Home Rule Could Be on Your November Ballot. Here Is What It Actually Is.

The McHenry County Board is deciding this month whether to put a question about home rule on the November ballot. If a binding version went to voters and passed, McHenry would become only the second home rule county in Illinois, after Cook, and the first ever to get there by a vote of its residents.

Every Marengo voter would see that question on their ballot. And if you have never had a reason to learn what home rule means, you are in good company. It is one of those terms that shows up in Illinois civics constantly and gets explained almost never. So before the board decides, here is the explainer.

The Default Rule, and the Exception

Illinois local governments come in two kinds.

The default kind, which includes both the City of Marengo and McHenry County today, can only do what state law specifically allows. If the council or the county board wants to regulate something, license something, or tax something, someone first has to find the statute that says it may. No statute, no power.

Home rule flips that. Under the 1970 Illinois Constitution, a home rule government may "exercise any power and perform any function pertaining to its government and affairs," including regulating, licensing, taxing, and borrowing, unless the state has specifically taken that power away. The constitution even instructs courts to read those powers generously. Instead of hunting for permission, a home rule government acts unless it is told no.

Cities and villages get home rule automatically once they pass 25,000 people, and smaller ones can adopt it by referendum. Some 224 Illinois municipalities have it, and most of the bigger towns around us are on the list: Crystal Lake, McHenry, Woodstock, Huntley, Lake in the Hills, and Algonquin all crossed the population line. Prairie Grove, a village of about 2,000, voted itself home rule back in 2004. Cary went the other way, rejecting home rule about three to one in March 2024. Marengo, at 7,568 people, is not home rule and never has been.

For a County, the Question Comes With a Catch

A county cannot simply vote itself home rule. The constitution gives county home rule only to a county with a chief executive officer elected countywide. Cook County qualifies because the constitution itself designates its board president as the county's chief executive. McHenry County has elected its board chairman countywide since 2016, but a chairman presides over the board; the office is not an executive one, and it does not trigger home rule.

So the binding version of the question, with wording fixed by state law, is really two changes in one:

"Shall the County of McHenry become a Home Rule County and establish the county executive form of government?"

A yes would grant the county home rule powers and create a new countywide elected office. Under the state's County Executive Law, the executive serves a four-year term, prepares the county budget, makes a range of appointments, directs county administration, and can veto ordinances the county board passes; overriding a veto takes a three-fifths vote of the board. Those are responsibilities that today sit with the board, its chairman, and a hired administrator, so this is less an added office than a separate executive branch for county government. Its powers are set by state law, not by anything the county could tailor locally, a point staff made when board members asked about guardrails at a June 3 committee discussion. A yes in November would not seat anyone right away, either: the first executive would be chosen at the next general election, in 2028.

One thing the law does not clearly answer is when the home rule powers themselves would switch on. State law tells the county clerk to certify the county's resulting status, home rule or not, to the Secretary of State within 30 days of the vote, which reads as immediate. The constitution ties county home rule to having an elected executive, which would not happen until late 2028. No county has ever tested the gap, because none has ever passed this question, so which reading wins would decide whether a yes in November changes the county's powers right away or only once the executive takes office. When a board member pressed the point at the board's July 16 committee of the whole, county administrator Scott Hartman said his research points to the later reading, with home rule arriving when the executive is seated in 2028, though he told the board a definitive answer would take a state's attorney's opinion.

McHenry County voters have seen the executive part before, on its own, and said no. A 2012 referendum on adopting the county executive form failed 64 percent to 36 percent. The two Illinois counties that did adopt it, Will in 1988 and Champaign in 2016, both used a version of the ballot question that expressly declined home rule at the same time. No Illinois county has ever voted to take it.

There is also a softer option on the table, and it is the one a board committee advanced on July 8: an advisory question, "Would you support McHenry becoming a Home Rule County and establishing the county executive form of government?" An advisory question is an opinion poll. It changes nothing by itself, whatever the result.

What Home Rule Would Actually Let the County Do

The practical stakes are mostly about money.

