Lakemoor’s term limits issue may not end with election

Voters in Lakemoor will decide April 5 whether people elected to the offices of village president and village trustees should be limited in the number of terms they can serve. The ballot question approved last fall by the village board asks voters if they wish to limit village officials to no more than three terms in office. If approved, it would apply to officials elected starting in April 2013.

However, some experts say even if the referendum is overwhelmingly approved, the matter may be far from settled.

The problem, according to Lake County State’s Attorney Michael Waller and the executive director of the Illinois Municipal League, lies in a three-word phrase contained in the state’s constitution.

At issue is the meaning of the words “terms of office” in the section of the constitution outlining the powers of non-home-rule communities such as Lakemoor.

Waller and the league’s Larry Frang say those words may have different interpretations, and the matter ultimately may have to be settled by the state’s highest court.

Lakemoor Village President Todd Weihofen, a proponent of the proposal, said the reason for the referendum is a desire to give the village’s citizens more say in the shape of their government.

“Term limits are becoming very popular, both in Illinois and across the country,” Weihofen said. “We wanted to ask our residents what kind of a government they want to have and allow them to make this decision.”

If the results of a pair of term limit propositions put before voters in recent elections in the home-rule communities of Naperville and Downers Grove are any indication, Weihofen is correct about the concept’s popularity.

In November, 72 percent of Naperville voters who went to the polls approved term limits for village officials elected starting this year.

Downers Grove voters favored an advisory referendum on term limits in the February election by an even more robust 84 percent.

But home-rule communities have much broader powers to make decisions effecting local government than non-home-rule municipalities such as Lakemoor. Home rule is a special provision in state law that allows communities over 25,000 in population and those that adopt it through referendum to exercise powers beyond those granted to communities in the constitution. Among those powers are greater flexibility in setting tax rates and addressing other economic issues, zoning matters and many other normal functions of government.

Without home rule, municipalities must generally adhere to the state constitution’s design for government, except for six specific exemptions outlined in Article 7, Section 7.

One of those exceptions states municipalities have the right “to provide by referendum for their officers, manner of selection and terms of office.”

Waller said the state constitution does not set limits on the number of terms in office a person can serve, so it is his belief that language allows communities to set the length of an individual term, not limit the number of terms.

“Generally, there are no term limits provided by Illinois law, and non-home rule communities are bound by Illinois law,” Waller said. “That would lead one to conclude that those words are speaking to the length of time an officer’s term can be; be it three or four or however many years.”

Other readings of the meaning of the language are possible, Waller allowed, and he said he believed the courts will have to come into play if the referendum is approved.

“A person who wants to run for a fourth term could conceivably go to court and seek a declaratory judgment that the limits are unconstitutional,” he said. “There could also be a challenge to someone who files petitions to run for a fourth term that would wind up in court looking for an order to enforce the limits.”

Frang concurred with Waller’s opinion and said his group is staying out of the matter until the courts speak to the issue.

“The league has no official position on the matter of term limits simply because the language is unclear,” Frang said. “Ultimately, we believe it will be up to the Supreme Court to decide the meaning of the language.”

Weihofen said he was unaware of any ambiguity regarding establishing term limits, but that the village board had submitted the proposed referendum for legal review before its adoption and had been given the green light. Trustee Ralph Brindise said he voted against putting the referendum before the voters because he believed a community as small as Lakemoor should not arbitrarily shrink the pool of people available for public service.

He, too, said he was unaware of any potential controversy surrounding the enforcement of term limits, and his reaction could be interpreted as prophetic.

“I am still going to vote against the referendum because I don’t think it is a good idea, but I didn’t know there could be problems with it,” he said. “If it passes, I guess we will just have to see how it all plays out.”