Carpentersville officials limit village president's power

For the first time in three meetings, Carpentersville trustees discussed whether Trustee Paul Humpfer is on the village board - and they decided he is.

Then they decided to limit President Bill Sarto's power with regard to Humpfer.

After reshuffling Tuesday night's agenda, moving a proposed resolution declaring Humpfer's board seat vacant and an ordinance seeking to limit the powers of President Bill Sarto to the end of the meeting, trustees voted 5-2 against the resolution introduced by Sarto and then 5-2 in favor of the ordinance about Sarto.

The vote split the same way both times: Trustee Linda Ramirez-Sliwinski and Sarto voted in favor of the resolution and against the ordinance, while trustees Humpfer, Keith Hinz, Judy Sigwalt, Ed Ritter and Kay Teeter voted against the resolution and for the ordinance.

The resolution stated that the "the nature of the offense for which Trustee Paul Humpfer has been found guilty precludes him from continuing to hold office as a Trustee."

The resolution sought to oust Humpfer based on the trustee's recent conviction on four counts of domestic battery and questions over his residency.

Sarto asserts Humpfer vacated his seat on March 5 when a Kane County judge found the trustee guilty of hitting and poking his wife in the legs with a baseball bat during a domestic dispute in May 2007.

A month after the May 2007 incident, Humpfer was forced to leave his Carpentersville home when his wife was granted an emergency order of protection. Humpfer has acknowledged that he is staying with his parents in Hammond, Ind., and intends to move back into the village.

Trustees supported Humpfer's intent to move back to Carpentersville pending the outcome of legal hearings and appeals.

"I pay all of the bills at the house," said Humpfer, who stated his driver's license, voter registration card and mail indicate his Carpentersville address. "If you are concerned where my shoes are every night, they have been in Indiana and Carpentersville."

Ramirez-Sliwinski said possessing such documents with a Carpentersville address "doesn't mean a thing."

At two previous village board meetings, trustees refused to address the resolution. On the first attempt, trustees snubbed a motion made by Ramirez-Sliwinski to discuss the item. At a subsequent meeting, Ramirez-Sliwinski asked for the item's removal, which Sarto supported.

The vote on limiting Sarto's powers came at about midnight.

Judy Sigwalt and Ed Ritter revisited an ordinance seeking to limit Sarto's powers in response to Sarto's continued insistence that a vacancy exists on the board. The ordinance states that the village board as a whole - and not Sarto alone - has the authority to determine the existence of a trustee vacancy.

Furthermore, the measure asserts that "the village board of trustees disapproves of the village president's unauthorized and unilateral actions, which will incur unneeded expenses for the village and which have unnecessarily contributed to strife and division among the corporate authorities."

Sarto called the oridnance "a get out of jail free card for Humpfer." But Teeter said, "We're making policy."

The proposed ordinance originally also denounced Sarto's requests for the Kane County state's attorney and the state attorney general to step in to remove Humpfer, but village Attorney James Rhodes said Sarto acted within his rights as a resident and did not require village board approval to ask for quo warranto proceedings. A quo warranto is used to determine the legitimacy of an elected officeholder's position.

That part of the proposal eventually was removed.

Neither Kane County State's Attorney John Barsanti nor Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan have presented findings.