Property taxes. Since 1991, McHenry County's levy has been under the state's tax cap law, which holds a government's property tax growth to the rate of inflation or 5 percent, whichever is less, plus new construction, unless voters approve more. Home rule governments are exempt from the cap. A home rule county board could raise the county's levy beyond that limit by its own vote, with no referendum. For scale: the county's levy is about $67.7 million inside a $288 million budget, and the county is one slice of a Marengo tax bill alongside schools and other districts, which would all stay capped regardless. Some home rule towns promise restraint. Woodstock has publicly committed to keep its increases within the cap even though it no longer has to. But a promise like that is a policy, and a future board can undo a policy by simple vote.

Sales taxes. McHenry County does not currently impose a general county sales tax. A home rule county can, in quarter-point steps, with no statutory ceiling and no referendum, and it applies countywide, including at every register in Marengo. Cook County's home rule sales tax stands at 1.75 percent. Home rule also opens the door to the familiar menu of local taxes: gas, hotel, amusement, packaged liquor. It does not allow an income tax; that still requires the legislature.

Borrowing. A home rule government can issue debt without asking voters first.

Regulation. Home rule is not only about taxes. Cook County has used its powers to set a county minimum wage and require paid sick leave. Rules like that presumptively apply everywhere in the county, including inside towns; a municipality's own conflicting ordinance prevails within its limits, but whether a town without home rule powers of its own, like Marengo, could effectively opt out is a genuinely unsettled question in Illinois law. County zoning, for what it is worth, would still stop at municipal boundaries.

None of this happens automatically on day one. Home rule is capacity, not a tax increase in itself. What it changes is how many decisions a future county board can make without coming back to voters.

What It Would Not Do

The frustration driving this is Springfield. Board member Joe Gottemoller told the July 8 committee meeting, as reported by the Northwest Herald, that he was "so tired" of Cook County being exempted from state laws McHenry must follow, and pointed to solar farms as "kind of the trigger as far as I'm concerned." Board member Eric Hendricks said it was "just sad that Springfield's basically forced us into this position."

That frustration is not abstract. On the same July 21 agenda where the home rule question sits, the board is set to approve five solar project zoning items under consent orders, the result of lawsuits solar developers brought against the county.

But home rule is not a force field against state law, and the county's own committee discussions have acknowledged as much. The legislature can still override home rule governments: laws written with express home rule language still bind them, and the General Assembly can take powers away outright with a three-fifths vote of both chambers, or claim a field exclusively for the state with a simple majority.

On the two specific grievances, the record is mixed:

• The solar siting law. The 2023 state law that requires counties to approve qualifying commercial solar and wind projects contains no express home rule carve-out in its current text. That gives a home rule county a real argument that it would no longer be bound. But no court has tested that argument, and the legislature could amend the law to close the door. It is a maybe, not a guarantee. Worth knowing either way: those siting standards only govern unincorporated land in the first place.
• The BUILD Act. The governor's proposed housing legislation, the other mandate cited at the county board, is written to apply to home rule governments expressly. Home rule would be no shield there at all. The package stalled in Springfield this spring without a vote, though it could return.

So the honest summary is this: home rule reliably expands a county's power over its own money and rules. Against Springfield, it helps only where Springfield has not spoken, and Springfield keeps the last word.

Voters Can Also Take It Back

The constitution has a reverse gear. The same section that grants home rule lets a community vote it back out by referendum, counties included, and Illinois voters have used it.

The famous case is Rockford. In April 1983, after city property taxes had climbed by roughly $10 million in four years, Rockford voters stripped their city of home rule, 17,474 to 14,792. It has been the largest city in Illinois without home rule ever since. Its leaders have spent the decades since trying to undo that vote: a restoration referendum failed 54 to 46 in 2018, and Rockford's mayor is publicly making the case for bringing it back. A few smaller towns have voted home rule out over the years as well.

