Extension Limitation Law — PTELL — the statutory cap that currently limits how fast your property taxes can grow. Under Home Rule, the county board could raise property taxes without a referendum. Without your vote. Without your permission. The only check on that power would be the political judgment of the same board that just brought you this proposal.
Three Illinois counties operate under county Home Rule: Cook, Will, and Champaign. For thirty years, McHenry County Republicans have used Cook County as a bogeyman — the cautionary tale of big government, high taxes, and runaway spending. “We don’t want to become like Cook County,” they’ve said, and voters have agreed, again and again. Now those same Republicans are proposing McHenry County join that exclusive three-county club. The irony doesn’t get richer than that.
The County Executive Problem
Home Rule doesn’t just change how the county taxes you. It changes who runs the county — fundamentally and permanently.
Under Illinois law, a county cannot achieve Home Rule without simultaneously creating an elected County Executive. This is not a minor administrative adjustment. It is a restructuring of county government that concentrates enormous power in a single elected official: the power to hire and fire department heads, to propose the county budget (leaving the board to react rather than lead), and, most critically, to veto any ordinance or resolution passed by the County Board.
To override that veto, the board needs eleven of eighteen members — a three-fifths supermajority. Under the current structure, a simple majority of ten governs. Under Home Rule, one person can block the will of ten, eleven, even twelve board members.
McHenry County voters already made one structural change in 2016, when they voted to directly elect their County Board Chairman — a meaningful democratic reform. Home Rule would replace that elected Chairman with a County Executive whose powers make the current Chairman look like a department head. Every county Home Rule referendum in Illinois history has been defeated. Voters have consistently said: we don’t want this much power concentrated in one office. That wisdom hasn’t expired.
The Real Story: A Deficit and a Distraction
Here is what is actually happening in McHenry County. The 2026 budget required nearly $6 million in cuts and the elimination of 18 county positions. The projected shortfall for FY2027 is approximately $4.5 million if no corrective action is taken. Special revenue funds, including FICA and IMRF accounts, are being propped up by the general fund. The county’s fiscal foundation, built on five decades of “no new taxes” campaign promises, is cracking.
That is the story the Republican majority does not want to tell heading into November. So instead, they’re telling a different one — about unfunded state mandates, about Springfield overreach, about solar farms they claim Home Rule would let them block (it wouldn’t — the state preemption language is explicit and airtight). They need a headline. They need an issue. They need a villain. And if generating that headline requires proposing unlimited taxing authority for county government, well, apparently that’s a trade they’re willing to make.
There is also an electoral calculation at work here that deserves to be named plainly. Republicans are facing a difficult November environment nationally and locally. A high-stakes Home Rule referendum on the ballot drives turnout — their turnout. It gives their base something to vote against, something to be energized by, a reason to show up. Never mind that what they’d be voting against is a proposal their own party put on the ballot. Politics, as they say, makes strange bedfellows.
The Non-Binding Tell
Notice that the committee is weighing two resolutions: one for a binding referendum, and one for an advisory referendum. The fact that the advisory option exists tells you everything you need to know about how confident the proponents actually are in this idea.
An advisory referendum on Home Rule isn’t a governing tool. It’s a poll. A very expensive, government-funded poll designed to generate a talking point, not a result. If you bring an idea to the voters, you should be willing to live with what they decide. If you’re not willing to be bound by the outcome, you’re not asking for the public’s judgment. You’re asking for their applause.
The Question McHenry County Should Be Asking
The board’s own resolution paperwork, filed with these proposals, lists every possible category of impact: on human resources, on the budget, on capital expenditures, on county departments. Every single line reads the same: N/A. Not applicable. No analysis. No impact.
Apparently, the unlimited ability to raise property taxes without voter approval has no impact on the budget. Apparently, creating a new branch of county government with veto power over the elected board has no impact on county departments. Apparently, the taxpaying constituents of McHenry County are not a relevant consideration.
That tells you how seriously this is being taken as a governing proposal — which is to say, not at all.
McHenry County voters are not a prop. They are not a turnout mechanism. And they are certainly not going to be fooled by a party that spent fifty years promising fiscal restraint suddenly discovering a passion for unlimited taxing authority right before an election, right when the bills they deferred are coming due.
If the Republican majority on this board has a genuine proposal to address the county’s structural fiscal problems, I am ready to engage with it seriously. But Home Rule is not that proposal. It is a political maneuver dressed in the language of local empowerment — and the voters of McHenry County deserve better than that.
John K. Collins represents District 2 on the McHenry County Board. He serves on the Administration Services Committee, the Finance and Audit Committee, and the Valley Hi Committee. He is a member of the Democratic Party of McHenry County.
Paid for by Neighbors for a Better McHenry County PAC. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.