Daily Chronicle: Sycamore antiwar referendum is in jeopardy

By Chris Rickert - City Editor [Members of the Illinois Green Party helped inform residents about the ability to place there referenda on the ballot through township meetings that resulted in Sycamore and many other townships moving to actually place anti-war advisory referenda on the ballot in November]

http://www.daily-chronicle.com/articles/2006/04/22/news/anews01.txt

Sycamore antiwar referendum is in jeopardy

SYCAMORE - A move to let Sycamore Township residents cast a vote on the Iraq war is in doubt after township officials discovered a procedural mistake in the way a nonbinding referendum presumably made its way to the November ballot.

During the township's annual meeting on April 11, residents voted 10-3 to place a referendum asking whether Gov. Rod Blagojevich should “veto further mobilization of National Guard units/personnel to the ongoing war/occupation in Iraq on the grounds that continued participation in this endeavor is harmful to the people of this state.”

But it was the vote to place the referendum issue on the night's agenda in the first place that appears to be in question.

Under state law, a three-fifths majority vote of those at an annual township meeting is needed to place an item of new business on the meeting's already-posted agenda. There were 19 people at the April 11 Sycamore meeting. Eight voted for the agenda addition, four voted against it and there were seven abstentions, according to Barbara Young, the township's supervisor.

Township officials were not aware of the requirement on the night of the meeting, she said.

“That was our mistake,” Young said. “We've never dealt with this before.”

As of Friday, Young wasn't certain about whether the question would appear on the Nov. 7 ballot anyway. She was waiting on further advice from the township's attorney, Charles Brown. The township board of trustees has until 61 days before the election to certify the referendum question, thus formally placing it on the ballot. Attempts to contact Brown on Thursday and Friday were not successful.

Peter Barick, a member of the DeKalb Interfaith Network for Peace and Justice who led the effort to get the referendum on the ballot, said he is considering a petition drive if it turns out the township is not able to follow through with the ballot measure.

He said he has been advised by the state board of elections that he would need to get 265 signatures to have the question placed on the township ballot.

“That doesn't look too daunting,” he said. “We may just do the petition thing.”

Barick also was part of a petition drive in 2003 and 2004 that got a slow-growth referendum placed on the ballot in the city of Sycamore.

Sycamore Township was one of about a dozen townships in Illinois targeted by peace activists on the day last week when all 1,433 Illinois townships held their annual meetings. The annual meetings allow all registered voters in the township to cast votes on matters of township business, and the effort by the recently formed Illinois Coalition for Peace and Justice was to use the venues as a way to get antiwar referendums on the ballot.

DeKalb Township was among those townships. Residents who turned up for its annual meeting voted 20-7, with three abstentions, to ask voters if the U.S. government should “immediately begin an orderly and rapid withdrawal of all of its military personnel from Iraq, beginning with the National Guard and Reserves.”

Uncertainty about the procedures for what can be added to an agenda at an annual township meeting and voted upon, and how that process is supposed to work, was common in townships where the referendum attempts were made and that were contacted by the Chronicle last week.

Township annual meetings are often poorly attended and many residents are not aware of their existence. DeKalb Township Supervisor Pat LaVigne said no one outside of township officials had attended any of the township's last 12 annual meetings.

There also has been uncertainty among township officials about whether the annual meetings are subject to the state's Open Meetings Act.

Case law stemming from litigation over the act has been interpreted to mean public bodies cannot take final action on an item added to a meeting agenda during the meeting itself.

But Don Craven, an attorney for the Illinois Press Association, said Thursday that unlike meetings of “public bodies” - such as city councils, school boards and township trustee meetings - annual township meetings are meetings of “electors,” and thus do not fall under the auspices of the OMA.

Chris Rickert can be reached at crickert@daily-chronicle.com.