Gordy Hulten, Champaign County Clerk, is working hard to make the County Clerk's office more efficient and has delivered some very impressive results in a very short time.  Gordy had some very big shoes to fill when Mark Shelden resigned as County Clerk to work as Congressman Tim Johnson's Chief of Staff.   Mark Shelden's office had a reputation for being one of the best in the state and it looks like Gordy is trying to raise the bar even higher. 



Here is a quick synopsis of the higher-profile projects and systemic changes that are easy to quantify.  Gordy can rattle off dozens of other small things but this hopefully gives you a good feel for how his office considers efficiency and financial stewardship in every thing they do.

• Ballot printing - savings equal about 80 percent of our ballot printing costs, including about $30,000 in savings for 2012 at no added expense.  There will be annual recurring savings as well, with amounts varying depending upon quantity of ballots required for a given year.
• Publication of specimen ballot/election notices - worked with News-Gazette to publish specimen ballot and election notice for Apri 5, 2011 election as an insert instead of as a classified ad.  This policy satisfies the law and provides better service to County voters than publishing in other less widely read papers, and reduces costs from $30,000 for notices in 2008 to less than $10,000 for 2012.
• Online marriage and civil union license applications - enacted June 1, 2011 in response to legalization of civil unions.  Reduces time in-office required for customers to pick up licenses from 20-30 minutes to 5-10 minutes, saving personnel hours.

http://www.news-gazette.com/news/education/2011-11-01/urbana-school-board-begins-discussion-redistricting.html

Helping to save the taxpayers money is more likely with cooperation from other districts throughout Champaign County and Gordy provided a great example:



"In April, I asked the City of Champaign, City of Urbana and Urbana School District #116 to draw new sub-district/ward boundaries in 2011 rather than 2012, even though the new sub-districts wouldn't be in effect until April 2013.  I did so because when we mail new voter ID cards to all the County's registered voters in January 2012, I wanted to have all the new districts on them.  If Champaign, Urbana, and D116 had waited until 2012, we would have had to mail new cards to all voters in the those districts a second time at considerable expense.  I am happy to report that it appears all three districts will have their redistricting efforts completed by early December as we had requested and that we will be able to achieve substantial savings for County taxpayers because of their cooperation."



We need more leaders like Gordy Hulten representing the taxpayers.