Former Bolingbrook woman slaps village with suit

A thwarted Bolingbrook mayoral candidate filed a federal lawsuit against the village Monday over her petitions being disallowed, while she also charged defamation over comments made at a village board meeting.

Bonnie Kurkowski-Alicea filed the suit in U.S. District Court in Chicago. She charged violation of due process because her candidate petitions were disallowed by a board made up of colleagues and political allies of Mayor Roger Claar.

According to the suit, Kurkowski-Alicea filed a petition with 205 signatures in January 2009 to be put on the ballot for the election last April, and 197 signatures were required. Yet election officials determined 42 of those signatures were disallowed. A hearing in February was run by village Trustees Sandra Swinkunas and Leroy Brown and Clerk Carol Penning. The suit charged that Swinkunas and Penning were running with Claar on a unified ticket under the banner Citizens First for Bolingbrook, and Brown was a longtime Claar ally as his deputy mayor.

They rejected the petitions and protests. Kurkowski-Alicea ran a write-in campaign and lost to Claar by about 75 percent to 25 percent.

"There was no conflict," Claar responded, adding that the review board "was made up of people dictated by state statute, which are existing trustees and the clerk."

The defamation charges stem from a village board meeting last July at which Trustee Michael Lawler suggested that criticism from Kurkowski-Alicea, whom he cited by name, was in part responsible for the recent death by stroke of school-board member Debbie Bielawski. "The folks who did this," Lawler said, "who chose to attack her for what she stood up for, should be ashamed of themselves."

Mayor Claar chimed in, saying, "Mike, I agree with you 100 percent."

In the suit, Kurkowski-Alicea denied attacking Bielawski and said she was subsequently subjected to threats and notes left on her door, to the point where she and her family moved to Florida last year.

Claar dismissed the federal suit, saying a more typical remedy would have been to file at the circuit-court level. "She just continues and goes on and on and on," he said, "but we'll look at the suit."

The suit said Kurkowski-Alicea incurred "substantial expenses" in moving and "was further forced to suffer the extreme emotional harm, humiliation and fear associated with being forced out of town and wrongfully accused of killing someone." It seeks in excess of $75,000 for compensatory and punitive damages.