Lake County Board Member / Avon Township Supervisor Should Be Removed From Office –

Lake Co., IL. (ECWd) –

Terry Wilke is currently a Lake County Board Member and Avon Township Supervisor.

Avon Township has or did have, contractual relationships between the Township and Lake County. Intergovernmental Agreements (“IGA”) were signed by Terry Wilke as Avon Township Supervisor and he also voted on or could have voted on, the same IGA as Lake County Board Member.

As we will attempt to explain below, state law permits Wilke to hold both positions generally, but it also specifically prohibits him from holding both positions when there is a contractual relationship between both units of government.

A person may hold both positions according to Section 1 of the Public Officer Prohibited Activities Act (“POPAA”), [50 ILCS 105/1]:

“. . . Nothing in this Act shall be construed to prohibit an elected county official from holding elected office in another unit of local government so long as there is no contractual relationship between the county and the other unit of local government.” Effective 8-14-2017

The Public Officer Simultaneous Tenure Act (“POSTA”), Section 2, also permits one person to hold both positions:

“. . . Simultaneous tenure declared to be lawful. It is lawful for any person to hold the office of county board member and township supervisor . . .” Effective 8-14-1998

With the POSTA being an Act covering the subject of simultaneous tenure in a general sense, and passed into law in 1998 – and the POPAA being a more specific Act and passed into law in 2017 – 19 years after the POSTA, it stands to reason that the POPAA’s specific restrictions on the holding of both offices override the POSTA’s general declaration – the keywords are “so long as there are no contractual relationships between the county and the other unit of local government.”

Section 3 of the POPAA reinforces Section 1 of the Act with its prohibited interest in contract language and we urge you to read it.

We mentioned the above two statutes, with their effective dates for a reason: See Moore v. Green, 219 Ill. 2d 470, 480 (2006) “Where a general statutory provision and a more specific statutory provision relate to the same subject, we will presume that the legislature intended the more specific provision to govern.”

With that, we should be proper in assuming the statute covering prohibitions of serving simultaneously in two offices, when there are contractual relations, takes precedence over the more general statute stating one person can occupy both positions.