No. 3 in Series
If you think an $800 file cabinet is the whole iceberg of taxpayer fund-abuse going on in the Clerk's Office, you'd be wrong. As a matter of "policy," Kathy Michael purchases office supplies from a small dealer, Klopfenstein's, rather than a national discount supplier like Quill. Prices paid for office supplies from Klopfensteins far exceed prices typically offered by Quill. Also, Quill provides practically overnight delivery, whereas Klopfensteins doesn't. Still, Kathy says she "prefers" to do business with Klopfensteins because she wants to "support a local business." Well that's a great idea.... However: Klopfensteins does not have a store located here in McLean County. All the money spent by Kathy Michael on office stuff is going to sales taxes and workers in Livingston and Peoria counties! No, the only "support" going to anyone "local" in this deal is the owner, Perry Klopfenstein, a very well-connected GOP leader in Gridley! Kathy gives Perry her business for political reasons, to court Perry's support for her re-election bid in 2014. Yup! So while Perry is getting Kathy's business, we taxpayers are getting a whole other kind of "business" from Madame Clerk! Hard to believe? File a Freedom of Information Act request for the amount of money spent on Office Supplies in December 2011 alone in the Clerk's office! Then, compare that gi-normous amount Kathy forked out (out of our wallets!) to the amount spent in any month of any year by her predecessor or other current County Elected Officials. Nobody blows taxpayer money on overly-expensive office supplies like Kathy Michael. NOBODY!
Earlier this month we promised to publish some juicy emails penned by Madame Clerk. In April we submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for these emails from McLean County, as is our right under Illinois Law. Well, you can guess what happened. McLean County's brand spanking new Assistant Administrator, Hannah Eisner, decided that the sheer number of emails Madame Clerk has sent was just too "burdensome" for the County to "process." You see, according to the laws governing the FOIA process, we citizens have a right to see any emails any Elected Officials send to other people. However, these emails must be checked to make sure that the privacy of innocent people mentioned in the emails is maintained, a really good idea. Hence, the emails are subject to "editing," or "redaction" to remove things like social security numbers and phone numbers. Of course you can do the math: having to go through and potentially "redact" over 52,000 emails would be a mighty big job. So, in an effort to be cooperative with McCo, and not to unduly waste too much taxpayer money, we cheerfully narrowed our request to just a few months worth of emails and for just a few keywords. Well, even that request produced over 5,000 emails--still too much work for Eisner to handle. So what did McLean County decide to do? Let Kathy Michael herself go through her own emails and redact out anything she felt was "privileged." The result was predictable: the emails we finally received in the FOIA were as white-washed as Tom Sawyer's fence! Nothing even remotely "imprudent" or "objectionable," nothing that would have gotten Kathy Michael into hot water, not a shred of Kathy Michael's signature nastiness or name-calling of her enemies (and other "mopes") was left standing after she put down her round-tipped scissors. Kathy did such a thorough job of redaction that at this point, she looks positively Saintly!
This isn't a mere fishing expedition: we know what we're looking for. (And so does she!) We know the unbelievable imprudence that Herself has shown in handling her official (FOIA-ble) email communications with others over the last 18 months-- because we've received some of these shockingly unprofessional emails in the past from her! (Have you?) The Truth about this Elected Official is out there and it's a truth that McLean County taxpayers and voters have a legal right to know.
Sigh. So please stand by everyone, as we now file a complaint with the Illinois Attorney General's office, seeking to roll back Kathy's, (and the County's?) attempts to protect Herself The Clerk from a political, social, and potentially legal firestorm.