B. Hills ethics complaint unresolved

Barrington Hills voters will have to make up their own minds on election day April 5 regarding the significance of an admitted violation of new campaign finance laws by one of the village board candidate slates.

Former village trustee George Schueppert’s complaint against the “Save 5 Acres” slate wasn’t resolved by Tuesday’s public hearing before the State Board of Elections.

This was due to both the unavailability of a key witness expected back in town April 7 and the inability of the state board’s hearing officer to complete her report before the election.

Schueppert’s attorney, Richard Means, said the absent witness was the office worker now said to have filed the campaign finance report for the “Save 5 Acres” slate of incumbent Joe Messer, current Village Clerk Karen Selman and Patty Meroni.

Means said it was this report that failed to identify Barrington Hills resident Benjamin B. LeCompte III as the original source of $5,000 donations the candidates individually made to their campaign fund.

Messer said his slate has already acknowledged that a mistake was made and returned the full $15,000 to LeCompte to correct it.

LeCompte said his desire was to support the individual candidates — not the slate — and that the responsibility for proper reporting of it was theirs, not his.

Means said that while the issue isn’t getting resolved before the election, Schueppert’s complaint was successful in bringing the matter to public attention.

“At least we’ve exposed this falsely reported donation,” Means said.

Messer said the late resolution of the complaint will deny any possibility of his slate’s admitted mistake being acknowledged as minor and unintentional by the state board before the election.

“It would be nice to have an official resolution of it,” Messer said.

Also in the race for three 4-year seats on the board are the candidates of the Common Sense Party — Diane “Dede” Wamberg, Steve D’Amore and incumbent Beth Mallen — and current Plan Commission Chairman David Stieper, who’s running independently.

Harold “Skip” Gianopulos, another member of the Common Sense Party, is running unopposed for the single 2-year seat on the board.