Some of you asked me last week to keep you updated on how my campaign  for Township Supervisor is going. I'm on a slate with 6 other candidates: Clerk, Highway Commissioner and 4 Trustees. Here is the first Press Release of our campaign. We sent it out over the last few days to every local media outlet around. But first a little background.

Here in Downers Grove Township we have a tiny government, sort of a vestigial appendage left over from the days when Illinois was one of the Northwest Territories and there were few villages, towns or counties let alone cities to provide services. DGT government has less than a $5 million dollar budget and by statute, we have to provide three services, a general assistance program to qualifying residents, property assessment, and maintenance of township roads and bridges. Beyond these mandated functions, the township offers a variety of social services for township residents, including senior citizen and youth programs, transportation, and cemetery maintenance. To give you an idea of how small it is the Village of Downers Grove itself has over ten times the number of employees and is only one of 9 towns within the Township.

If elected, as Supervisor I'll be the top official on the board, I will sign the checks and make out the annual budget and financial reports. Our slate has FOIA'd records from the township and attended some of the meetings.

Republicans, as far as anyone knows, have held every position in DGT township government since there's been one, or at least since the Whig party died. They run a very sloppy ship.

Lately they screwed up appointing board members and don't have a legally constituted board anymore as you'll see below. Their own handpicked auditor issued an "adverse" opinion on their year end financial statement last year. In accountant speak that's an F. I'll have more on that in the future. The Highway Commission uses half the budget and is a microcosm of Chicago's Dept. of Streets and Sanitation with all the nepotism there. That's particualrly funny because all we hear out of Republicans around here is if Democrats get elected "they'll make it just like Chicago". This careless compliance, slipshod accounting, and cronyism are hallmarks of bad government and ought to raise red flags. If I have anything to say about it we'll be hoisting ones as big as Old Glory in the coming weeks.

So without further ado here is our first press release:

Republicans Botch Appointments to Downers Grove Township Government

Recently several members of the Downers Grove Township Government chose to retire. Edward P. Smith, the Highway Commissioner left office on December 31, 2008. Supervisor Barbara Wheat proffered her resignation letter effective January 16th. It appears rather than serve out the last few months of their elected terms they left early so their appointed successors could run as incumbents with the attendant advantages.

Illinois statutes (60 ILCS 1/60-5) say that's a legal maneuver, the Board is charged with filling vacancies by appointment, but let's look at the way they did it.

Those same Illinois statutes (60 ILCS 1/60-20) also say "Whenever they (the Board) accept a resignation, the township clerk shall make a minute of the acceptance upon the township records."  Nowhere in the minutes published over the last 6 months does it show the Board made a motion to accept the resignations of either Smith or Wheat. There was no motion made to accept the resignation of Frank Wurster as Trustee. The December 4th minutes show the clerk did read a resolution  honoring Highway Commissioner Smith for his many years of service  which was passed by vote along with a mention that his successor, Lawrence Anderson would be appointed in January. A resolution honoring someone is not the same as a motion to accept a resignation.

During the January 22 meeting Clerk Diane Konicek acknowledged receiving Barbara Wheat's resignation letter on January 16, 2009. Clerk Konicek slso informed the Board Trustee Frank Wurster had tendered his resignation effective January 22, 2009. Trustee Rita Carlson then made a motion to appoint Kathleen Abbate as Trustee to fill the remaining term of Mr. Wurster which was seconded by Trustee Robert Del Sarto with "all" voting aye.

The next order of business was the appointment of Frank Wurster as Supervisor. Trustee Carlson then made a motion to appoint Frank Wurster as Supervisor for the remainder of Wheat's term, seconded by Trustee Del Sarto, again with "all" voting aye.

In order for Wurster to be appointed Supervisor he first had to resign his Trustee position (as he did), he's not allowed to hold two voting positions on the Board simultaneously, however briefly. In order for Abbate to be appointed Trustee Wurster also could not remain in that position, the seat had to be vacant.

There are five voting positions on the Board, the Supervisor and the 4 Trustees. Neither the recently retired Supervisor Barbara Wheat or Trustee William Swanston  were present at that meeting. That left three voting members, one of whom was Wurster who had resigned his position to be appointed to Supervisor,  thus leaving only two qualified voting members.

Two qualified voting members of the Board do not constitute a quorum. According to the Illinois State Open Meetings Act (5 ILCS 120/1.02) (from Ch. 102, par. 41.02)  "for a 5-member public body, 3 members of the body constitute a quorum and the affirmative vote of 3 members is necessary to adopt any motion, resolution, or ordinance".  Thus the appointment of Frank Wurster to DGT Supervisor and  Kathleen Abbate to succeed him as Trustee were not legally done under Illinois law. Neither is any action the Board has taken during or since that meeting as they don't have a legally constituted Board.

Now this might seem like nitpicking to some. But appointing successors for elected officers is a pretty rare occurrence and serious business, especially right before an election. The law is very specific but also flexible, there were any number of ways they could have done this correctly and stayed within the law. But the all Republican Board, many of whom have been there for years if not decades, and really ought to know better ignored the statutes and instead made sloppy and ultimately illegal appointments. If that's how they conduct very rare business like this in open meetings when it's bound to attract attention, how are they conducting the people's business when nobody is watching their everyday activities?

The rest is contact info for local reporters which I won't include here. But I will include the campaign website where you can see the handbill we're having printed with our smiling faces on it and a link to the Actblue page where anyone who has a mind to can make me and TPM look good by ponying up a few bucks for the cause.

We start canvassing on Saturday and will be tromping through whatever weather Mother Nature throws at us all 7 weekends until election day on April 7th. There's no way we can reach all the voters we need to on foot so anything you give will go toward postage for mailing out these press releases (in modified form) to voters. Needless to say every little bit helps and will be greatly appreciated. If you're going to donate I ask that you tack a penny on the end so we can tell how many contributions we get from TPM. It's an old Kos trick. 

Thanks in advance for reading and contributing. Please recommend.

The website