The one county that has home rule supplies the other cautionary tale. In November 2016, the Cook County Board passed a penny-per-ounce tax on sweetened drinks, with the board president casting the tie-breaking vote. No referendum was required; that is what home rule means. The tax took effect in August 2017, drew intense public backlash, and the board repealed it that October, effective December 1. Both halves of that story are instructive: home rule let the county impose the tax by a single vote, and ordinary politics, not any legal limit, is what undid it.

Binding or Advisory, and the Clock

The board's remaining argument is over which version to send to voters, and the Northwest Herald's account of the July 8 committee meeting captures it. John Collins, who favors asking the real question if the board believes in it, called the advisory version a "very expensive opinion poll" from a county facing budget pressure. Matt Kunkle said he would prefer the advisory route because it gives people time to research a big change, though he had no issue with the board taking up a binding version.

The board's July 16 committee of the whole, its last discussion before the vote, suggested the real fault line is no longer binding versus advisory but the county executive itself. Only one of the members who spoke argued unreservedly for the change, casting it as the only way onto equal footing with Cook County. Most of the rest voiced reservations about the executive form of government the question is packaged with, and two said outright they will vote no on both versions Tuesday. The binding version reaches the full board without a committee endorsement; it failed in the law and government committee and was tabled by administrative services.

Both versions are on the board's posted July 21 agenda, so the choice gets made that night. The agenda also carries a third, separate ballot question: a nonbinding advisory question about restoring local zoning authority over commercial energy projects and residential development, aimed squarely at the solar law and the stalled housing bill. Depending on what passes, county voters could see more than one of these questions in November.

The timing is less flexible than it sounds. State law requires the board to act at least 79 days before the election, which works out to August 17, and the board's August meeting falls on the 18th. That makes July 21 effectively the last regular chance to put any of these on the November ballot. And a binding county home rule question can only appear at a general election in an even-numbered year, so choosing the advisory route now would push the earliest possible binding vote to November 2028.

Opposition is already stirring. Former state representative Cal Skinner has written that he is organizing a campaign against the measure. Statewide, home rule referenda draw well-funded opponents; the Illinois Realtors association has campaigned against them for years and claimed credit for defeating five in the April 2019 elections alone. Recent suburban results cut both ways: Barrington, Roselle, and Glencoe voters approved home rule between 2022 and 2024, while Cary's lopsided 2024 rejection is the nearest data point to home.

What This Means at a Marengo Address

If any of these questions reach the ballot, every Marengo voter gets a say on November 3.

If a binding version ever passed, the county government, though not the city, would gain the power to raise its levy past the tax cap and to add countywide taxes without returning to voters. Whether it would use those powers is a decision for future county boards, which is precisely the argument on both sides: supporters call that flexibility, opponents call it a blank check.

Marengo's own status would not change either way. The city stays a default-rule government unless its residents someday vote otherwise, and at 7,568 people it is nowhere near the automatic threshold.

The full board votes Tuesday, July 21, at 7 p.m. at the county administration building in Woodstock. We will report what it decides.

Marengo Weekly reviewed the draft resolutions in the county board's July 8 committee packet and the posted July 21 board agenda, the state statutes and constitutional provisions they cite (the County Executive Law at 55 ILCS 5/2-5005 through 2-5010, and Article VII, Section 6 of the Illinois Constitution), county committee minutes from May 26, June 3, and June 4, the county clerk's official canvass of the November 2012 election, the text of the proposed housing legislation (House Bill 5626), the Illinois Department of Revenue's tax cap publications, the Illinois Municipal League's list of home rule municipalities, and the county's fiscal year 2026 budget release for this article, along with contemporaneous reporting on Rockford's 1983 and 2018 home rule votes and Cook County's 2016 to 2017 sweetened beverage tax. Board member quotes are from the Northwest Herald's July 9 report of the committee meeting; the account of the July 16 committee of the whole is from the county's YouTube stream of that meeting (machine transcript reviewed against timestamps; no individual board members named or quoted from that discussion by design; the staff answer on effective-date timing is attributed to the county administrator).