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TO: Mayor Richard C. Irvin
FROM: Alex Voigt, Deputy Chief of Staff
DATE: February 11, 2025
SUBJECT:
An ordinance amending Sec. 2-185 "Disclosure of Economic Interests and Campaign Finances", specific to boards and commissions.
PURPOSE:
The purpose of this amendment is to address an operational issue created by the 2023 amendment to this section of the code.
BACKGROUND:
In 2023, the City Council approved amendments to Sec. 2-185 "Disclosure of Economic Interests and Campaign Finances" (O23-066, attached). The change in 2023 was intended to reduce the burden on the local City Clerk's Office and to avoid duplication by substantially reducing the City's local disclosure requirements. Because the State of Illinois had recently begun requiring more detailed economic interest disclosures of public officials, and because reporting obligations related to campaign finance had evolved significantly in the 40 years since Aurora began requiring local disclosure, the additional transparency afforded by the local disclosures, relative to state requirements was significantly reduced.
Moreover, the manual form required by the City created a substantial amount of work for the City Clerk. The revised process adopted by the City Council created a streamlined quarterly economic disclosure and publishes those results to the website for the public to review. This process is now done entirely online.
The 2023 amendment also provided that the members of a select number of the city's boards and commissions would also be required to complete the Aurora disclosures. This amendment aims to address the issues created by this change specific to the boards and commissions. There are no proposed changes for city employees or elected officials, however adapting the new process to the needs of the volunteer members of the boards and commissions has proven difficult.
DISCUSSION:
To honor the intention of the revised ordinance for staff and elected officials, the City Clerk worked...
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