Buffalo Grove officials upstanding

I was both dismayed and angered to read the stories in the Herald regarding the ongoing friction among members of the Buffalo Grove Village Board.

I was Jeff Braiman's law partner for 14 years. I was on the Buffalo Grove Transportation Commission and Plan Commission for about the same length of time. I know many of the trustees very well. I know Village Manager Bill Brimm and Village Attorney Bill Raysa also very well.

I no longer live in Buffalo Grove, so I have no stake in nor real concern about the OTB issue that apparently has erupted and so consumed them. Some people will recall that during my tenure on the Plan Commission, I was anything but a gainsayer for the village board. I opposed positions taken by all of them on numerous occasions. I fought tooth and nail with every one of them at one time or another.

What compels me to write this letter, though, is the maligning and impugning of the character and integrity of Messrs. Braiman, Brimm, Raysa and, apparently, too, the other longer-serving members of the board by Lisa Stone. Let me say flat-out: Lisa Stone, you are wrong. To my knowledge, and in more than a decade of dealing with them, each person mentioned above is absolutely above reproach. Period. They do not collude. They do not do "back door deals." They are as clean, honest and trustworthy a group of individuals as I have ever known.

There is an old saying in the legal profession: If the facts are against you, argue the law; if the law is against you, argue the facts. If both the law and the facts are against you, yell and call the other lawyer bad names. Lisa Stone is just yelling and calling people bad names.

Michael Samuels

Arlington Heights