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NWI Times
July 16, 2019
https://www.nwitimes.com/opinion/editorial/editorial-outside-probe-needed-of-portage-malfeasance-allegations/article_659b7256-f484-5814-832d-b0211d7a99c3.html
Public officials owe it to taxpayers to keep their business dealings above board and beyond reproach.
And when any hint of that tenant of good government seems to be awry, the proper authorities should investigate until wrongdoing is either disproved or verified.
It's why Porter County Prosecutor Gary Germann is right to seek a special prosecutor to sort through allegations of malfeasance in the Portage clerk-treasurer's office.
Only a criminal probe — and a thorough audit of the office's financial records by the Indiana State Board of Accounts — can satisfy Portage residents' right to know if this taxpayer-funded office was acting appropriately when paying contracts in 2015 and 2016 to three companies owned by a woman who would become Clerk-Treasurer Chris Stidham's wife.
There are too many questions not to conduct a thorough investigation to either clear the matter or bring appropriate change to policy and possible justice.
There's no question that certain matters that have been sniffed out and questioned by a committee created by interim Portage Mayor John Cannon have an odor of being unethical.
But Cannon's allegations also take on the shape of a political football, requiring third-party criminal and state budget investigators to review the matter and render unbiased findings.
Stidham is alleged to have paid Keeping the Books, ERG Advisors and Paramount Technology Solutions a combined total of $70,000 in contracts without the Portage Board of Works approval. The principal of those three companies was Rachel E. Glass, Stidham's then-girlfriend and mother of his child, according to records compiled by a city investigative committee.
In April, Cannon appointed the bipartisan executive investigative committee to look into potential malfeasance in Stidham's office related to those contracts.
Despite claims that Stidham hasn't satisfied the committee's full request for public records in the matter, the committee has concluded a "sufficient likelihood" that unlawful conduct occurred in the transactions.
Those are serious allegations requiring the eyes of separate and impartial investigators or agencies.
Cannon has been a close ally of former Mayor James Snyder over the years. Snyder, who was convicted of felony bribery and tax charges in federal court earlier this year, was a political enemy of Stidham.
Cannon was chosen to fulfill the remainder of Snyder's mayoral term after the felony conviction removed Snyder from office.
Clearly, Cannon formed the committee that has investigated Stidham, though the interim mayor claims he stepped back and didn't interfere with the committee's probe. One of the three members of the committee is Republican City Councilman Bill Fekete, who replaced Cannon as a councilman via a party caucus vote after Cannon became interim mayor.
The other two committee members probing the matter were Portage Board of Works member Ron Necco and city streets Superintendent Steve Nelson.
Any hint of a political football needs to be removed from the field of play.
The city and county prosecutor should push with all haste for an outside investigation, and Stidham should be forthcoming with all public documents as a matter of open records law.
Portage residents deserve the unfiltered and untainted truth.
State Board of Accounts looks into malfeasance allegations in Portage clerk's office
NWI Times
July 10, 2019
https://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/state-board-of-accounts-looks-into-malfeasance-allegations-in-portage/article_07037e4a-4bda-5864-b878-ab2d067c6769.html
PORTAGE — The Indiana State Board of Accounts is looking into the allegations of malfeasance in the Portage clerk-treasurer's office.
Clerk-Treasurer Chris Stidham said SBOA officials interviewed him earlier this week, and he said he was told they were looking into the matter.
Mayor John Cannon said Wednesday officials also met with him and his investigative committee about two weeks ago when the allegations came out.
Stidham said he believed Cannon should let the "proper authorities" investigate the situation.
At issue is allegedly unapproved payments to three companies by Stidham's office. Specifically, Stidham is alleged to have paid Keeping the Books, ERG Advisors and Paramount Technology Solutions a total of $70,000 and contracted them without the approval of the Portage Board of Works.
Information obtained by a bipartisan executive committee investigating the possible misfeasance showed the companies were registered under Stidham's wife's maiden name. As part of that probe, Stidham was directed to provide Portage officials with documents involving the payments.
“He just needs to let the third-party authorities look into this situation. He is not a professional investigator. The whole situation reeks of politics," Stidham said.
"I can't keep responding to every single allegation. I and the rest of the city's officials have business to attend to and the mayor should stop neglecting his duties in favor of what is really a witch hunt.”
