WurfWhile

The Naperville Sun is reporting that current DuPage County Coroner Richard Ballinger is retiring and endorsed Chief Deputy Coroner, Peter Siekmann, at a Monday press conference. For reasons I’ve given before, I think voters should vote for Mike Kisler in the upcoming election. Both the Ballinger and Schillerstrom contingents have made a mockery of the election process, and since they held voters in contempt, they do not deserve the vote of DuPage County residents.

Read the Sun Article below.

DuPage County coroner retiring

Ballinger supports chief deputy as successor

By Katie Foutz
Naperville Sun

WHEATON — Longtime DuPage County Coroner Richard Ballinger once had to leave his wife at a drive-in movie when he was called to the scene of a death, but now his family is calling him from his job.

Ballinger announced Monday he will retire at the end of his current term and wants the county’s chief deputy coroner to replace him on the November ballot.

Ballinger has worked in the coroner’s office for 36 years and served as coroner for 20 of those. He cited his health and family, not politics, as his reasons for leaving. He had quadruple bypass surgery two years ago and said he’d like to watch his three grandchildren grow up.

However, he has said politics drove the DuPage County Board’s recent vote to freeze the coroner’s salary after a 2005 pay raise — what County Board officials said was the first step toward changing the elected coroner’s office to an appointed medical examiner system.

“To say I’m being forced out or pushed out … that’s not the case,” he said. “I like competition. I like challenges. That made it more difficult to say this is the time.”

Now Republican precinct committeemen must decide at their convention later this summer who will run in Ballinger’s place. Ballinger and leaders of local law enforcement agencies rallied around Chief Deputy Coroner Peter Siekmann at Ballinger’s Monday press conference at the courthouse.

County Board Vice Chairman William Maio, R-Itasca, also is interested in the job, said DuPage County Board Chairman Robert Schillerstrom, R-Naperville. Maio is self-employed in insurance and financial services and has been a County Board member since 1984. He did not return phone calls for comment Monday.

Siekmann, a Republican from West Chicago, joined the coroner’s office in 1974 as a disaster deputy coroner. He was then promoted to deputy coroner and for the past 11 years has served as chief deputy coroner, supervising the investigations division.

“I do want to be the next coroner of DuPage County,” he said.

The Republican nominee will face Democrat Mike Kisler, a former funeral director from Westmont, in the general election.

DuPage County State’s Attorney Joe Birkett praised Ballinger’s and Siekmann’s work as partners of prosecutors through homicide investigations and trials. He also noted Ballinger led a task force that developed a death scene investigation protocol that became required for all county law enforcement agencies through state law.

Birkett said the office must continue to be professional to grieving families and working law enforcement, “regardless of what you label it.”

“Until such time as the voters of this county eliminate the coroner’s office, we have a coroner system,” he said. “We must make sure that the coroner’s staff continues to perform at the same professional level as they have for the last 20 years.”

Schillerstrom has asked the county Judicial/Public Safety Committee to review a possible change to a medical examiner system by the end of summer. He took the task from the Government Efficiency Committee when he learned Maio, the committee chairman, may run for coroner.

“When you look at counties our size, urban places, better services are provided by a medical examiner,” Schillerstrom said. “By my initial study, we would save a substantial amount of money. I think it’s probably a good time to look at it when (Ballinger’s) leaving. It makes it a lot easier. It’s always difficult to look at an office when there’s a long sitting incumbent in it.”

He said it’s too early to tell whom he or the Republican party will support as the new coroner candidate.