Mayor calls for clerk-treasurer’s resignation in Portage after committee investigation
Post-Tribune
June 26, 2019
https://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/post-tribune/ct-ptb-portage-mayor-complaint-st-0627-20190626-eylxreaedffhfaux5qdc62j4y4-story.html
Portage Mayor John Cannon is asking for Clerk-Treasurer Chris Stidham to resign in light of a committee’s findings that “predicted a ‘sufficient likelihood’ of unlawful conduct warranting further investigation by law enforcement and other officials.”
Stidham called the investigation a political attack based on testimony he gave during the federal trial of former Mayor James Snyder, who was convicted in February and awaits sentencing on two counts of public corruption.
“There’s no reason to resign. It’s just an attack to make something look salacious that’s not salacious at all,” Stidham said, adding he will fulfill the rest of his term, which ends this year.
Cannon said in a release Wednesday afternoon that in April, he appointed a bipartisan executive investigative committee to investigate allegations of possible wrongdoing in the clerk-treasurer’s office.
A confidential final report was issued Tuesday to Cannon detailing allegations and findings by the committee, Cannon said, adding the committee sent the clerk-treasurer’s office a request for public documents that did not receive a response.
“Having received no response to the public records request and lacking the authority to issue subpoenas compelling a response, the committee could not affirmatively conclude violations of law sufficient to satisfy the legal standard,” Cannon said.
Cannon said he requested a meeting with Stidham at 11 a.m. Wednesday to discuss the findings without a response from Stidham.
In response to the report and what Cannon called Stidham’s “failure to meet to discuss the findings,” Cannon called for his immediate resignation “and notified the proper law enforcement and other officials regarding the conduct in question.”
Cannon called for a special meeting of the Portage Board of Works at 9:30 a.m. July 3 at City Hall to demand the repayment of unapproved payments made by the clerk-treasurer’s office.
Stidham’s testimony during Snyder’s trial prompted a conversation between some board of works and city council members as well as others, Cannon said, who asked him to look into the matter. He eventually appointed the committee to do so.
Stidham dismissed the investigation as political.
“This is all the regurgitation of a slam against me that the former mayor brought up in his trial in trying to save himself,” Stidham said.
During Snyder’s trial, Stidham testified he hired his then-girlfriend, who later became his wife, to work in the clerk-treasurer’s office as a contractor. Her work, he said, took place around four years ago and included reconciliation of bank statements and database work.
“We were obviously in a relationship so it doesn’t always appear the greatest. We were married and it was done,” he said, adding she hasn’t worked in his office since then.
Reached by phone, Cannon declined to say which law enforcement agencies and officials might be involved because the matter could become an ongoing investigation.
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The focus of the board of works meeting will be on what Cannon called “unapproved payments” made by the clerk-treasurer’s office to Keeping the Books, ERG Advisors and Paramount Technology Solutions. The companies will be notified by certified letter to return the payments, he said. Cannon declined to specify the invoice amounts.
“I’m here to get the money back. My job is to look out for the taxpayers and that’s what we’re doing,” he said, adding it will be up to law enforcement to handle that end of the investigation.
The bipartisan committee that conducted the investigation included a member of the board of works, a city council member and a department head, Canon said, declining to say who they were but noting the makeup included two Democrats and one Republican.
“It was not a political situation whatsoever,” he said.
Cannon, Stidham said, “works lockstep with the former mayor,” adding since Cannon is running for mayor during this year’s municipal election, he wants to distance himself from the former administration.
Stidham said Cannon didn’t mention the investigation during a Tuesday board of works meeting and asked for a special meeting July 3 to open bids for police cars, which Stidham agreed to.
He said he received an email from Cannon around 4 p.m. Tuesday asking to meet Wednesday morning and requesting documents from his office, and notifying Stidham that he would be putting out a release to the media.
“I didn’t have a chance to respond,” Stidham said, adding his office is responding to the document request, which includes canceled invoices and is similar to information he provided as requested in March or April.
Stidham called the investigation an attempt by Cannon to control an office he doesn’t have control over, adding the clerk-treasurer’s office is independent and has its own budget.
“He doesn’t have the authority to approve the people I hire or the work that I have done,” Stidham said.
City Council President Sue Lynch, D-At large, who will face Cannon in the general election for the mayor’s seat, said she was allowed to review the committee’s report for 10 or 15 minutes Wednesday morning but was not allowed to keep a copy, so she declined to comment on the report itself.
“No city council people have a copy of this report, either,” she said, adding she “heard rumblings” about the investigation but wasn’t directly involved with it.
The State Board of Accounts and law enforcement officials are the best choices to investigate, Lynch added.
“Those are the people who need to have eyes on that, not the council,” she said.
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