Cannon said it has nothing to do with politics.
"How could it be? He's not running for office," he said. "He lost."
Cannon is questioning the documents Stidham supplied regarding 19 checks claimed to be unapproved by the board.
In a statement released Tuesday, Cannon said the documents Stidham provided don't match other records. Those documents included copies of the checks in question, invoices and account registers as well as copies of 1099 forms from Stidham's wife, who was hired by Stidham to do some work for his office before they were married.
“It appears that multiple invoices were alleged by Stidham to have been paid at the same board meetings, including payments to two or even three of (his wife's) companies with very similar descriptions of work performed during the same time period,” Cannon's statement said.
He questioned why they were invoiced as three separate companies instead of on a single bill or single company.
Cannon also questioned when the claims were put onto the docket for the board of works, adding they all seemed to be last-minute additions after the meeting.
"It looks like a loophole to me," he said. "The way it seems to me is that he is using the process in a way so nobody notices what's going on."
Previously, Stidham said it has been common practice for the clerk-treasurer's office to add additional claims to the Board of Works dockets to keep up with city bills as efficiently as possible. He repeatedly has said he was willing to review and change that practice.
Embattled clerk turns over Portage documents
Chicago Tribune
July 09, 2019
https://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/post-tribune/ct-ptb-stidham-documents-st-0710-20190709-4nwpvkqy3zhgrogyeyd7aenr7m-story.html
Portage Clerk-Treasurer Chris Stidham provided that city’s mayor, the city attorney, a member of the Board of Works and the media with 122 pages of documents he promised to provide during a July 3 Board of Works meeting.
The documents include 1099s, account payable registers and the fronts and backs of checks related to work done by three companies owned by Rachel Glass, then Stidham’s girlfriend, in 2015 and 2016, under contract with the clerk-treasurer’s office. The work, Stidham has said, stopped once the two married in 2016.
The documents, which Stidham initially pledged to provide Friday but said were delayed when the bank statements he needed were no longer online, arrived via email Monday afternoon in the latest volley between him and Mayor John Cannon, who has asked, unsuccessfully, for Stidham to resign.
The documents weren’t enough to satisfy Cannon, who in the spring established a three-person executive investigative committee to determine whether Stidham was involved in any wrongdoing.
Though that committee’s work was done, Cannon said the Board of Works has asked the committee to review the documents in greater detail and draft an addendum to their report based on any additional findings, and said there are a number of discrepancies within the documents.
“We received the documents, the very documents that the committee asked for in a FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request in May,” he said, adding Stidham had seven days to respond to the request but didn’t do so then, “and there’s still no response to the FOIA request.”
Stidham has said he provided most of the documents requested by the committee in the spring, though Cannon has disagreed.
“I guess the question is, why now and not then?” Cannon said.
On July 2, Cannon released a redacted, 15-page report put together by the committee, which he has said is bipartisan and comprised of a City Council member, a Board of Works member and a city department head.
The committee’s report noted that it is “sufficiently likely” that Stidham’s payments to his then-girlfriend for the work violated a number of state and federal criminal as well as civil statutes, and questioned whether she performed the work at all.
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Stidham has said the accusations are retaliation for his January testimony during the federal trial of disgraced former Mayor James Snyder, who awaits sentencing on two federal corruption charges, during which the payment to Glass first came up.
According to the 1099 tax forms, Rachel Glass made a total of $58,416.16 in 2015 and 2016 between her three companies, Paramount Technology Solutions, ERG Advisors and Keeping the Books.
The last invoices in the documents were both on Aug. 8, 2016, and were $3,000 to Paramount and $4,000 to ERG. Stidham has said the last invoices came in shortly before the couple’s wedding because they had to be cleared out before the two married so they didn’t run afoul of anti-nepotism rules.
The invoices list bank account reconciliation and database work as the brunt of the tasks done by the companies on contract.
The documents, said Cannon, don’t include contracts between the clerk-treasurer’s office and the three businesses.
And they won’t, Stidham said, because there were no contracts.
“It’s not criminal. It’s what I told the State Board (of Accounts),” Stidham said, adding he met with the board Monday, and the board will be in his office for three weeks investigating that and other matters.
