By Jason Crane
An Aurora mayoral candidate forum Monday, March 1 through the Zoom video conference platform, allowed viewers to learn more about the three candidates seeking the job as mayor of Aurora for the next four years.
An election will be Tuesday, April 6.
League of Women Voters Aurora Area Mayoral Candidate Forum was on the League’s Facebook page.
The candidates are Aurora mayor Richard Irvin, Judd Lofchie, and John Laesch.
Moderator was Barbara Young from the LaGrange Area League of Women Voters.
The League of Women Voters is a non-partisan organization founded in 1920 that encourages informed and active participation by citizens in government.
It does not support, or oppose, any candidate, or any office. The League sponsors such events, so voters are informed on issues.
Here is the third set of three questions and answers by the candidates after the first set was in the March 4 issue and second set was in the March 11 issue:
• How will the recently-passed House Bill 3653, which is Use Of Force Standardization Act, be used, implemented, and funded in the city of Aurora?
• John Laesch: “I’m going to say that we’re going to comply with the law, as the next mayor. We will make sure that we implement that.
“Some of these things were actually on my radar to do anyway.
“One of the things that happens is this thing called resisting arrest where a person can be arrested even though they weren’t doing anything wrong but for simply resisting arrest.
“Quite frankly, it’s been used to put young black men in jail early on in their lives, often.
“I’ve talked to people who’ve been charged with the term ‘resisting arrest’ and if they go limp, they’re resisting arrest. If they go stiff, they’re resisting arrest. If they do nothing, or don’t comply to a verbal command immediately.
“So that was one of the positive things that I would want to see changed anyway, is making sure that our police force understood that if we’re actually going to arrest somebody for something like resisting arrest, there has to be a cause behind that.
“We can’t just be creating criminal records for young people.
“To answer the question, I’m going to implement the laws the State has required. Thank you.”
• Judd Lofchie: “First and foremost, we need to have a contract with the police if we want to ask them to do their job.
“They haven’t had a contract since 2019.
“The aldermen have given themselves a raise. The mayor got a raise. The firemen got a raise. The AFSCME Union got a raise. The police don’t have a contract.
“If we’re going to ask them to put their life on the line, we need to get them a contract and we need to do it quickly.
“As far as the Bill, I think it’s all about accountability. The City passed body cameras, so we will be getting all the police body cameras. Right now, they’re trying two different types.
“What worries me a little in this bill is that if a policeman doesn’t turn on his camera, he could be convicted of a third-degree felony, lose his job, I’m not sure if he loses his pension or not.
“I know that I forget my wallet, my keys, my phone, my glasses, occasionally.
“I just hope that this isn’t used to get rid of police who are good police who make a mistake, because we all make mistakes.
“I think that the accountability that we’re going to see is with the Civilian Review Board. I think if someone has an issue, instead of filing with the police, they can file with the Review Board. Hopefully we get that going soon.
“I would have preferred to have minorities picked by the various committees, African American (Heritage Advisory Board), Hispanic (Heritage Advisory Board), Indian (American Community Outreach Advisory Board) instead of the mayor picking all those. I voted against that, but It is what it is.
“I think it’s a step in the right direction. Thank you.”
• Richard Irvin: “First of all, just because this Act has been passed doesn’t necessarily mean we have to accept the terms of that Act.
“What this administration has done and what we’ll continue to do is lobby to get those issues changed in that Bill that did not work with our police department.
“Any of the legislators that passed the Bill, passed it based on their contact and understanding of how the Chicago Police Department works.
“It’s our job to make sure Aurora Police Department is taken care of and who we look out for.
“First of all, I’ve been in law enforcement for a number of years. I was a prosecutor for five years, defense attorney for 15 years after that, worked directly with the police and alderman for 10 years before I became mayor for four years.
“We’re going to do what’s necessary to protect our men and women in blue.
“There are some issues in this new law that are very good. Things that we’ve already implemented.
“As a matter of fact, we gave them our CHANGE (Community Helping Aurora’s Necessary Growth and Empowerment) Initiative and showed them how we do our policies in Aurora as a foundation for the policies they made in Springfield.
“However, they added a whole lot of additional stuff that we did not expect.
“We’re going to be working hard to get back some of those additional things like charging a person with a felony and taking out obstructing justice and resisting arrest, and not giving a police officer the ability to do his job.
“We’re going to lobby hard to get a lot of that taken out.
“The other things that they mention in the Bill, those were things we were already doing.
“We were already talking about body cams.
“We were already talking about a civilian review board.
“We already had no choke policies, so I think Aurora’s ahead of the game.”
• How would you improve transparency and accountability within the city of Aurora government or defend current policies and processes related to these concepts?
• Judd Lofchie: “As mayor, I would make sure all meetings are broadcast.
“I think we are moving ahead on that a bit, but I think we have a ways to go.
“I think we have a very unused asset, the Aurora Community Television station. It’s Comcast and AT&T and not everyone uses Facebook.
“We broadcast all of our things on Facebook and I would love to see people who have those cable stations as well.
“Our meetings should be broadcast on ACTV as well.
“I also think we could do a better job with FOIAs. I FOIA’d something recently and the fifth day I was called and I didn’t respond, so they said, ‘okay, because you didn’t respond, we’re terminating your FOIA.’
“I think we need to bend over backwards and do a better job with our FOIAs because ultimately people want information, and we need to give it to them.
“So the other thing with transparency is when we have a zoning change, we have to give the homeowners within 250 feet, two weeks notice.
“We bought that property where we want to build a 35 million dollar garage and we only gave the neighbors two weeks notice.
“I wouldn’t do that. I would be for buying property, I would go meet with them and talk to them and make sure that it’s not going to be a blue elephant like it is for them.
“They really don’t want it.
