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Schools

Gift Giving A Violation

District 46 board member charged with giving gifts to teens to get their votes. State's Attorney filed charges in a previous case.

Of the seven spots on the District 46 school board, the hot seat currently belongs to Sue Facklam.

Facklam, who successfully ran for her third term, has been accused of providing gift cards to 18-year-olds to register to vote in the April election. In an e-mail to fellow incumbent candidate Mary Garcia, a teacher in D30, Facklam refered to giving gifts to register to vote "probably being illegal."

Facklam then said "I did offer Erika (Garcia's daughter) more gift cards if she can gather up more friends."

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Garcia did not win re-election, but Facklam did. Questions about her conduct are now swirling throughout Grayslake.

The allegation of improper gift giving during an election was made as a result of a FOIA request made to District 30. While the Lake County State's Attorney's office reviews the charges, Facklam is facing what seems to be the most serious of the allegations.

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Lake County Clerk Willard Helander told Patch that election code states that candidates cannot provide anything of value in exchange for registering to vote or voting.

"This is an election code violation and will have to go through the State's Attorney. The other charges are considered ethics violations and may be handled by the State board," said Helander.

Helander said there had been a previous, similar situation in the Village of Bannockburn that was pursued vigorously by the States Attorney's office.

"A candidate for village president gave pizza and sunglasses to students in exhange for registering to vote. The candidate was charged and given a penalty. It may have ended up being settled out of court," said Helander.

Facklam did not respond to repeated requests by Patch for comment.

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