The board, he said, is reviewing everything and is qualified to do so. Cannon also has said he met with the board earlier this month about the matter.
Cannon, Stidham said, is making accusations but thus far hasn’t given him a copy of the committee’s report, all the while making “inflammatory and defamatory remarks” that are beneath Cannon and the office of mayor.
Cannon, Stidham said, seems to have a personal vendetta against him.
“The whole thing smells of personal politics,” Stidham said.
Stidham delivers documents over questioned checks
NWI Times
July 08, 2019
https://www.nwitimes.com/news/stidham-delivers-documents-over-questioned-checks/article_4c0b48f1-e6f6-5997-8004-f5aeb42a50ac.html
PORTAGE — Clerk-Treasurer Chris Stidham has provided Portage officials with the documents requested involving allegedly unapproved payments to three companies by his office.
Copies of the checks in question, invoices and account registers were provided to Mayor John Cannon, Board of Works Member Ron Necco, Attorney Gregory Sobkowski and media outlets, including The Times Media Co.
In the packet of information, Stidham included his wife's 1099 forms from her employment in his office. They showed she received about $28,000 in 2015 and $30,000 in 2016. The income was listed as “non-employee compensation.”
Cannon said the only requested documents they didn't receive were dockets from Board of Works meetings when the checks would have been approved.
"We are still reviewing the documents and haven't drawn any conclusions," Cannon said.
The mayor said his office would make an announcement on any findings.
Stidham promised last Tuesday he would deliver the documents by Friday, but missed his self-imposed deadline because of what he called an archive issue with the city's bank.
Stidham is alleged to have paid Keeping the Books, ERG Advisors and Paramount Technology Solutions a combined total of $70,000 and contracted them without the board's approval.
In April, Mayor John Cannon appointed a bipartisan executive investigative committee to look into potential malfeasance in Stidham's office.
According to the committee's report released last Tuesday, the companies were registered under Stidham's wife's name.
The documents Stidham provided show his wife listed under her maiden name and two of the companies in question as sharing an address in Valparaiso.
The allegations mostly stem from Stidham formerly employing his wife in his office before they were married.
Her employment was brought up during the trial of former Mayor James Snyder when Stidham was cross-examined as a witness. Snyder was convicted on bribery and tax evasion charges and is awaiting sentencing.
Porter County Prosecutor Gary Germann is currently looking for a special prosecutor to investigate the allegations. The candidate will likely be from outside of Northwest Indiana to avoid any conflicts of interest.
Document deadline missed as mayor brings Dem opponent into fray
Chicago Tribune
July 07, 2019
https://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/post-tribune/ct-ptb-portage-clerk-documents-st-0707-20190705-vc4irjzefjfw3iulpvzunbvq54-story.html
Portage Clerk-Treasurer Chris Stidham did not meet Friday’s self-imposed deadline for providing documents to the city’s Board of Works and other officials relating to work his then-girlfriend did for his office because he said he was not able to access the fronts and backs of checks online.
He plans to provide by Monday morning all of the documents requested by Board of Works member Ron Necco, including 1099 tax forms by the city for work performed by companies affiliated with Rachel Glass, now Stidham, before the two married; copies of the fronts and backs of checks made out to the firms in 2015 and 2016; and board dockets with the claims listed.
Stidham said he found out Friday that the online bank website no longer has 2015 and 2016 available, so he has to go through two years of bank statements manually to make the requested copies.
According to his records, Stidham said that on April 12 he provided invoices and canceled checks to a three-person executive investigative committee established by Mayor John Cannon. He did not provide the backs of the checks, he said, because the committee didn’t ask for them.
Cannon said Friday Stidham informed a member of the Board of Works by email that he couldn’t get the requested documents online in time to provide them that day and needed another business day.
“He did not provide in April the backs of checks or we wouldn’t ask again,” Cannon said, questioning why the checks were available online a few months ago but aren’t now, and adding that Stidham “ignored” a May Freedom of Information Act request for the same documents.
“Either you have them or you don’t,” Cannon said.
Stidham’s response is full of discrepancies, Cannon said, including the amount he claims he paid to Rachel Stidham’s companies. “We had $50,000 and added it up and it came to $70,000, so it’s worse than we thought.”
