The odds appear to be against Democrats who are trying to convince the Republican-controlled Sangamon County Board to put a referendum on the April 1 ballot that would give voters the power to remove sheriffs from office.
County Board member Sam Cahnman, a Springfield Democrat, said he will introduce his proposal to put the recall option on the ballot at the board’s Jan. 13 meeting.
He said he believes the public wants a mechanism to hold law enforcement more accountable in the wake of the July 6 fatal shooting of Sonya Massey in her Woodside Township home after she called 911 when she suspected there was a prowler in the neighborhood.
Massey, 36, was killed by a responding Sangamon County sheriff’s deputy who since has been fired and charged with her murder.
“Our job is to carry out the will of the voters who sent us here, and that will is abundantly clear,” Cahnman said.
Several Democrats on the County Board began raising the question of putting a recall option in place for the sheriff after former Sheriff Jack Campbell, a Republican, pushed back on calls for his resignation.
Campbell was criticized for hiring former deputy Sean Grayson in 2023 despite questions about Grayson’s truthfulness and temperament in law enforcement before coming to work for Sangamon County. The nationally publicized killing of Massey, 36, a single, Black mother of two at the hands of Grayson, 30, who is white, eventually led to Campbell leaving the sheriff’s department to retire at age 60.
There have been no calls for current Sheriff Paula Crouch to resign or be removed. She is a former Springfield Police Department officer.
Almost all Republicans on the 29-member County Board voted in August to block a proposal to put a referendum establishing recall for sheriff on the Nov. 5 general election ballot.
And on Dec. 10, five Republicans on the board’s Election Oversight Committee voted to oppose putting such a referendum on the April 1 election ballot even though the Massey Commission, appointed by the County Board to make recommendations to the board, voted unanimously Nov. 18 to support placing a referendum in front of voters “at the earliest possible election.”
Voting against the proposal were Republicans Tom Madonia Jr., Cathy Scaife, Abe Forsyth, Joel Tjelmeland Jr., and Jennifer Deaner. Voting for the proposal were Cahnman and fellow Democrat Marc Ayers.
Madonia Jr., a rural Rochester Republican, said before the vote that the county apparently doesn’t have the legal authority to establish recall.
The board’s legal adviser, Assistant State’s Attorney Joel Benoit, told the committee at a special meeting Dec. 5 that the state Constitution doesn’t give Sangamon County the right, as a non-home-rule unit of government, to establish recall.
He also said there have been conflicting opinions by the Illinois Appellate Court on the issue of recall rights at the local level.
Scott Szala, a University of Illinois law professor, spoke to the committee at Benoit’s request. Szala, too, mentioned the differing legal views.
But if a referendum were put on the ballot, or if recall were instituted and a referendum were passed to remove a certain sheriff before the end of his or her four-year term, Szala said, “I have a feeling you would spend significant attorneys’ fees in order to litigate this issue.”
Szala said he believed the county eventually would lose a lawsuit challenging recall. “There’s a cost factor that the county has to take into consideration,” he said. “It would be an unnecessary expenditure of taxpayers’ money.”
Cahnman, however, said the law would be on the county’s side in any challenge. He noted that the suburban Chicago communities of Buffalo Grove, Wheeling and Arlington Heights established recall for local officials.
The right of voters in those communities to petition for a recall vote hasn’t been challenged in court, Cahnman said, and a Buffalo Grove village trustee was removed from office by recall in 2010.
The Jan. 13 meeting of the Sangamon County Board will be the last opportunity to meet a deadline for getting referendums on the April 1 ballot.
If that effort fails, Cahnman said he may try to use another option for putting a referendum establishing the recall option on a future ballot through a petition drive that would require the signatures of approximately 7,000 Sangamon County voters.
Democrats on the County Board and the public have said it was insulting for Szala to suggest that the board shouldn’t give voters the chance to approve recall as an option when wrongful death lawsuits filed against the county have cost the county more than $12 million. That figure doesn’t include a potential multimillion-dollar settlement that the family of Sonya Massey could receive from the county.
Cahnman said defending a lawsuit challenging recall – a lawsuit he believes the county eventually would win – wouldn’t cost the county extra because the State’s Attorney’s Office has the expertise to handle the legal work in-house.
The notion that concerns about cost should derail an effort to instill more trust and accountability in law enforcement is “really disrespectful,” Springfield resident Evan Brown told the committee.
The County Board shouldn’t “hide behind shady legal opinions,” he said. “It’s not cutting it for the public. … Public trust is constantly eroding.”
Springfield resident Jenna Broom, who favors putting a recall option on the ballot, said: “Let the people decide. The people clearly want it.”
Springfield resident Nick Dodson added: “We are calling for change. A moment like this is unprecedented in our community and demands that we confront hard truths about the systems we have in place.”
The Massey Commission’s resolution supporting a referendum to establish recall says the County Board should “evaluate the constitutional and legal questions regarding recall provisions in non-home-rule counties” and then “take all legally authorized steps to effectuate” a referendum.
Ayers, a Springfield resident, said it would be “absurd” and a “slap in the face” to the Massey Commission if the County Board doesn’t allow a referendum because of a “hypothetical legal situation.”
“It’s our fault for not taking this stuff seriously, and the Republicans are to blame for all of it,” he said. “I don’t know why this is even partisan.”
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I love the quote at the end of the article. “I don’t know why this is even partisan.”
Republicans are FINALLY starting to recognize that EVERYTHING is partisan, down to the smallest issue. There’s no reason to ever cede an inch of ground to democrats. It doesn’t matter what the particular issue is.
Not that this recall idea is a small issue – it’s not – but if you’re near a democrat who says that they love to breathe air then a republican would be wise to hold their breath and run away.
The democrat party has proven that they are more than happy to see their political opponents thrown in jail over nothing and they will be even happier if they find out that you’re shot dead in the middle of New York. The last year has proved that beyond reproach.
THE DEMOCRATS HATE YOU. DON’T GIVE THEM AN INCH.