The lengthy letter recently published in this newspaper by DeKalb County State’s Attorney Ron Matekaitis, explaining how carefully he has spent your tax dollars, was a marvel of obfuscation. I learned long ago that the longer it takes a politician to explain himself, the more you should read between the lines. This adage certainly applies here. The more he tells you how efficiently he has spent his million-dollar budget, the tighter you should hold your wallet. In fact, he was just before a committee of the county board this week, pleading for more money to add yet another position to his bloated staff.

The only thing he doesn’t do in his long diatribe to us citizens is give you a comparison between the budget that existed when he came into office and the budget he lords over today. If he did that, it would reflect that it is hundreds of thousands of dollars higher since he took office. Of course, some of this is because of accounting changes that placed additional figures in his budget that weren’t there before. And some of it has to do with the growth of the county and its burden on the office. But most of it has to do with a tax-and-spend philosophy that is pushed by politicians so they can create bureaucracies to consolidate their power. In the meantime, citizens are left gasping as they stare at their real estate tax bills, wondering how they are going to make ends meet.

It would have been nice for Mr. Matekaitis, as a true cost-saving measure, to offer to personally prosecute some serious cases to alleviate the backlog of felonies in the system. He could offer to participate in the prosecution of Willie Spates or William Nally, both of whom sit in jail on charges of first-degree murder. But that would take him out of traffic court, where more than $135,000 of our tax dollars are being spent for him to negotiate speeding tickets. He should be spending a lot of time writing letters to the paper and knocking on doors throughout the county. Great jobs like his don’t come along very often. We are the county in the state of Illinois to be blessed with a state’s attorney who has never personally prosecuted a felony case.

On Election Day, take a look at your tax bill before you vote. Then vote for candidates that vow to guard you tax dollars as zealously as they guard their own. And to those who spend it like water, introduce them to the private job market. Only then will they appreciate what caused them to lose the election.

Clay Campbell

Republican candidate for DeKalb County State’s Attorney