No reason, such as gross misconduct or conviction on an actual criminal charge, is needed to conduct a recall. A simple majority of the vote is all that's necessary to recall (remove from office) an elected official.
If ten candidates run for election, no one candidate gets the majority of the votes. Somebody could win with, say, 30% of the vote, if the other candidates got less. That means that any losing candidate, or the supporters of any losing candidate, could decide that an easy way to undo the election is to recall the winners. After all, no reason is needed, and since the majority didn't vote for any of the winners, recall should be easy.
The requirement to conduct a recall is extremely low. All you need is the signature on petitions from a number of voters equal to 25% of the number of votes that were cast in the last municipal election. That's not 25% of the registered voters in Buffalo Grove. Rather, that's 25% of the number of votes that were cast. Buffalo Grove has about 45,000 residents. However, only about a thousand typically vote at a municipal election. That means that you would only need about 250 signatures to get a recall measure on the ballot.
There are numerous constituencies in Buffalo Grove. About half of the village population is in Cook County and half in Lake County. If somebody from Cook County wants to get rid of all of the elected officials who live in Lake County, or vice versa, you'd only need a handful of petition signatures from your county to put the elected officials from the other county in jeopardy.
About half of Buffalo Grove residents are Democrats. About half are Republicans. There's even at least one member of the Green Party that I know of. As soon as a municipal election is over, the Republicans could seek to recall all of the Democrats, or the Democrats could seek to recall all of the Republicans, because you don't need a reason. Hey, why not try to replace members of the other guy's party with members of your party, since the only reason you really need is a political power play? Imagine how long it would take for either, or more likely both, of them to go after me, as a member of the Green Party.
About half of Buffalo Grove is Jewish and about half is Christian, with an atheist or two thrown in, here and there, as well as a few other types that we let in. Suppose one Christian decided that there are too many Jews on the Village Board? The Christians would surely have no problem at all getting 250 signatures from like-minded residents to put all of the Jews on trial.
Suppose I got elected to the Board, and one Jew or one Christian didn't like it? You can be sure that, as soon as I took the oath of office (so help me Nobody), the recall movement would start to get rid of that goddam atheist.
Not only that. The ordinance provides that, upon removal from office for the crime of nothing, you are prohibited from running for office, again, for four years. Since when, in this country, do we allow citizens to cancel the civil rights of minorities on a simple, majority vote, particularly when you don't have to do anything wrong to have your civil rights cancelled?
There are a lot more reasons why this is such a bad ordinance. Come to the meeting, tonight, to find out more about it.