Stidham has repeatedly said that Rachel Stidham stopped contract work with his office once the two married, and that the committee’s investigation and allegations of improprieties are retaliation for his testimony earlier this year during the federal trial of former Mayor James Snyder, who awaits sentencing on two federal corruption charges.
Cannon, a Republican, has demanded Stidham, a Democrat whose term ends in December and who lost a primary bid for mayor, resign. Stidham has refused.
“There’s a clear design in his actions of harassment and personal animus,” Stidham said of Cannon, who is seeking election to a full term, adding of the executive investigative committee, “They’re not empowered to do anything. If they thought there was an issue, take it to the right people instead of this constant witch hunt to harass me and my staff.”
Stidham said he decided to wait until he had all of the requested documents in hand to turn them over because the partial list is documents he already provided in April.
On Tuesday, Cannon released a redacted, 15-page report put together by the committee, which he has said is bipartisan and comprised of a City Council member, a Board of Works member and a city department head.
The report notes that it is “sufficiently likely” that Stidham’s payments to his then-girlfriend for contract work for his office violated a number of state and federal criminal as well as civil statutes, and questions whether she performed the work at all.
Much of the focus of a Wednesday Board of Works meeting, during which Necco requested the documents, focused on the claims process and why Stidham said they are sometimes added to a board docket after the board has met and signed off on claims for the city.
Cannon said that what “really upsets” him is that City Council President Sue Lynch, D-At large, received the documents from Snyder during Snyder’s trial. He claimed she did nothing with them until Cannon was selected by caucus to fulfill the rest of Snyder’s term, through the end of this year.
He also claimed Lynch was aware of the committee’s initial charge to come up with a preliminary report before the May primary and Lynch, who will face Cannon on the November ballot for mayor after besting Stidham in the primary, said she didn’t want the matter to be political.
“She may have more documents than we have because of what Snyder provided her. We don’t even know,” he said.
Lynch said she looked through the documents when she received them from the mayor’s office and didn’t think the matter belonged with the City Council.
“I don’t even have that stuff anymore,” she said.
Signing contracts and disbursing checks, she said, are the work of the Board of Works, not the council, and she feels this is a Board of Works issue.
Cannon has said he and committee members met with representatives from the State Board of Accounts about the matter earlier this week; he has declined to say what other agencies may be involved, but Lynch has said the Porter County prosecutor’s office is in the process of bringing in a special prosecutor from Lake County to look at things.
She, like Stidham, wonders why the matter is coming up now.
“If it was such an egregious crime, why didn’t officials do something about it?” she said, adding she wants to keep the council from getting involved. “We need to sit back and let the authorities do what they need to do.”
Portage clerk fails to deliver promised documents
nwitimes.com-Jul 5, 2019
NWI Times
July 05, 2019
https://www.nwitimes.com/news/portage-clerk-fails-to-deliver-promised-documents/article_9306cc66-2f90-59be-90d7-055143135c7f.html
PORTAGE — Clerk-Treasurer Chris Stidham did not deliver the documents he promised to provide earlier this week to the Portage Board of Public Works by Friday.
The documents involve allegedly unapproved payments to three companies by his office.
He said Friday he "hit some snags" in producing the documents and would not be able to deliver all of them until Monday.
“Our online banking system does not have the backs of checks from 2015 and 2016, so now I have to pull them manually,” he said.
Stidham said he had provided copies of the fronts of the checks in question back in April to Mayor John Cannon.
He hasn't provided the other documents requested, including 1099 forms, invoices showing payments and copies of board of works dockets with the invoices listed.
“I plan on providing everything in one big batch,” Stidham said Friday. “I thought this process would be faster, but with the holiday things simply did not fall the way I expected.”
Stidham is alleged to have paid Keeping the Books, ERG Advisors and Paramount Technology Solutions a combined total of $70,000 and contracted them without the board's approval. A report released Tuesday alleges the companies in question are associated with his wife.
Cannon said he is frustrated with the situation.
"Either you have it or you don't,” he said. “Why come up at 9 a.m. to the board of works meeting and say that he'll have it all to us by Friday?”
