Under ‘microscope’ with Bears project, Arlington Heights to keep local campaign finance rules
Arlington Heights — already one of the few Illinois municipalities with its own campaign finance rules — is poised to keep the restrictions in place as elected officials in the Northwest suburb consider redevelopment proposals for the sprawling Arlington Park property by the Chicago Bears or other developers.
Ahead of local elections next April, most village board members have endorsed imposing limits on contributions to candidates for mayor and trustee, but agreed those caps — unchanged since 2018 — should increase due to inflation.
Current contribution caps limit local candidates from accepting more than $1,000 from any single organization and $500 from an individual.
By comparison, candidates for state and local races elsewhere in Illinois are limited to receiving as much as $7,300 from individuals, $14,600 from organizations and $72,800 from political action committees. There are no limits from political parties.
But some village board members this week argued Arlington Heights should have a higher standard, especially as some critics of the proposed Bears stadium and mixed-use project have raised questions of undue influence by potential developers of the 326 acres of prime real estate.
“I don’t know that there are many people in our community, across the state or across the country, that would think that Cook County or the state of Illinois’ views of what’s a maximum for a contribution is the height of ethics,” Trustee Bill Manganaro said during a committee discussion Monday night.
“We all sat here over the past several months and listened to some people question our transparency around the Arlington Park project,” he said. “We are under a little bit of a microscope with that project, however it gets developed. It’s the most valuable property in the state, and it will get developed. And being under that microscope, I think it behooves us in the village to have the highest standards of ethics that we can possibly achieve.”
Trustee Wendy Dunnington added it’s important to prevent the potential of “quid pro quo.”
“It is projected to be the largest private development in Illinois history,” she said. “Whatever we can do to prevent the appearance of corruption or impropriety, it’s more important than ever that we have those campaign limits at the local level and at a small dollar amount as they are right now.”
Both trustees proposed tightening the local rules further, perhaps mirroring ethics rules in Elgin and Aurora that limit how much businesses or vendors who have contracts with the local government — or are seeking to do business in the town — can give to candidates.
In some ways, Arlington Heights has stricter rules already since the limitations apply to everyone, not just businesses, said Village Manager Randy Recklaus.
An outright ban would go further, but there wasn’t consensus on the board to do that.
Trustee Colin Gilbert favored eliminating the local caps and deferring to state campaign finance law, citing the increasing costs to run campaigns, including printing, postage, signage and digital communication.
“One thing that bothers me a little bit about the caps that we have in Arlington is it almost seems like it’s defensive, as if there’s an expectation that there’s going to be some unscrupulous, unethical things happening, so we have to impose these low caps,” Gilbert said. “I don’t feel that way about our town. I don’t feel that way about this board. I don’t think that there’s this presumption that there’s going to be something unethical and therefore we have to keep these limits low.”
Village board members are expected to vote to increase the contribution limits soon, though they agreed any changes wouldn’t take effect until the 2029 election cycle.
cplacek@dailyherald.com