Dolton Village Board members voted Monday to pursue four lawsuits against Mayor Tiffany Henyard, including one challenging her eligibility to also serve as Thornton Township supervisor.
“I believe that’s a conflict of interest,” Trustee Jason House said during a special meeting held via teleconference and attended by five of the six village trustees, but not Henyard or Trustee Andrew Holmes.
Henyard abruptly canceled a separate meeting that had been scheduled for the same time. An agenda for that meeting included a proposal to fire Burt Odelson’s highly regarded Evergreen Park-based law firm as legislative counsel for Dolton trustees. Dolton’s village attorney is James Vasselli of Berwyn-based Del Galdo Law Group, who also has replaced Stanley Kusper as township attorney.
The board majority directed Odelson to pursue lawsuits accusing Henyard and the village of spending public funds without board approval, violating policies regarding hiring and firing employees and ignoring requests for documents through the Freedom of Information Act.
“It’s sad that we have to get to this point where we have to go through court proceedings with it costing the village money because of the negligence of leadership,” Trustee Kiana Belcher said.
The board majority and Henyard last met together via teleconference Feb. 7. For the past two months, the two factions have held separate meetings at the same time. Henyard and Holmes are joined by administrative department heads, but lack a quorum to hold a legal public meeting.
Henyard has described her sessions as informal town halls but she invites no public participation and spends up to an hour addressing a camera and complaining about how members of the board majority are uncooperative.
The board majority has a quorum and is joined by Alison Key, village clerk. Trustees said they meet the requirements of the Open Meetings Act by calling special meetings and posting agendas at the entrance to Dolton Village Hall at least 48 hours Before the start of meetings.
“It’s a legal meeting,” said legislative counsel Mike McGrath, partner with Odelson, Sterk, Murphey, Frazier and McGrath, Ltd.
Trustees said Henyard has directed department heads to not cooperate with the board majority. Trustees said they have gone two months without seeing a list of warrants, which describe bills paid with taxpayer funds. They say Henyard issued certifications for $2 million in unauthorized disbursements.
“Those bills have been paid without proper approval from the board,” House said. “We feel all actions taken without approval of the board are illegal.”
The dispute seems to have escalated from a simmering battle of wills into a full-blown legal fight.
“Right now this mayor is operating on her own accord. We don’t know what she’s spending,” Trustee Edward Steave said during public comments directed at Henyard. “It is blatant hypocrisy because you ran on transparency.”
Henyard narrowly defeated Holmes and former Mayor Riley Rogers by a few dozen votes each in the February 2021 Democratic primary. Since taking office after winning the consolidated election in April, Henyard has not convened a village board meeting in person but has hosted numerous community events without restrictions related to the pandemic.
“We’re hoping she reopens the board room and we can have in-person meetings,” Steave said. “It doesn’t have to be this way. There are other towns that are run much smoother.”
Trustees described Henyard as an arrogant populist who has thumbed her nose at the board’s efforts to act as a legislative check on her power.
“It’s just crazy now,” Steave said. “It is, ‘My way or the highway.’ There is no compromising.”
Henyard improperly appointed people to the village’s Police and Fire Commission, trustees said, including two members who are ineligible because they do not live in Dolton.
The commission oversees hiring and firing of village police officers and firefighters, among other duties. Recent appointees include Christopher D. Gonzalez of Calumet City, a Thornton Township trustee who voted to appoint Henyard to a $250,000 a year job as supervisor following the Jan. 3 death of Frank Zuccarelli.
Dolton residents have petitioned to place a referendum on the June 28 primary ballot asking whether Henyard should be recalled as mayor. Henyard sought to put three different referendums up for votes, which would have left no room for the recall question.
However, an electoral board administrative review determined none of Henyard’s proposed referendums had enough valid petition signatures, Cook County clerk’s office representative Sally Daly said last week.
“If the electoral board rules that the petition questions should not appear on the ballot, then the clerk’s office will not certify the questions onto the ballot,” Daly said. “That would then clear the way for the recall referendums questions passed by the Dolton Village Board to appear on the June 28 ballot.”
Aside from the recall vote, the lawsuit over eligibility might also resolve the stalemate between Henyard and the board majority.
There are conflicting opinions as to whether Henyard may legally serve simultaneously as township supervisor and mayor of a community within the township. The legal concept in play is known as compatibility.
On one hand, mayors such as Thaddeus Jones of Calumet City, Steve Landek of Bridgeview and Kelly Burke of Evergreen Park simultaneously serve in the Illinois General Assembly as state representative or senator of districts that include their municipality. Court rulings have held the offices are compatible and do not pose a conflict of interest.
But those situations involve overlapping state legislative and municipal offices, and a different set of rules may apply to overlapping township and municipal offices.
Courts found, for example, that former Harvey Ald. Keith Price could not simultaneously serve on the city’s park, library and school boards while serving on the city council because those offices were incompatible.
Lyons Mayor Christopher Getty simultaneously serves as supervisor of Lyons Township. That may indicate the two offices are compatible, or it may be that no one has yet filed a lawsuit challenging the compatibility of the two offices. Getty won his fourth term as mayor last year despite being involved in a federal corruption investigation.
Generally, Illinois courts have held that incompatibility exists if one office is subordinate to another, according to legal analysts.
Ted Slowik is a columnist for the Daily Southtown.