DuPage County Clerk Jean Kaczmarek and the DuPage County Board are at odds as upcoming deadlines for the fall general election in November loom.
Earlier this month, County Board Chair Deborah Conroy sent Kaczmarek correspondence about election division finances within the clerk’s office and a request for details on additional funding. Kaczmarek responded with a 3-page letter that characterized Conroy’s request as “bizarrely disingenuous.”
Conroy said her correspondence was intended to be proactive
During her chair’s report at the DuPage County Board’s meeting Tuesday, Aug. 25, Conroy addressed the elections funding issue and recited her attempts to learn more about what specifically the clerk’s office needs.
“I proactively informed the clerk that if she needed resources to print and mail ballots, she should make a request to the board,” Conroy said.
In her remarks, Conroy also stated Kaczmarek has been seeking “a lump sum” of about $2.5 million — the amount Kaczmarek claims her office was underfunded in the fiscal year 2026 budget when requests were made more than a year ago.
Conroy, in her remarks, said she has been seeking transparency from Kaczmarek on specific line item needs within her department for the purposes of carrying out this fall’s election.
“I take the operation of elections very seriously,” Conroy said. “However, we will not allow the clerk to hold our elections hostage, while demanding $2.5 million without any information about why that sum is needed.”
Looking back a year ago, Conroy also defended the appropriations Kaczmarek’s office was given for its election division this fiscal year. She indicated a 14% increase was accounted for, between the 2022 and 2026 gubernatorial elections.
Conroy also stated a fiscal analysis determined $2.7 million is in the election division budget, but sufficient dollars have not been shifted to the printing and postage line items to run the November election.
Additionally, Conroy indicated the analysis stated the clerk spent 99.8% of the postage line item and 74% of the printing line item in this year’s primary election on Tuesday, March 17.
Kaczmarek says she has been sounding the alarm on funding
In her letter — which she made public — Kaczmarek asserted she brought forward all of the necessary funding requests on July 1, 2025, as department- and office-level appropriations were in the preliminary stages of review for this year’s fiscal budget.
To Conroy, Kaczmarek wrote, “Rather than making elections a priority, you personally chose to underfund the county clerk’s office by nearly two and a half million dollars in your budget proposal to the county board, despite the availability of tens of millions of dollars of surplus funds.”
Kaczmarek in the correspondence also recounted an experience she had late last October, appearing before the county board’s Finance Committee in the final stages of the FY 2026 budget review process. At the time, Kaczmarek said her office stated they had inadequate funding for this year’s elections.
“There was no engagement from the county board whatsoever,” Kaczmarek wrote. “My staff and I were told to sit down while board members took turns berating us for twenty minutes without asking a single question regarding our budgetary needs.”
Kaczmarek also indicated she has been posting information about her office’s budgetary needs for this year’s elections on the clerk’s website.
In her letter, Kaczmarek also stated she believes Conroy and the board have been “playing games with the democratic process.”
One township supervisor expresses concern during public comment
During public comment, the board at its most recent meeting heard from Addison Township Clerk Maria Vesey. She expressed concern about the upcoming election and implored the board to increase funding allocations.
“I hold one of the largest election sites in DuPage County in my township building, and I am in charge of that,” Vesey said. “This board is currently not funding that election that is coming up in November.”
Vesey said the current funding situation is preventing her from fulfilling all of her duties.
“Am I supposed to turn people away at the door and say, ‘Sorry, the ballots didn’t get paid for?’” Vesey said. “No, I’m sorry, I can’t do that.”
Additionally, Vesey said she has grown weary of the strained relations between both sides and the downstream effects that have arisen.
“I am not in the mood for the infighting anymore,” Vesey added. “If we don’t start getting along, this is going to get much worse. We are not North Korea. I refuse to let elections go down the tubes.”
Board to hold special call meeting on Sept. 1 to address funding
Conroy reserved a spot in the “new business” portion of the county board’s meeting agenda on Aug. 25 to have Kaczmarek and/or a member of her office come before the board and share in more detail their specific funding needs.
In her letter, Kaczmarek described the agenda item as a “political stunt” and an “unserious proposal.” She indicated she would not participate in the agenda item, and, indeed, no one from her office was present to discuss the matter.
Once it was established neither Kaczmarek nor a staffer within her office would be present to discuss the issue, Conroy made a declaration to hold a special call meeting at 8:30 a.m. Tuesday, Sept. 1, to address additional funding allocations for the clerk’s office to carry out elections this fall.
“We believe it is a critical function of the clerk’s office to administer elections, including the important vote-by-mail program,” Conroy said. “As county board chair, I will do everything I can to provide voters access … for the November election.”
At the special call meeting, the board will consider two funding requests that are specific to the upcoming November election — one in the amount of $440,000 for postage and another for $225,000 for printing.
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