Cannon claimed Council President Sue Lynch knew of the situation and was informed by former Mayor James Snyder of his suspicions on Stidham. He said he tried to get her involved with the investigation before the primary election in May, where she and Stidham were both running for the Democratic nomination for mayor.
“She said that it was going to be seen as political and didn't want to get involved,” Cannon said. “I'd rather lose an election than let the taxpayers lose money. She sat on this for months.”
Lynch said Friday she couldn't comment on the allegations.
“We need to stay out of the process as a council. We're not investigators and we need to turn it over to the people who are,” she said. “Let the proper authorities report back on what they find out and then they can proceed.”
The council has hired Porter County Council President Dan Whitten to represent the City Council over the situation.
Porter County Prosecutor Gary Germann said he wants to find a special prosecutor from Lake County to look into the matter.
Portage official promises to turn over documents by Friday deadline
Chicago Tribune
July 03, 2019
https://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/post-tribune/ct-ptb-portage-board-of-works-st-0704-20190703-qufcwnvgv5dn7apkm5jqfigkuu-story.html
Portage Clerk-Treasurer Chris Stidham agreed during a Wednesday Board of Works meeting to provide that board and other city officials with a lengthy list of documents by the end of business Friday, even though told he the board, as he has said repeatedly, that he turned over those documents in March.
The document request comes after Mayor John Cannon created a three-member investigative committee to look into allegations about Stidham paying his then-girlfriend, Rachel Glass, whom he later married, for contract work in his office through her companies, to Keeping the Books, ERG Advisors and Paramount Technology Solutions.
Cannon has said the work came to around $70,000 and neither the invoices nor contracts came before the board, as required by law. Stidham has countered the figure is closer to $50,000 and the claims didn’t go before the board because of the claims procedure, which he detailed for the board during the meeting. He also has said the investigation is retaliatory for testimony he gave during the federal trial public corruption trial former Mayor James Snyder, who was forced to resign his office after being convicted earlier this year.
Necco asked Stidham for a list of items including contracts with all three of the companies; 1099 tax forms by the city for all of the work performed by the companies; copies of the front and back of checks made out to the firms; and board dockets with the claims listed.
“Does the clerk-treasurer plan to comply?” Necco said.
“I will make sure you have all of it by the end of business Friday,” said Stidham, who made an unsuccessful bid for mayor in the Democratic primary and whose term ends Dec. 31.
Cannon, a Republican, previously said that the board would seek repayment of the invoices at the meeting. That didn’t come up and Necco said afterward the board wanted to review the documents before deciding how to proceed.
“How do you demand repayment when you don’t know if they were paid improperly?” Necco said, adding there may be invoices from other firms that also haven’t gone before the board. “This is nothing more than fact gathering.”
A packed crowd filled the conference room at City Hall, including members of the City Council and attorney Christopher Buckley, who is being retained by the executive investigative committee convened by Cannon. The bipartisan committee, who Cannon has declined to identify by name, includes a City Council member, a Board of Works member, and a city department head.
On Tuesday, the mayor’s office, with a go-ahead from the committee, released a redacted version of the committee’s 15-page report. The report notes that it is “sufficiently likely” that Stidham’s payments to his then-girlfriend for contract work for his office violated a number of state and federal criminal as well as civil statutes, and questions whether the work was performed by her at all.
Since the committee can’t issue subpoenas, Cannon has said the report has been turned over to the appropriate authorities. Other than saying that members of the committee met Monday with the State Board of Accounts, he’s declined to say who those authorities are, but Council President Sue Lynch, D-At large, has said the Porter County Prosecutor’s office has the full report. That office is lining up a special prosecutor from Lake County to look into the matter.
Stidham outlined the docket and claims process during the meeting.
“I’m not saying it can’t be done better,” he said, adding as far as the payments to the companies in question, “we’ll sort that out in due course.”
With one minor change, Stidham said the claims process has been in place since before he took office in 2012. A cover sheet, with room for board signatures, lists the number of pages of claims and the dollar amount.
The board signs the form and claims continue to be added or removed from the docket for a couple of days after the meeting.
“Right or wrong, that’s been the process for many years,” he said.
Based on requests from the board, Stidham said he has been making changes to the process. “I think there’s room to go there. There’s been some confusion with the docket process.”
