UPDATE: Bruce Stickell’s Incompatible Offices Of Milan Village Trustee And Blackhawk Township Road Commissioner –

Milan, Ill. and Blackhawk Township (ECWd) –

UPDATE: 12-13-2024:

We rely on public records for our articles.

In this case, the public records available on the Rock Island County Clerk’s webpage has not been updated since prior to August of 2021 – EVEN THOUGH the document we downloaded indicated it was produced on August 21, 2024 (see bottom left of every page).

We have been informed, though not through official channels, that Stickell had resigned from the township highway commissioner position on August 21, 2021.

However, for years Stickell did hold both positions:

• Jan 6, 2020, is the oldest meeting minutes on the Milan webpage, and Stickell was a trustee at least back that far.
• He was elected as township highway commissioner in 2017 (see page 66) and 2021 (see page 62).

While he apparently is not “currently” serving in incompatible positions, at the very least he held incompatible positions for those overlapping timeframes.

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Original article:

Bruce Stickell is an elected Trustee in the Village of Milan, Illinois and also an elected Blackhawk Township Road Commissioner. See the Rock Island County list of elected officials (here) – see pages 9 and 15 for these two offices.

Stickel’s village trustee term ends in 2027 while his road commissioner term ends in 2025.

According to previous opinions by the Illinois Attorney General, the most recent being 2005 and the first that we know of was in 1963, the offices of village trustee and township highway commissioner are incompatible – which means the same person cannot hold both offices simultaneously.

The Illinois State Bar Association has written about this incompatibility:

“Because of the potential conflict of duties that arises when one governmental unit contracts with another, an individual may not serve simultaneously as both a village trustee and a township highway commissioner because the individual would not be able to represent the interests of both entities adequately, fully, and faithfully.”

The Illinois Municipal League has written about incompatible offices (here), we have published a comprehensive article in 2022 listing all of the Attorney General Opinions referencing incompatible offices (here), and the most recent list from the AG is here (See 2023 list).

The AG opinions referencing Township Highway Commissioners are (here) – see page 22.

From the 2005 opinion:

“. . . it is clear that potential conflicts in the duties of these offices could prevent one person from faithfully discharging the duties of each simultaneously. A township highway commissioner, in exercising the duties granted to that office under the Illinois Highway Code, has a duty to protect and represent the best interests of the township road district. A village trustee has a concomitant duty to protect and represent the best interests of the village. The fulfillment of these duties is subject to compromise where the same individual holds both the office of township highway commissioner and that of village trustee, because a person holding both offices could be placed in the position of favoring one governmental entity to the detriment of the other.”

“Because of the potential conflicts in the duties of these offices, a person who serves simultaneously as both a village trustee and a township highway commissioner would not be able to represent the interests of both entities adequately, fully and faithfully. Therefore, the two offices are incompatible, and one person cannot simultaneously hold both.”

We urge Blackhawk Township, the Village of Milan, and the Rock Island State’s Attorney to immediately address this issue and declare the first office   vacant, due to the office holder taking an incompatible office, which resulted in his ipso facto (by operation of law) automatic resignation of the previous office.

Short of that, any interested citizen can file a “quo warranto” suit seeking to declare the office vacant.