Outsiders may vote on Campton Hills referendum
Residents of properties recently seceded from Campton Hills may get to vote on a Nov. 4 referendum that could dissolve the village, even though they technically don't live in it anymore.
Kane County Judge Michael J. Colwell said Tuesday he lacks jurisdiction to rule on Campton Hills' request to prevent owners no longer living in the village from weighing in on the controversial ballot item.
The village should have taken its case to the appellate court in Elgin, the judge said.
"I'm not really comfortable jumping back into this puddle," said Colwell, whose rulings in five disconnection cases were upheld last week by the appellate court.
About 700 people live in the five most recently disconnected neighborhoods. Pat Griffin, an attorney representing some of them, argued Tuesday that by law disconnections within 60 days of an election can have no bearing on local voters.
Hal Morris, an attorney for the village, countered that Campton Hills is well outside that timeline because the original decision in the five disconnection cases was handed down by Colwell seven months ago. The appellate court last week merely upheld that decision, he said.
Several residents from both the village and recently disconnected areas attended Tuesday's hearing. Afterward they said the situation smacked of disenfranchising voters at a time when the village's future is on the line.
"They want to rob me of my right to vote," said Al Sebek of the disconnected Cheval de Selle subdivision.
The Nov. 4 ballot issue asks whether the village, incorporated a little more than a year ago, should be dissolved.
Sebek said the village wouldn't have to worry about outsiders voting if it hadn't appealed Colwell's original decision.
"They have fought us every inch of the way," he said.
Wendy George, of the village's Fox Mill subdivision, saw it the other way around.
"They're having their cake and eating it too," she said of people who now live outside the village but still want to vote on its future.
"If they have any sense of justice they shouldn't vote on it."
Campton Hills Village President Patsy Smith said trustees would discuss their next step at a closed session meeting later Tuesday night.