Niles Ethics Board candidates cite examples of their own personal honesty at debate

“We’re running for the Niles Board of Ethics, not the Niles Board of Saints.”

Niles Ethics Board candidate Paul Kotowski felt the need to clarify that point in response to a question about his personal code of ethics and morality and whether he’d ever violated it.

Five of the 11 candidates for Niles’ newly established elected ethics board were seated at a long table in an airy room at the back of the Niles Park District’s Howard Leisure Center and broke into laughter at Kotowski’s response.

Six candidates, including four of the sitting members of the village board of ethics, did not attend, citing a pending lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of electing an ethics board. Candidate Dave Laske is also running and attended the debate but did not participate; Laske said he had recently been released from a hospital stay.

The candidates who did attend agreed that the matter of whether an elected ethics board is legal in Illinois had already been resolved in 2020 and 2021, when citizen and current Niles-Maine Library Board Treasurer Joe Makula went to court to force the village to place a question about electing the board onto the ballot and a circuit court and court of appeals both held that it was a valid referendum question.

Candidate Lin Bartucca, who pitched herself as the only independent candidate with professional experience in the field of ethics, said she wasn’t a legal expert, but that the matter seemed buttoned up to her.

“The voters have spoken and the courts have spoken,” she said.

Bartucca, a retired human resources specialist who worked for both the state and federal government, is the 11th candidate in a field of two slates running with the backing of two political rivals in Niles.

Mayor George Alpogianis coordinated the petitions for the four incumbent board members — Carol Bagley, Jerry Acciari, Jill Boysen, Vera Pandev — and new candidate Jeffrey Kash, while Makula’s often-used personal attorney Daniel Kelley filed petitions on behalf of all the candidates on the stage except for Bartucca, the independent.

Earlier this month, the village’s attorneys sent a letter to the five candidates for whom Kelley filed petitions asking them to cease and desist from using Niles imagery on their campaign literature, arguing that it implied a village endorsement.

At the forum, the candidates agreed that the village ought to revisit its gift ban and that the ethics board should meet more frequently, with Kotowski, an attorney and current chair of the Oakton College Board of Trustees, suggesting a once-a-quarter basis.

They also agreed that board members would need to recuse themselves if the body heard cases that involved people with whom they had personal friendships, and concurred that nobody was perfect in response to the question that elicited Kotowski’s remark about a board of saints. But all said they did their best to hold themselves to high moral standards.

Joy Alfonsi said she lives with a “strict code of honesty” and offered an example from her days as a teacher.

“I could have changed an election for homecoming queen by three votes and given it to the prettier girl, and I didn’t allow myself to do that,” she said. “I believe in karma.”

Later on, Alfonsi cited a different career experience to illustrate her adherence to her moral code: “There are bad teachers out there,” she said, and as union representative, she had occasionally been faced with “having to defend these lazy creatures from losing their jobs.”

“Nobody is perfect; everyone makes mistakes in life,” Lisa Emmett-Stechman said. “I’m an open book. If you lie, it’s going to catch up to you.”

Bartucca said she once risked her job for the sake of her code of ethics.

“My boss asked me one day about a client and asked me to reveal what they told me in the counseling session,” she said.

She said she refused because the information didn’t point to the client being harmed.

Candidates were leery of the idea of a public registry of village employees’ movements and personnel infractions similar to the Evanston Citizens Protection Network, which publishes the city’s police personnel and disciplinary actions.

“People have a right to go and publish things, but you also have a right to be sued if you publish something that violates people’s rights,” former Maine Township Trustee and attorney David Carrabotta said.

“I’m a big first amendment fellow, freedom of speech, all that, but late to work, all that kind of thing, to embarrass those who work for the village of Niles? No,” Carrabotta continued. “We’re not here to embarrass anybody.”

Emmett-Stechman said she didn’t think police or other village employees needed to be under such a microscope.

“If it’s something that comes to maybe an ethical question or could be brought before the ethical board, handle it then,” she said. “Transparency is important to me... but the little ins and outs of things, the little problems here and there, I’m not concerned.”

Early voting opened March 20 and runs through April 3. Election Day is April 4. Early voting locations, including at Niles, Norridge and Park Ridge village or city halls and the Morton Grove Civic Center, can be found here and include Saturday and Sunday hours: https://www.cookcountyclerkil.gov/elections/ways-to-vote/early-voting/early-voting-locations