Rummel Vs. Parekh: Lake County Board District 12 Election Preview

LAKE COUNTY, IL — In the race for the Lake County Board, a first-time township trustee is challenging a former mayor and two-term board member to represent the 12th District, which includes parts of Deerfield, Highland Park, Knollwood and Lake Forest.

Both candidates told Patch keeping property taxes flat and identifying budget savings were among their top priorities.

Mike Rummel, a Lake Forest Republican and board member since 2012, said his experience creating public-private partnerships while managing the finances of the Lake County Forest Preserves, and its nonprofit wing, had already saved taxpayers money with projects like the Middlefork Savanna bridge. During his time as finance chairman for the forest preserve, Rummel pointed to the $20 million reduction in its budget.

"The first thing I did was created a public-private partnership, knowing that the forest preserve didn't have money, going to individual donors like Wintrust, Chicago Bears, Lake Forest Academy, the city of Lake Forest, Lake Forest Open Lands and then there were several private donors," Rummel told Patch.

He also said his connections with local businesses and experience as a mayor of Lake Forest had helped secure three evening express trains south to Chicago through a public-private partnership with Metra, which had been a success prior to the coronavirus.

"That was something I worked on through [Lake County] Partners," he said, "and because I knew most of the players you could put everybody at the table to make this happen."

Rummel, who works at a Chicago-based insurance company now owned by his son, said he is working with the nonprofit Preservation Foundation of the Lake County Forest Preserves, where he is the treasurer, toward a goal establishing a $30 million endowment, with interest from the fund used to provide tax relief to residents while expanding the forest preserves and protected woodlands through more public-private partnerships.

"Why the Forest Preserve endowment is so important is eventually taxes aren't going to be able to keep up with our 30,000 acres," he said. "And our budget won't be able to keep up with it."

Paras Parekh, a Highland Park Democrat, said the board had not done enough to prevent the loss of jobs and population. He said the county had lost 3,000 jobs prior to the coronavirus.

"People are feeling that while they enjoy living here they are having to make too many trade offs between the values of the services provided and the cost of those services," Parekh said. "So I want to make sure that I'm passing more fiscally responsible budgets than have been passed."

Census data shows the county has lost about 7,000 residents since 2010.

"We're on a very slow path, but it is a path, of our county and community shrinking and we need to do everything we can do reverse that trend. That means meeting with businesses big and small and asking them how Lake County can be a reliable place for them to continue or grow," Parekh said. "I think the board will have to take more responsibility for creating a county that is sustainable and growing."

Parekh, a marketing director at a Northbrook-based pharmaceutical company, said the board had not shown enough leadership on environmental issues.

"When I come there it's going to be a critical portion of my looking at what we need to do — are we looking at sustainability in all of our actions?" Parekh said. "From our energy sources are sustainable, the buildings we create are sustainable, that we are asking large vendors to help us understand their sustainability plans, and then how do we look at our own operations — the courthouses, the jail, the facilities, everything that is our property — and ask: how do we make it more sustainable?"

Parekh said West Deerfield Township had kept taxes flat in both budgets he voted on during his time on its board. Since the coronavirus pandemic, he said, the township has been ensuring emergency services and food security for those in need.

"There has been discussion about the role of townships quite a bit in the community and that has shown what the townships can do," he said.

The township trustee said consolidating townships alone will not lead to the structural change that's needed.

"There's just not enough money there to be honest," he said. "Let's go ahead and consolidate where we can but you're not going to consolidate your way into budget savings. You need to look at what you're doing today and determine how we can provide those services at a better efficiency."

Rummel, the board's former finance committee chairman, touted his understanding of the county's approximately $560 million budget. The board is expected to vote on a final 2021 Fiscal Year budget at its Nov. 10 meeting.

"Our challenge is going to be how do you keep good employees with no rate increase? How do you not have people get furloughed?" said said. "How do you manage through those waters of keeping your employees working and positive in this time, not laying them off and keeping what we have to do as a core county function going."

The economic challenges associated with the pandemic will continue over the next two years, he predicted.

"I believe I can bring something to it, having the knowledge I have," Rummel said. "I just think I could bring information and historical knowledge of how things work in the county in working through the budgetary processes and continuing to work with partners to get other public-private partnerships going."

