Hanover Park mayor's veto can't save wife's job from chopping block

Though it never stood a chance, Hanover Park Mayor Rod Craig needed to try.

He exercised a seldom-used veto power on Thursday and overturned a 4-2 vote to eliminate the collector job held for more than two decades by Village Clerk Sherry Craig, the mayor's wife.

"Both politics and revenge are the motives for this ordinance," Craig wrote to his board this week. "Those who proposed it and voted for it did so solely out of vindictiveness."

But his veto was quickly overturned with the same vote by trustees, who provided the required two-thirds majority. With Craig's last-ditch effort unsuccessful, the collector job will expire April 30, or the close of the fiscal year.

"I felt it was important to stand up and voice my opinion for an absolute wrong," Craig said after the meeting.

It's only the second time in Hanover Park history a mayor has ever exercised his veto power, said village attorney Jim Binninger. The last was by Lou Barone, more than 20 years ago.

Trustee Robert Packham said that while the Craigs may not believe it, his vote was one of the most difficult decisions he's ever had to make in his nearly 20 years of service.

"They would never believe it, but it's the truth," Packham said.

He says the collector job isn't necessary anymore, especially with the village's new director of information technology, a hire made at the mayor's insistence.

The finance department, which would absorb the collector's duties, "suddenly has the ability and time to take on some things," Packham said.

He also said the village's customer service isn't up to standards, in part due to Craig.

"In our view, she creates a bottleneck that everything needs to funnel through her. It can't continue on that way."

Many of Craig's supporters would say otherwise. They showed up in droves at the last board meeting to speak to the merit of the "face of Hanover Park."

Conceding that efforts to save the job were futile, Trustee Toni Carter moved to delay its elimination until Craig's term as village clerk ends in April 2009. It's only fair, she said, given that Craig ran with the knowledge that the clerk and collector jobs have gone hand in hand for years. But it, too, was voted down 4-2.

"We need police officers now," Packham said.

Helping to fund an understaffed police department has been cited as the main reason to get rid of the collector job, which earns $55,000 annually.

The Craigs don't buy the sales pitch and maintain the motive stems from a contentious April election.

"Thank goodness we have elections every couple of years," the mayor said.