Buffalo Grove decides not to put recall to voters

Buffalo Grove trustees themselves exercised a form of recall Monday night.

They rejected a proposal to put a referendum on the February ballot asking voters if they support the idea of recalling local officials.

Now, the board has to decide whether it wants to implement a recall provision on its own. No timeline for that discussion was set Monday.

The idea of a nonbinding referendum asking voters whether they support recall was proposed by Village President Elliott Hartstein after a resident suggested it.

But the idea got virtually no support from the rest of the board, and several criticized the proposal as tantamount to shirking their duty.

Trustee Jeffrey Berman, who started the debate a few months ago when he proposed passing a recall ordinance, said Hartstein's proposal was not so much about gathering public input as it was about ducking the responsibility of actually legislating.

His view was seconded by Trustee Beverly Sussman, who said: "It is our responsibility to govern. It is our responsibility to do our job, to legislate."

Berman wrote the recall ordinance, he said at the time, in response to citizens who were concerned over the rancor on the board that emerged postelection.

Both Sussman and Trustee Jeffrey Braiman said they were reluctant to send the board down the "slippery slope" toward holding referendums on touchy issues, rather than the trustees themselves deciding things like the use of red-light cameras.

"Where do we stop?" Braiman asked. "Where do we draw the line?"

Trustee Lisa Stone continued to express reservations about recall, although she said she basically supports the concept.

She said she read a series of comments made on Daily Herald blogs before the April 2009 trustee election. The comments, she said, suggest to her that her political opponents were ready even before the election to pursue recall as a weapon, as insurance against her winning the election.

"It is clear that for these residents, recall is a tool for political retribution," she said. She said the election process could be sabotaged, inhibiting quality candidates from running for office.

Recall: Trustees saw referendum as shirking their duties