This is one in a series of stories looking at contested races in the Aurora area in the March 19 primary election.
The contest in the Republican primary for Kendall County circuit clerk is between incumbent Matthew Prochaska and challenger Kit Kuhrt, who is an Oswego trustee.
No candidate is running in the Democratic primary for circuit clerk in Kendall County.
The primary election is set for March 19, with the general election to be held Nov. 5.
The circuit clerk is a non-judicial officer responsible for all of the official records of the court filed in Kendall County, including child support, traffic, probate and criminal court cases.
Prochaska, of Bristol, said it’s important to continue to modernize the office. He previously served as a Kendall County Board member starting in 2012. He took office as the Kendall County circuit clerk in December 2020.
“I would like to follow-through and finish all of the technology upgrades,” he said.
The office has transitioned to e-records for civil, family, criminal and traffic cases, he said.
“It has been a huge undertaking and massive change in procedure to the office,” he said. “To help accomplish this, we have finished the e-filing for every case type.”
As the keeper of records of court-related documents, the system previously only had partial e-filing, Prochaska said.
“When I started serving in the office, we only had civil e-filing and now we have taken it to include all cases,” he said.
Prochaska said he’s currently working to get older cases scanned into a case management system.
“Once that is done, the office will be 100% electronic,” he said.
He said the office has secured more than $1 million in technology modernization grants to help advance the technology upgrades in the courthouse.
The transition to electronic filing is beneficial for the public and legal profession, he said.
“The upgrades have made it quicker to process cases. It also makes it easier for judges and attorneys to access records. It makes it much easier for people to have access to court records,” he said.
The Kendall County Circuit Clerk’s Office needs to be modernized in all areas, including the payroll system, Kuhrt said.
Kuhrt said as a small business owner of multiple types of businesses, he would bring his experience to the office if elected.
“I will use my more than 20 years of experience in business to bring stability to the staff and minimizing the endless turnover of employees that currently exists,” he said.
He would bring his experience as Oswego trustee as well, the candidate said.
As an Oswego Village Board member, he advocated for and voted in support of hiring additional police officers.
“The village has hired five new police officers in the last few years, bringing our police department to an all-time high number of police staff,” he said.
He was part of the votes that approved balanced budgets and reduced property tax rates in recent years, he said. Kuhrt was elected to the village board in 2021.
He said he would be forthright with information in the Circuit Clerk’s Office.
Circuit clerks are not required to answer some Freedom of Information Act requests, he said.
“I will work to change that law,” he said. “In the meantime, even though clerks are not required to respond to FOIAs, nothing prevents the office from doing so. When I am the circuit clerk, my policy will be to presume all the information in my office is public, as much as is legally permissible, instead of presuming that the information is private.”
Linda Girardi is a freelance reporter for The Beacon-News.
