Long about 30 years back, I received in the mail an invitation to appear before the VMA for possible slating as a village trustee. I inquired as to whether the Village Manager Association had lost its mind, asking the local editor to consider running for office. No loss of cognitive function, they replied back, just sloppy clerical work.
In recent weeks as the every-other-year VMA secret selection process spun and spit through the motions, I’ve kind of expected another invitation to apply for the board and I wondered if the VMA’s clerical staff had my new home address in Berwyn.
You see things haven’t gone smoothly for the VMA recently. If you demand proof of my assertion, I’d point you to the Thanksgiving weekend press release from the long-revered and now long-in-the tooth VMA.
In the upcoming April municipal election there are five seats open in Oak Park’s village government. There’s village president, or mayor, if your name is Anan Abu-Taleb. There is the ever-diminishing post of village clerk. And there are three of six village trustee swivel chairs up for grabs.
The VMA tried to put a good face on the stunner that it had found candidates for just three of those five jobs. It has no one willing to run against the incumbent Abu-Taleb despite having offered it around like the last hot dog on the platter at a family dinner. And it is one trustee candidate short of a full deck having had two somewhat credentialed candidates turn down its offer in favor of independent runs.
It is never a happy thing to have to answer a reporter’s question with, “No, the VMA is not dead.” Listen, I work in the newspaper business and I’ve honed my response to the death of newspapers query with “As long as there are swimming pool referendums, there will be local newspapers.”
Possibly the VMA is not dead. But it is in the ICU. Its pulse erratic and it is looking sort of pasty.
Here’s what we know: All six of the currently announced village trustee candidates declared to the Journal before ever going to the VMA. That’s never happened. And one, maybe two, of those candidates never went to the VMA at all. Each of those candidates said, in advance, that they’d run as independents if not slated by the VMA. That is a far piece from the multiple decades — 1950s and into the 1980s — when the VMA chose all the candidates who ran and then automatically won election. It was one hell of a winning streak.
This year, the two incumbent trustees seeking re-election, Glenn Brewer and Peter Barber, turned down a VMA shot at village president out of either loyalty or worry at taking on Abu-Taleb. At this point they are the two endorsed VMA candidates for trustee.
Deno Andrews and Dan Moroney hemmed and hawed about seeking VMA slating but eventually took part in the super-secret process. The neophyte Andrews was cajoled to run as the VMA’s presidential choice but turned it down as an inevitably unhappy introduction to electoral politics. His new buddy Moroney was offered a spot as a trustee candidate but chose not to take it if Andrews was not also slated.
Simone Boutet, the former assistant village attorney-turned-trustee candidate, announced at a late moment that she would not appear before the VMA. Likely a good choice since her strong criticisms of all things village hall would make an uncomfortable fit for an organization which proclaims Oak Park’s good government ways.
That leaves Jim Taglia, a from-the-start independent trustee candidate and currently a township trustee.
The VMA did find a candidate for village clerk in Lori Malinski. I’ve known Lori for a long time and she is as good a candidate as any for the final village clerk in Oak Park history. The writing is on the wall for this increasingly circumscribed position. Its official duties will soon be restricted to polite waving in local parades.
