Gregory Mattingley for County Board 2022

Listen to Greg's interview on youtube, from which most of this article is written.

Greg currently serves on the Macon County Board and has done so since 2012. He is a member of the Board's Finance Committee and chair of the Justice Committee. Greg is an attorney who was the County's Chief Public Defender from 2008 - 2012.

Mattingley understands the County Board's duties to include: oversight of county offices, manage the county budget, pass ordinances governing unincorporated areas of the county, set the tax levy, collect and distribute taxes. He says county offices overseen by the Board include Sheriff, the jail, State's Attorney, Probation Department, Public Defender's Office, County Highway Department, and the Macon County Mental Health system, at least as far as funding is concerned. He says the county also helps townships perform annual property tax assessments.

Political Platform & Priorities

When Greg retired from being an attorney in 2012, he wasn't ready to "just sit in a chair and do nothing," and considered either being a substitute teacher or serving on the County Board. John Baxter, a former public defender, who joined the macon county board in 2008, encouraged Greg to join the County Board "even though he knew my political affiliation," says Mattingley. Baxter was a Democrat & Mattingley is a Republican. Greg felt he had a working knowledge regarding judicial departments that others on the County Board might lack, due to his experience as an attorney. He's also been a precinct committeeperson a couple times over the years.

During his last four years as a public defender, Greg says there was a lot of initiative in establishing "specialty courts" in conjunction with the probation department, State's Attorney, Macon County Mental Health Systems, and Dr. Jeanelle Norman, which used "a more intensively based community sourced model of dealing with offenders instead of just shipping them off to prison for low level, non violent, non sex-offender types of criminals who would otherwise would have been sent to prison because of their past records," says Mattingley. In 2012, he wanted to continue to support these efforts and wishes to continue that work into his next term.

Financial and budgetary oversight is important to Mattingley. He talked about an investigation into Jay Scott, a former Macon County State's Attorney, which Mattingley initiated with a petition. The article cites several allegations. Mattingley told me part of it stemmed from when Jay Scott was doing his budget, and that Greg felt Scott was being dishonest to the finance committee.

Mattingley went on to talk about a concerning budget process office holders sometimes engage in. He described it as office holders will get near the end of the budget year without having spent all their allocated funds, then will spend the remaining funds just because they are available, instead of returning funds to the county. He says some will follow up by requesting the next year's budget be based upon what the office holder had actually spent, rather than what the office holder truly needed. Greg says he doesn't like this and calls it out when he sees it, though says he doesn't know how to break that cycle.

Greg says the top two concerns of voters on the political right, in regard to county issues, are: community safety and fiscal responsibility. He says the top three concerns of voters on the political left are: marijuana dispensary, women's equality, and abortion rights.

He adds that he has "a little bit of a libertarian streak" and that he is "more fiscally conservative but socially liberal on some things." He says there is a huge disconnect in the public's knowledge of County processes, in regard to the County having no power over allowing dispensaries in incorporated areas (Decatur, Mt. Zion, Forsyth, etc).

Greg talked about the Democrat's all women slate for county-wide offices. He said he "can't divorce them as much from the more national issues, though they also apply locally." He continued that by the nature of their statements, it seems they (the women candidates) think they have something to do with the overturning of(pdf) Roe v. Wade. He said those opinions "have no bearing on what we as county officeholders and county board members can and cannot do."

Political Eperience & Ambitions

"This will be my last term, assuming I am elected," says Mattingley. He says he will be 76 at the end of the 2022 term.

Mattingley has served on the County Board since 2012. He has served on both the Justice Committee and the Finance Committee. He is currently the chair of the Justice Committee. He says he served as a precinct committeeperson a couple times over the years.

Greg was the Chief Public Defender from 2008 - 2012. Prior to that he says he served both as a private attorney and part time attorney for the Public Defender's Office. He says he's also served on the Community Restorative Board of the Adult Redeploy Illinois program, the Macon County Mental Health Board, and Heritage Behavioral Health's board before they were called "Heritage".

