Carpentersville board gets tough on panel absences

Like truant schoolchildren, Carpentersville residents who serve on panels that advise the village board will now face consequences when they play hooky.

The Carpentersville village board Tuesday approved a policy giving the board the power to remove a member from any of the village's seven committees and commissions if the member misses three consecutive meetings.

At the same time, trustees reasserted their authority to remove one of their village board colleagues.

The board voted to overturn Village President Bill Sarto's veto of an ordinance giving the board the exclusive authority to declare a village trustee seat vacant.

Sarto defended his veto before it was overturned, calling the ordinance "unconstitutional" and saying it undermined the mayor's statutory rights.

"It's my obligation and duty to protect the powers of the president," Sarto said.

Both measures -- the attendance policy and the ordinance on board vacancies -- were prompted by Sarto's efforts to remove Trustee Paul Humpfer from the village board.

Sarto declared Humpfer's seat vacant after Humpfer was found guilty in March of misdemeanor domestic battery.

But the board quashed Sarto's attempt to remove Humpfer earlier this month and enacted an ordinance giving the entire board -- not just the mayor -- the power to declare a board vacancy.

Meanwhile, four members of the village's audit and finance commission skipped the panel's last meeting because the status of the commission's chairman -- Humpfer -- had not been resolved.

Trustees proposed the attendance policy in response to the situation with the finance panel, saying the village needed a uniform policy on absenteeism and that appointees should be penalized if they don't fulfill their commitment to the village.

Trustee Linda Ramirez-Sliwinski was the only board member to vote against the attendance policy. She has said the policy is not warranted because members of advisory boards are volunteers.

Ramirez-Sliwinski was also the only trustee to vote against overturning Sarto's veto. Sarto abstained from voting on his veto.

After the village board voted this month to keep Humpfer on the board, three of the four residents who skipped the last audit and finance meeting -- including Sarto -- said they will return to the commission at its next meeting Thursday.

But the seat of one of the commission's members -- Nathan Spain -- could be in jeopardy. Spain has missed two meetings and says he won't attend meetings as long as Humpfer remains the chairman.