Will County Executive Committee Splits on Whether to Ask Voters About Single-Member Districts

Will County Board Executive Committee Meeting | May 14, 2026

Article Summary: The Will County Board Executive Committee on Thursday, May 14, 2026, took the temperature of members on a proposal to place an advisory referendum on the November 2026 ballot asking voters whether they want to move from 11 two-member districts to single-member districts, with the discussion exposing sharp partisan and procedural disagreement over how the county should be represented. No vote was taken; the matter would have to return for a formal resolution by July to make the November ballot.

Single-Member District Referendum Key Points:

• Will County Board Speaker Joe VanDuyne, who placed the item on the agenda, said reducing the board to 11 single-member districts could save the county more than $500,000 in salaries today and an estimated $670,000 by fiscal year 2030.
• Several Republican members, including Judy Ogalla, Frankie Pretzel and Dan Butler, said the proposal is politically motivated and would reduce constituent representation, while a few members, including Sherry Williams and Jackie Traynere, said voters deserve to weigh in directly.
• A binding referendum is not legally available under state law for this question; only an advisory referendum is permitted, and the County Board would still need to act separately on any subsequent map.
• Will County reduced its board from 27 to 26 members in the 2010 redistricting cycle and from 26 to 22 in 2020.

WILL COUNTY — A proposal to ask Will County voters in November whether the County Board should adopt single-member districts split the executive committee along familiar partisan lines on Thursday, May 14, 2026, with several members arguing the move would weaken constituent representation and others contending voters deserve a direct say in how they are represented. No vote was taken on whether to advance the proposal.

VanDuyne, who placed item 26-4803 on the agenda, opened by saying he was not advocating for any particular outcome but wanted to gauge whether members wanted to put the question to voters. He told members that reducing the board to 11 single-member districts would save the county more than $500,000 a year in salaries immediately and roughly $670,000 by fiscal year 2030, when salary changes adopted earlier this term roll fully into effect. The current board is composed of 11 districts with two members each, for a total of 22 members.

Republican Leader Richmond said cutting the board in half would leave residents with less representation and noted that voters often prefer the option of approaching a member of their own party. “I’d be happy to do that again if it meant that we can keep two members in every district,” Richmond said, referencing his prior votes against board salary increases. Frankie Pretzel was more pointed: “The party in power obviously supports something like this because they’re going to get to draw the map. I ask you to think, if you weren’t going to have control of the map, would you support this?”

Steve Balich, who is not a member of the executive committee, told the panel he routinely receives constituent calls from outside his own district and that adding to representatives’ workloads while reducing their numbers would be counterproductive. “There’s two people in my district. I’m helping everybody else’s district because they don’t call them or they call them and they’re not getting called back,” Balich said.

Democratic Leader Williams pushed back on the premise that two members per district produces better representation. “After all, we only have one president of the United States of America,” Williams said. Freeman, who is a Democrat, said she could support letting voters weigh in. “If our congressional leaders have a huge district and they represent us on a federal level and our state legislators have a huge district and represent us on a level, our county members can do the same,” Freeman said.

Newquist offered a middle position, suggesting that if the county were ever to move to single-member districts, the right number would be larger than 11, perhaps 15 or 17. “11’s probably not enough would be my thinking,” she said.

Berkowicz used her comments to question the process by which the item came to the committee and to detail her memory of the contentious 2020 redistricting cycle, asserting that a bipartisan map agreed to by the redistricting committee was replaced at the last minute by a map drawn in the county executive’s office that, she said, effectively wrote four sitting Republicans out of their seats. Judy Ogalla echoed that account and contended the proposal is “nothing but a political maneuver.”

The county’s chief of staff told members that any referendum on single-member districts would be advisory and non-binding under state law, and that the County Board would need to approve a resolution placing the question on the ballot at its July meeting to qualify for the November 2026 ballot. Even if voters approved, the chief of staff said, the board at the time of the next redistricting cycle around 2030 or 2031 would still need to take a separate action to alter the number or composition of districts.

The chief of staff committed to providing the committee with a full procedural write-up before any further action is taken.