Questions from Voters

How will you protect voting rights?

• "There's really nothing that a county level officer is going to do or vote on that has a bearing or effect on voting rights and just whatever affect their is is already passed with the most recently redrawn maps that were done according to the last census," says Greg. He's referencing the 2021 Redistricting of the county.

What are your budget goals?

• "To keep the budget basically as flat as we can, in terms of increases, and keep it as balanced as we can."

What are your goals regarding taxes?

• "To maintain or decrease the tax levy."
  • Earlier, Greg talked about a tax cut that led to a reduction in the County's 'rainy day' fund. He said the cut came at a time the county budget was doing very well, but they later had to increase the levy again due to budget shortfalls. He attributed part of the budgetary issues to COVID, though shortfalls were written about in 2015.
  • I asked if he thought the tax cut was a mistake and Greg said "In retrospect it probably was [a mistake to decrease the tax levy], but at the time, it looked like a good idea to take a little bit of the burden off our tax payers."
• Greg talked about potential funds from having a cannabis dispensary, though he opposes having a dispensary in unincorporated areas of Macon County for safety reasons (see below for more on this), and the Decatur City Council has twice declined to allow a cannabis dispensary in the city.

How will you address crime?

• Mattingley: "It would be nice if we had more money, because some of the alternative programs we developed work and cut down on recidivism. Some of it involves getting the State's Attorneys and prosecutors to think differently than they once thought about how you define success with a person who's come into the criminal justice system."
  • He talked about Drug Court, the Adult Redeploy Illinois program, and Mental Health Court
  • Regarding redefining success, he gave a theoretical example of someone who goes through one of these programs and re-offending after 5 or more years being a success when compared to someone going without these programs and reoffending within a year or two.
  • He says it's not perfect, but it beats the way we're doing things.
  • He says having more money for these programs would be nice, but they're trying to do more with less as properties age and our local population shrinks, thus property tax revenue declines.
• Mattingley discussed his concerns with the Illinois Criminal Justcie Reform Act (HB3653). He "immensely disagree[s]" with the end to cash bail. See his quote below. He also said the county board has no legislative authority in regard to cash bail.

What goals do you have regarding cannabis dispensaries?

I did not ask this question directly, because we covered it thoroughly in other parts of the interview. I've summarized his responses here.

• I asked if Mattingley would advocate for cannabis dispensaries if he were in discussion with City Council and he said "Actually yes. I see no reason for the residents of Macon County to have to drive to Springfield." He continued "I don't see the public safety concern for the business or its employees if they are in an incorporated area where you have a reliable police presence."
• I asked if he would be interested in approving a cannabis dispensary and he said: "In the unincorporated areas of macon county, no." And the reason is "public safety". Cannabis is "a cash only business" and a "cash only business is an attractive target, and to put it in an unincorporated area where you might have one deputy who's nowhere near anything is asking for a problem. At least in an incorporated area, you have a police officer nearby who can respond"
• He says other cannabis-related businesses have already been approved by the County Board.

Additional Quotes

• About the Illinois Criminal Justcie Reform Act (HB3653), Mattingley said:
  • "I immensely disagree with the last change that they made at the state level crime act, especially in taking away cash bail requirements. That hasn't hit yet, but I don't think even our public defender approves it, and I was a public defender and sometimes bonds are set too high. It's not supposed to be for detentions. It's supposed to ensure a court appearance. But at the same time, it needs to have a cash component, so i disagree with that. I think if that continues on and goes into full effect and isn't changed, we're going to have an immense crime problem because people [are put] right back on the street. And the only way to address that... [umms, uhs, fillers] We can only address through the powers of the purse is to put more tax dollars into the budgets of the Sheriff, for both deputies and investigations, but also into the Sheriff's budget for the jail and if that bill emboldens criminals, you'll see more cases filed, more perhaps demands for more staff by offices such as the Probation Department, the Public Defender, and the State's Attorney."