“I wouldn’t do that even if legally I could. Thank you.”
• Richard Irvin: “Now, we’ve done a lot from the day that I took office to ensure transparency in the City.
“First of all, we starting broadcasting our City Council meetings live. That has never been done in the history of the city of Aurora. We started under the Irvin administration.
“We opened a portal for citizens complaints and concerns called beat the drum.
“We have a whole department set up to take calls from citizens who have complaints and make sure that whether the administration or anyone else in the City, wherever these issues are, we address them immediately.
“We streamlined our FOIA process. That’s where citizens can call in, make a request to the city of Aurora about any kind of document the city of Aurora produces.
“We’ve streamlined that and made it accessible and easy by way of sending E-mails versus an individual having to come down to City Hall and request those documents personally. We’ve streamlined that, substantially.
“We’ve focused so much on transparency and making sure the average citizen had access to everything going on in the city of Aurora, everything!
“We want to make sure that we remain transparent and keep our transparency over the next four years of an Irvin administration.”
• John Laesch: “I guess I want to say that I think I’ve probably covered some of this when I was talking about getting rid of the pay to play system, not taking money from people doing business with City Hall.
“I’ve talked a little about improving communications with the public. I’ll keep office hours, be accessible with the public.
“I’ll use social media, E-mail, and keep using Zoom during times of crisis, we need someone who will hold regular press briefings.
“We need to bring back the quarterly newsletter to reach senior citizens. This is especially important during the pandemic.
“If you think about it, a lot of senior citizens aren’t on social media and we need a plan to communicate with them to let them know how the vaccine is going to roll out.
“The best way to do this, we can do it affordably just by putting it in people’s water bills. We can also mail to people who live in apartments who don’t necessarily get their water bills, or senior living facilities.
“I think overall when one is a two-way dialogue between City Hall and the people we serve.
“I’ve talked about including people in our first 100 days.
“I’ve talked about pushing an ethics ordinance early on.
“Overall, I think that when we develop that two-way communication street, people are going to start to trust their government again.
“My first 60 days is all about ethics, cutting my salary, and being a mayor for the people.
“We’re going to rebuild the trust that needs to be rebuilt to do the things we need to fix our economy. Thank you.”
• How will you ensure that those who make contributions to your campaign are not shown favorable treatment in policy setting or decision making, particularly as it relates to proposed economic development projects?
• Richard Irvin: “First of all, I know there’s been a suggestion that there’s pay to play politics going on in the city of Aurora. That’s absolutely incorrect.
“I think one of my opponents said, ‘it’s a requirement by law that I file documents with the Secretary of State to let people know who gives the Irvin campaign, money.’ We do that!
“The only reason anyone knows what kind of campaign contribution the Irvin campaign got is based on the fact that I tell the world!
“I let everybody know, to make sure there is no pay for play.
“Let me just tell you why these business men give the Irvin campaign money. Let me be clear, they don’t give me, Richard C. Irvin the money, they give it to a campaign account.
“I can’t spend this money myself. I can’t use any of this money. It has to be spent on campaign activities. Campaigns are expensive when you want to do it right.
“I don’t just help me, I help other aldermen that we need to get on our Board as well.
“What we do is we follow the laws that the State put in place and the State put all the caps in. Any cap that you need, the State put in place.
“Any type of contact that you would have with any person doing business with the City, the State has those laws put in place.
“As a matter of fact, what we did is said Aurora doesn’t want to be responsible if someone makes a complaint against me or any of the other alderman so we moved our enforcement to DuPage County and said if there’s ever a chance where somebody makes a complaint against me, which never has happened, someone else is going to review it to make that determination if anything is wrong.”
• John Laesch: “I guess this will be the third time we’ll be talking about ethics in government which underscores why it’s such an important issue in this race.
“If we want to have a government and economy that works for everybody, you need to have a mayor for the people, that’s working for the people.
“When developers come into a community, they’re coming in here to make money.
“They’re not coming in here to bring money to our community. They might bring money to a development project but at the end of the day they want to make a profit or they wouldn’t be coming here.
“They want to take money out of our community.
“I am going to be a mayor of the people. We’ve identified 22 companies, that have donated to a candidates campaign and then received millions of dollars of contracting.
“That is the behavior that erodes people’s trust, and it’s not just at the city level, it’s every level of government. We need to reform our system.
“Aurora isn’t going to change the world if we receive a new mayor in town, but you know what? We can be a beacon of hope and opportunity and show people what people-powered government looks like.
“I’ve said I want our campaign to make the City of Lights a beacon of hope for the Nation. It’s not just on ethics, it’s on inspiring our youth to embrace a new education path and to create living wage jobs where we all do well in that kind of community and while we address the climate crisis. Thank you.”
• Judd Lofchie: “I appreciate the mayor being honest and saying that everything is posted, and it is.
“I invite everyone to go to the Illinois State Board of Elections, check out the website. In the top middle there is a tab, it says campaign disclosure, and on the right side it says, search by committee.
“I invite you to look at all three of our committees and see the donations that have gone in.
“If you want to search a company like Scientel Solutions. The mayor is right, there is a cap. An individual can give six thousand, a company can give $12,000, but they can also give up to $59,000 to a PAC (political action committee).
“What’s important is, these other cities have a cap for a whole company who have done business with the city and it is improper to pay to play.
“I think if someone gave me $50,000, I think that I would be holden to them a bit.
“So if you look at Scientel, you’ve got the president, the wife, the chief technology officer.
“You can just go down the line. There are some companies like that and it’s not right.
“That’s why I introduced the $3,000 cap and we need to enact that.
“So if I was elected mayor in a strong mayor form of government, I would try and do that because we need to get the money out of politics! Thank you.”
The Voice will have more campaign coverage in the next two weeks.