Skokie Trustee James Johnson, who has in the past brought complaints before the Skokie Ethics Commission, was himself named the subject of an ethics complaint submitted to the Commission in late February.
The Ethics Commission met on March 5 to discuss the merits of a 10-point complaint filed by seven Skokie residents. The commission dropped most of the complaints raised by the complainants but decided to investigate whether Johnson violated the village’s ethics code when he spoke during the public comment section at a number of Village Board meetings.
Starting in January 2024, Johnson began to speak during the public comment period at the end of Village Board meetings to protest what he claimed was political hiring in the village’s legal department.
Since then, Johnson has spoken at the end of nearly every Village Board meeting to advocate for a non-political legal department. The ethics complaint did not specify a date on which Johnson spoke at public comment.
The complaint said Johnson spoke during the public comment period for political gain, as he is also running for village clerk. Johnson began his campaign for that office in late 2023, before former Clerk Pramod Shah announced his retirement.
Mayor George Van Dusen told Johnson then that he should be careful with what he said from the lectern used for public comments, as some could see it as a “campaign appearance.”
According to the complaint, “Trustee Johnson has consistently and repeatedly used their position on the Village Board to attack and disrespect their real or imagined political opponents, and anyone they deem insufficiently in alliance with their ideas, including but not limited to elected officials, private citizens, commission volunteers and clergy.”
“Trustee Johnson did so from the dais, and from the lectern during public comments, during Skokie Village Board meetings, utilizing village resources, and while getting paid by the village using taxpayer funds,” the complaint said.
In 2023, Johnson filed four complaints to the Ethics Commission alleging that Corporation Counsel Michael Lorge and Assistant Corporation Counsel James McCarthy had acted unethically when they allegedly asked Johnson to drop out of the race for village trustee in 2021.
Village Board trustees and Van Dusen have long denied that Lorge and McCarthy asked Johnson to drop out of the race. After Johnson made his fourth complaint, they recommended he be fined $5,000 for making “frivolous” ethics complaints. The Ethics Commission ultimately decided not to fine Johnson.
In a phone call with Pioneer Press, Johnson said the ethics complaint filed against him is politically motivated. He said one of the complainants, Elline Eliasoff, is Trustee Alison Pure Slovin’s campaign manager and treasurer, and was a slate maker for the Skokie Caucus Party in 2021.
“I have been using my voice to speak in opposition to the Village Board’s political hiring and misappropriation of attorneys in Skokie’s legal department. Everyone knows this,” Johnson said. “Everyone knows that I keep saying that this is the most serious, systemic problem in our village government. So the allegation that my comments are actually electioneering is completely false.”
“The complainant is echoing the false allegation of Mayor Van Dusen and other members of the Village Board who are refusing to reform the political corruption in our legal department.. they are saying all sorts of things to misdirect… My comments are about the political corruption in Skokie’s legal department — corruption that my colleagues on the Village Board are willfully covering up,” said Johnson.
Van Dusen, the Village Board’s liaison to the Ethics Commission, said he is not participating in the review of the ethics complaint and that Village Manager John Lockerby is taking his stead for this particular case.
“We’re in the midst of a heated political system… elections are coming up,” Van Dusen said. “I just want to stay out of this whole ethics complaint. We have a commission. I have full faith in the commissioners. They’re independent, they’re intelligent, they’re good people. Let them do the case and decide.”
Van Dusen recalled warning Johnson that some could see his public comments as a political act. “When somebody takes an oath of office, regardless of the office, you are no longer just ‘Joe Blow’ living next door. You are undertaking responsibilities.
“What I tried to warn Trustee Johnson is that there’s a very thin gray line, and that gray line gets smaller and smaller and smaller as time goes on… that’s the power of taking office, and you have to be extra specially careful about the way that you go about your life,” Van Dusen said.
The next Ethics Commission hearing for the complaint is scheduled for March 19.