Necco said he’s been on the board since 2016 and didn’t know claims could be added without his knowledge or approval, or after the board signs off on the docket.
“That’s a problem,” he said.
Stidham took the blame for the board’s lack of knowledge about how the docket worked.
“Shame on me with not being more clear with the board about the process,” he said. “Right or wrong, that was the process. It wasn’t meant to be salacious or deviant or anything. It was intended to keep vendors from waiting” for payments.
Bills to the city, Cannon said, are due in 30, 45 or 90 days, and the board meets every two weeks.
“There would be no reason to pay bills between these times,” he said.
He added that his office requested the same documents of Stidham that Necco did during the meeting in March, April and May.
“Why we can get it Friday and not the previous three months is a mystery to me.”
Stidham said he believed he had complied with the request.
“That’s not true. The fronts and backs of checks, dockets, invoices, you haven’t provided any of those to my office or they would have been provided to the committee,” Cannon said.
Stidham said he believed he provided a folder with those documents but would provide them to members of the board, Cannon, the City Council, and Gregg Sobkowski, the city attorney.
Stidham will provide documents for questionable payments
NWI Times
July 03, 2019
https://www.nwitimes.com/news/stidham-will-provide-documents-for-questionable-payments/article_881f649e-4061-588a-909b-95afbe05eb93.html
PORTAGE — Clerk-Treasurer Chris Stidham has promised to provide the Portage Board of Public Works with documents involving allegedly unapproved payments to three companies by his office Friday.
He made that commitment at a special board of works meeting Tuesday morning.
Board member Ron Necco asked for copies of contracts involving Keeping the Books, ERG Advisors and Paramount Technology Solutions as well as 1099 forms, both sides of checks cut to the companies, invoices showing payments and copies of board of works dockets with the invoices listed.
Stidham is alleged to have paid these businesses a combined total of $70,000 and contracted them without the board's approval. A report released Tuesday alleges the companies in question are associated with his wife.
“This isn't a witchhunt or headhunt type of thing. This stuff comes out and us, being responsible for the finance of the city, we're doing our due diligence,” Necco said.
Mayor John Cannon said he asked for the same information back in March, but Stidham never provided the documents. Stidham said he provided the mayor documents when they were requested in March, but Cannon said they were not related to the case.
Stidham said the issue involving the checks can partially be explained by the way the claims docket is handled before and after meetings.
He explained the board gets several versions of a claims docket that has the bulk of the city expenses the board approves. The docket goes through multiple revisions before the board approves it, he said.
It is first sent digitally to board members, followed by an updated hard copy signed at the meeting and a final version with any additions made later.
The docket can be updated after the meeting as the form is signed off without a dollar amount or amount of pages in the docket set in stone. Department heads may even remove or add some claims up to three days after the meeting.
Stidham said he was told by a longtime employee of the clerk-treasurer's office that this process was the way it has been done for years before he took office.
“It flows into this (issue with the checks) and creates a lot of confusion,” he said. “I'm not saying it's right or wrong. It's just been the process and I want everyone to understand it.”
Necco said he was unaware of how the process worked and surprised items could be added later.
“I had no opportunity to review (the additional claims), ask questions or verify their legitimacy,” he said. “That does create a problem.”
Cannon took issue with this practice, saying that most bills coming before the board aren't due immediately when they're sent to the city.
“Bills are normally sent to the city in a 30-day, 45-day, or 90-day time frame. The board of works meets twice a month,” he said. “There would be no need to pay bills between that two week time frame if we have leeway in the bill paying process.”
Stidham said he was open to changing the process and has been willing to discuss concerns.
“I think (the docket process) is the underlying concern,” he said. “I'm not saying it can't be done better.”
Last week, Cannon issued a news release announcing a report had been provided to him about potential wrongdoing in the clerk-treasurer's office, while a redacted version of the report with all of the allegations wasn't released until Tuesday afternoon.
Most of the allegations stem from Stidham employing his wife in his office before they were married. The report alleges some financial motivations for cutting checks to the three companies in question.
This employment issue was also brought up during the trial of former Mayor James Snyder during the cross-examination of Stidham, who testified as a witness. Snyder was later convicted and is awaiting sentencing.
Stidham has repeatedly called any allegations of wrongdoing involving his wife's employment salacious and even slanderous.
