For the second time in 18 months, Skokie’s Ethics Board has dismissed a complaint from an independent village trustee that accused longtime Mayor George Van Dusen and Corporation Counsel Michael Lorge of ethics violations.
Village of Skokie Trustee James Johnson brought forth his ethics concerns after Van Dusen and Lorge proposed earlier this year to add three referendum questions regarding environmental sustainability to the Nov. 8 election ballot.
Johnson said that proposal was a blatant attempt to prevent a group called the Skokie Alliance for Electoral Reform from putting its own three referendum questions on the election ballot. Illinois law allows a maximum of three referendum questions to appear on a ballot.
The Skokie Alliance’s three referendum questions ask voters if they want to change how officials in the village are elected. One would create nonpartisan elections; a second would allow partial geographic representation and a third would allow some trustees to be elected every two years.
Referring to Van Dusen and Lorge’s proposal to fill all three ballot slots with the environmental sustainability referendum questions, Johnson said, “I filed the complaint because I know this is wrong. I know this is unethical. I can’t just sit here and pretend it didn’t happen, which is how I felt my colleagues on the village board were responding to it.”
But in an Oct. 12 letter to Johnson, Jonathan Minkus, chairman of the Village of Skokie Ethics Board, wrote that Johnson’s complaint “failed to establish probable cause that a violation of the State or Village of Skokie ethics ordinance occurred in this case.”
Van Dusen said Johnson’s perception is askew. The mayor said he had no intention of blocking the Alliance’s referendum questions, and that everything he proposed was according to the law. But in June, Van Dusen withdrew his attempt to add his referendum questions to the ballot.
“It was simply too divisive and I withdrew them, he said. “I did nothing that smacked of anything that was even dubious.”
After Van Dusen withdrew his resolutions, The Skokie Alliance was able to add its referendum questions to the Nov. 8 ballot.
“I have been saying all along that we need to let the people of Skokie know that we are planning on taking up a dramatic sustainability plan and they should have some kind of opportunity to voice their input,” Van Dusen added. “Each one of those resolutions dealt with sustainability.”
Johnson said he was “saddened and disappointed” by the Ethics Board’s ruling.
“I wasn’t totally surprised, given that they’d dismissed my first complaint in a very similar way,” he said. “I think their systems of checks and balances is failing us if something so blatant can happen.”
Johnson was elected to the Skokie Village Board as an independent in 2021, and in April 2021, during his first week as a trustee, he asked the Ethics Board to investigate his claims that a few months earlier, Lorge and Assistant Corporation Counsel Jim McCarthy tried to “bribe” him, in his words, to not run for office. He said he was invited to Lorge’s Skokie home in December 2020, where he was told he would be given a position on a village commission if he did not file paperwork to run as an independent candidate for the village board.
“They kept telling me I had gone about everything the wrong way, that instead of running for office independently I should have gone through them and the Skokie Caucus Party,” Johnson said. “They talked about how they wanted to get me on the Environmental Sustainability Commission. At one point Michael Lorge said “If you don’t turn in your paperwork tomorrow, we can do that.” They talked about me becoming the chair of the commission.”
The Skokie Caucus Party, which both Van Dusen and Lorge belong to, has successfully slated candidates for the village board and clerk’s office for decades. Van Dusen was first elected as a trustee in 1984; he became mayor in 1999, according to previous reporting.
Johnson said he left the meeting feeling confused and said he was determined not to end his candidacy. He said the Skokie Ethics Board later wrote him a letter stating they did not find any proof of unethical conduct by Lorge.
Lorge did not respond to requests for an interview but Van Dusen said he believes that Johnson “misinterpreted” the conversation with Lorge.
“Michael Lorge is one of the most ethical, above-board people I know and have ever known,” Van Dusen said. “His family has given a great deal to this community. The charge is ludicrous and the ethics commission so found.”