The ugly, destructive
campaign to be able to screw your political enemies
before your political enemies screw you, resumes at 7:30
p.m., Monday night (October 5, 2009), at the upcoming
Buffalo Grove Village
Board meeting (agenda).
The Buffalo Grove Village Board of Trustees, including
the
Village President, along with the Village Manager and
Village Clerk.
Photo from the Village of
Buffalo Grove.
The
Board of
Trustees will consider adopting this
Recall Ordinance, which would allow residents to
seek to oust up to three elected officials at any
regularly scheduled election. Election law limits to
three the number of referendum questions that can appear
on the ballot at any one election.
Unfortunately, there are
members of the Village Board who seek to use lawyer
tricks to undo the results of the fair election that was
held, earlier this year, at which time
Lisa
Stone was elected to be a Village Trustee. The
Recall Ordinance would allow the target of the
ordinance, Trustee Stone, or any other elected
officials, such as the main backers of the Recall
Ordinance, to be ousted purely for political reasons, as
no justification, such as misconduct, is required to
place a recall referendum on the ballot.
I've asked Trustee Stone to respond to the recall scam
by sponsoring a term limits ordinance.
I've always
been opposed to term limits. That' what we have
elections, for, but if the election isn't going to mean
anything, then we need term limits.
If "Recall for Political Reasons" becomes the law of
the land in Buffalo Grove, elections won't mean
anything. If somebody who does not have the support of
the majority of trustees gets elected to be a Trustee,
the majority could simply conspire to get a Recall going
and then appoint whoever they want to replace the ousted
trustee.
After all, the top vote getter in the 2009 municipal
election only got around 2,500 votes. There are 25,000
registered voters in Buffalo Grove. That means that
only about 10% of the registered voters thought enough
of the top vote getter to vote for him. It also means
that 90% of the registered voters did not like the top
vote getter enough to bother to vote for him.
That means that just about anybody can be removed in
a Recall, no matter how competent or well qualified that
person is.
Under those terms, why would anybody even bother to
run for election? You're going to end up with a
hand-picked, appointed trustee, anyway, so why bother
running?
Why bother even voting? Your vote won't matter one
iota.
I urge the Village Board to reject this really bad
idea, but my opinion probably won't matter at all.
They've surely made up their minds, that the majority
has successfully manufactured a way to reverse the
results of last April's election, and get away with it,
so they surely are going to try to get away with it by
adopting this Recall Ordinance. I know how lawyers
think.
However, several members of
the community have informed me that they are standing
by, waiting to file Notices of Recall against
Trustee Jeffrey Berman, who is the sponsor the
Recall Ordinance;
Trustee Steven Trilling, who seconded the Motion to
Adopt the Ordinance, and
Trustee Jeffrey Braiman, who is a chief backer of
the Recall Ordinance. These community members have
assured me that they will get their Recall petitions
against Berman, Trilling and Braiman signed and
submitted before those three can get one against Trustee
Stone signed and submitted.
Is that what we want in
Buffalo Grove? Do we really want to turn the focus of
our community, away from the welfare of the community
and, instead, on who can screw whom before the other
person screws you? I don't think that's what
Money Magazine had
in mind when it named Buffalo Grove as one of the 2009
winners in 100
Best Places to live in the United States.
The purpose for the Recall Ordinance, as stated in
the proposed ordinance, is to ensure that "elected
officials are responsible and accountable to the
electorate for their behavior in office," and to ensure
that "elected officials properly and appropriately
discharge their responsibilities in office." However,
the lack of any requirement that an elected official
violate any of those standards, or do anything else
wrong, in order to be recalled, proves that those stated
purposes are really merely a sham. The real purpose for
the Recall ordinance is political -- to reverse the
results of a legitimate election, in which Trustee Stone
(and two others) won and three others lost.
Don't do it! Back off from this really bad idea.
Thanks to the power of the
internet, THE WHOLE WORLD IS WATCHING. If you are old
enough to be one of the current members of the Buffalo
Grove Village Board, you surely remember that phrase.
It comes from the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago,
when the hippies (my kind of people) chanted that phrase
to a worldwide television audience, while the police
rioted at Grant Park and nearby in Downtown Chicago, in
a bloody attempt to silence the hippies' political
dissent regarding the Viet Nam War and the power of the
Establishment.
I will be at the Buffalo Grove Village Board meeting
on Monday, October 5, 2009, where I'll be offering my
sentiments to the Board during Public Comment on the
proposed Recall Ordinance. I hope to see you there,
too.