Portage releases clerk investigation report; Stidham says it's retribution for testifyingin disgraced former mayor’s trial
Chicago Tribune
July 02, 2019 - 6:24 PM
https://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/post-tribune/ct-ptb-portage-council-investigaton-st-0703-20190702-tuo7z4l6k5h27dclzxowrgnqqe-tuo7z4l6k5h27dclzxowrgnqqe-story.html
A committee report investigating alleged wrongdoing by Portage Clerk-Treasurer Chris Stidham notes that it is “sufficiently likely” that Stidham’s payments to his then-girlfriend for contract work for his office violated a number of state and federal criminal as well as civil statutes, and questions whether the work was performed by her at all.
Mayor John Cannon’s office released a redacted version of the 15-page report Tuesday afternoon. Redactions include the agencies looking into the matter, Social Security numbers and other personal information, and eight bullet points of recommendations from the committee.
“They got everything from public documents. Everything is public information. They can’t go any further in the investigation because they don’t have subpoena powers,” Cannon said, adding the bipartisan committee, comprised of a city council member, a member of the board of works and a department head, consulted with their attorney, Christopher Buckley, before releasing the redacted report.
City council members have been provided redacted copies, Cannon said, adding they had the opportunity to view the full version of the report over the past several days.
“The investigation at this time is completed. They have done everything I’ve asked. It’s now been turned over to the proper authorities,” he said.
The report details the amounts paid out to Keeping the Books, ERG Advisors and Paramount Technology Solutions, all owned by Rachel Glass, including thousands of dollars paid from the city’s cable fund. None of the payments, according to the report, had accompanying invoices, descriptions of work performed or vouchers and none of them are listed on the city’s “Financial Transparency Portal” on its website, which the report said includes “the exhaustive list of hundreds of other vendors paid by the City.”
The report notes that given the evidence, it appears “that Mr. and Mrs. Stidham were sufficiently financially intertwined to implicate civil and criminal liability,” including a relationship that began in 2014 or earlier, the birth of a child the following year, and the purchase of a home in Portage in 2016 around the time they married.
Cannon has asked Stidham, whose term ends on Dec. 31, to resign in light of the committee’s report, which he has refused to do. Cannon also will ask the Board of Works during a Wednesday morning to seek repayment of what he says is almost $70,000 in unauthorized payments to three companies affiliated with Glass, now Stidham’s wife, for contract work with his office.
The report notes that no contracts with her companies are on record with the city and the invoices did not receive approval from the board of works, in violation of an assortment of laws.
A representative from the State Board of Accounts met with two committee members, Cannon and Buckley on Monday, Cannon said, declining to note which other authorities have received the report.
Stidham has said the investigation is politically motivated because of testimony he gave during the federal trial of former Mayor James Snyder, who was convicted in February on two public corruption charges and awaits sentencing.
He has said the figure for the contract work was closer to $50,000, and that the work, including database tasks, took place in 2015 and 2016, and stopped once he and Glass married. Stidham also has said the board of works did not see the invoices for the work because of a procedural matter.
Stidham said he has not been provided a copy of the redacted report and has reached out to the State Board of Accounts as well, asking them to review the committee’s allegations and other matters as part of their next annual audit of the city, which he expects in the coming weeks.
“They are the proper entity for this type of thing as an independent entity and not politically motivated like the mayor,” he said. “I’m concerned that this is all in retaliation for matters the mayor believes I had already reported to the state board.”
In his letter to state board, Stidham asks the board to “review the process of payment of claims by this office for 2012 through current. While Mayor (Cannon) has hand-picked selected claims in order to make salacious accusations, the underlying process for paying claims in the City of Portage has been in place since before I took office on January 1, 2012 and remains largely in place to this day.”
Council President Sue Lynch, D-At large, confirmed she had received a copy of the redacted report but said she has not yet had a chance to review it. The full report, she said, has been turned over to the Porter County prosecutor’s office.
Porter County Prosecutor Gary Germann confirmed his office has the report, and that he will be meeting with a representative from the Lake County prosecutor’s office to see if they will serve as a special prosecutor in the matter.
