The head of the political committee formed to preserve the elected office of Champaign County auditor is a Republican from DuPage County.

He's also the DuPage County auditor.

Bob Grogan filed a report with the Illinois State Board of Elections last week disclosing that the "Vote No Champaign County Auditor Referendum Committee" had been formed and had $3,510 on hand.

The report did not disclose the source of the funds or what they would be spent on. But in an interview, Grogan said the money came from other members of the association of elected county auditors, who are both Democrats and Republicans.

"There's no sugar daddy out there with some other agenda," said Grogan. "It's strictly this group that is interested in it."

"We have taken votes and said we would take whatever action seemed appropriate in support that there would continue to be an elected Champaign County auditor," he said. "This isn't unprecedented. When these votes have come up in the past in other counties, that's been the stand of the association."

Grogan said there are significant advantages to having an elected county auditor.

"I am a peer of the other elected officials so that when it's the sheriff's turn to be audited, I am a fellow elected official. I have statutory authority behind me when I say I'm going to be auditing this. Or if I need to go into the clerk's office and say I need to do this, I am a fellow elected official. That means I've been endorsed by the people. I have a certain stature there. And I also have the statutes behind me."

An appointed auditor would not have that standing, Grogan said.

"The statutes that empower me to go into the clerk's office or the recorder's office or the coroner office, do not empower an appointed county auditor to do that, because the statutes are written for county auditors," Grogan said. "As far as I understand it, no one has ever shown me where the county board can go into the operations of another elected official and say, for example, 'I want to go in and have an audit on what you're doing with marriage licenses.' But the statutes say that I can do that.

"Whether (Champaign County) Tony (Fabri) is doing that or not, that's a different story. I can't speak to the actual workings on the ground there, but I can tell you that the mechanisms available to an elected county auditor are different than those available to an appointed county auditor."

Further, Grogan said, if an auditor is appointed by the county board but the public believes "the person is not doing their job, there's no recourse for the people to directly affect and I believe that they are going to directly affect Tony in the next election I don't believe there's any way they can say that this appointed county auditor, he's not going his job.

"They'd have to go through this Byzantine process where I have to un-elect these other people so that they won't appoint this guy again."