Parekh cited opportunities for exploring efficiencies in the Lake County Sheriff's Office and the 19th Judicial Circuit, both of which operate independently from the Lake County Board, although board members are ultimately responsible for signing off on the budget and staffing requests of its executive and judicial branches.

"Budgets are, in my opinion, also value prioritizations," Parekh said. "So how you fund things demonstrates what you believe in terms of your values." The challenger said there are opportunities to discuss what is being funded in funding requests.

Both candidates were asked their views on this summer's protests in support of the Black Lives Matter movement, as well as the campaign to "defund the police" through reallocation of public safety resources.

Parekh, who participated in a downtown Highland Park demonstration against racism and spoke at a rally held in Lake Forest in support of Black Lives Matter, said everyone should have the right to peacefully protest and he was glad to see both young and old taking to the street. But he was critical of the conflation of civil disobedience and violence.

"I think the Republicans have tried to mix everything together, and the reality is that people who are peacefully protesting have a legitimate concern. I have concern," he said. "I think a lot of people who are not African-American have concern with racial inequities. If you look at Lake County, we're not immune to that."

"Frankly we all have guilt in this. We've all not done enough to break down the systematic racial injustices," the challenger said.

"The idea of 'defund the police' is not a solution. But the question is how do we support our police," he said. "They've been asked to take on an increasing number of roles, and often it crosses into the line of human and health services, so we need to decide how we want to use our police officers effectively."

Some officers, he said, have been too aggressive and unhelpful. For instance, he said Black and Latino motorists in Highland Park were disproportionately pulled over by police in traffic stops that do not result in a citation.

"The number of non-traffic related stops that disproportionately are Latino or African-American is very high," he said. "I don't know how one could say that even though African-Americans make up 2 percent of the population they make up quadruple that percent of stops that that seems like there isn't some bias going on."

About 18 percent of the Highland Park Police Department's traffic stops in 2019 were of minorities, who represented roughly 34 percent of the area's population, according to Census demographic data.

The stop rate of Black motorists is about 130 percent that of white drivers, while the rate of Latino drivers pulled over was less than 70 percent that for white people, according to population-adjusted data police are required to submit to the Illinois Department of Transportation.

What role does the Lake County Board have in that? Parekh said he would learn from other board members about the extent of its potential oversight.

"We can fund initiatives that we think are in alignment with making sure that our police officers are trained well, are not putting themselves or people in harm," he suggested. "I think there's a lot we can do in terms of that."

Rummel said he supported peaceful protests in support of the Black Lives Matter movement and shifting police resources to more community outreach to improve the quality of policing. He said he had worked successfully with numerous Black political and community leaders in the area during his time on the board and in his own business.

"I work well across the aisle. The business I own, an insurance agency, my partner is Black. I'm very supportive of those issues. This summer, do I believe the protests were important? Absolutely. Do I condone the violence? Absolutely not. I think there was no sense for the looting and what went on. Your message can get across without that," Rummel said. "So while I am not fond of the looting, I do understand the message, and the message has to get across. We have to work to be a better society, a better people at working with minorities."

Rummel said he has been a public servant for nearly 20 years, starting with four years on the Lake Forest City Council, with the sole goal of trying to give back to the community.

In recent years, the incumbent Republican said, levels of partisanship have become untenable.

"It certainly has gotten to a level that is just completely unacceptable," he said, and I think it's unacceptable to everybody. 'If you're a Democrat then you're bad,' 'If you're a Republican then you're bad' — we're not looking at the people and saying what have they done, what is this person doing. It's just as soon as you put a label on them they're labeled. I think people are tired of it."

Rummel is currently facing a complaint before the Illinois State Board of Elections for sharing a political action committee with his wife, a member of the Lake Forest City Council, and has faced criticism during board meetings and from the local Democratic Party over photos from a GOP fundraiser in Lake Forest last month, some of which showed attendees without masks.

"I think there's good people out there on both sides and unfortunately people don't want to run because they don't want to be attacked constantly," he said. "How do we get the best and brightest to come out and work for the public if they just don't want to get involved in that? I feel it's a sad state."

WATCH MORE: Mike Rummel and Paras Parekh appear at a remote forum hosted by the League of Women Voters of Lake Forest/Lake Bluff Area