Lynch said that because the city council’s attorney, Ken Elwood, shares office space with Stidham, the council has hired Dan Whitten, who has an office in Portage, as its conflict attorney. She expects he will meet with prosecutors and, once the investigation is further along, she will schedule an executive session for an update from Whitten. Whitten is a member of the Porter County Council.
“Now that it’s been turned over to the proper authorities, the council needs to sit back and let that process work. That’s what we need to do,” she said.
Portage report says Clerk-Treasurer Stidham may have violated city, state laws
NWI Times
July 02, 2019
https://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/porter/portage/portage-report-says-clerk-treasurer-stidham-may-have-violated-city/article_0b1c9c90-d436-50ad-a69a-e7d9234adf6b.html
PORTAGE — More investigation is needed into the dealings of Clerk-Treasurer Chris Stidham, according to a report released by the mayor's investigative committee.
A heavily redacted version of the June 25 report compiled by the committee assembled by Mayor John Cannon to look into allegations against Stidham was released Tuesday afternoon. The report says there is probable cause Stidham violated city ordinances and state rules on the conduct of attorneys. It lists at least 13 laws Stidham could have violated.
The allegations mostly stem from Stidham previously employing his wife in his office before they were married. Stidham has said previously his wife left the city's employment before they tied the knot, thus not violating any nepotism statues. But the report suggest Stidham may have had financial motivations.
The report lays out a number of claims including Stidham having financial issues and potential nepotism violations. The report also claims his family may have benefited from several checks signed by his office that were allegedly not approved by the city's Board of Works.
It states Stidham unsuccessfully filed for bankruptcy in 2007 and eventually had his home foreclosed on in 2013.
In 2015 and 2016, the two were cutting city checks worth a total of $70,000 to three companies: Keeping the Books, ERG Advisors and Paramount Technology Solutions, according to the report. The checks range from about $1,700 to $5,000.
The report claims all three companies were registered under Stidham's wife's maiden name in Valparaiso under the same phone number. It claims Keeping the Books is registered at her former residence, ERG was registered in 2015 at her parents' address and Paramount is unregistered but has an address that is the same as a Valparaiso UPS store.
The committee's attorney, Christopher Buckley, interviewed two Board of Works members in May who said they never heard of the three companies and that any payments to the three were never brought to their attention.
In 2016, Stidham and his wife purchased a home in Portage around the time they were married.
“In spite of such poor financial health, (the Stidhams) were somehow able to purchase a home together,” the report reads. “The house is currently assessed at $257,500.”
The report also says that because the couple had a child together in 2015, Stidham's employment of the mother of his child could still fall under provisions of anti-nepotism laws as the child benefited from money coming out of his office.
The report has a list of actions recommended for the mayor to take and a list of law enforcement agencies the committee sent the report to, but both were redacted.
Stidham said he has not been provided a copy of the report and couldn't comment on the exact claims until he is given an opportunity to see it.
“It's the same story being rehashed over and over and over again,” he said. “To my knowledge, this is over the way we do the dockets, which I have said I would be willing to discuss with the State Board of Accounts and all interested parties on changing the process.”
Today at 9:30 a.m., a special board of works meeting will be hosted at city hall to discuss the $70,000 worth of checks.
Porter County sheriff not investigating allegations on clerk-treasurer
NWI Time
June 29, 2019
https://www.nwitimes.com/news/porter-county-sheriff-not-investigating-allegations-on-clerk-treasurer/article_c081ffed-2bf6-5d41-9722-c6904b94b708.html
The Porter County Sheriff's Department is not currently investigating the allegations made earlier this week by the Portage mayor of possible wrongdoing in the city's clerk-treasurer's office.
Cpl. Benjamin McFalls said Friday the sheriff's department was not looking into the allegations made by Portage Mayor John Cannon about Chris Stidham.
He did not say whether his department was asked to look into the matter.
“As we stated in the press release, we turned over the report to the proper authorities,” Cannon said Friday. “That's all the (investigative) committee authorized me to say.”
Earlier this week, Cannon called on Stidham to resign after a bipartisan committee assembled by the mayor's office found “a sufficient likelihood of unlawful conduct” in the clerk-treasurer's office. The findings were laid out in a confidential report shown to some city officials.
Cannon said Tuesday he had contacted other officials and law enforcement about the situation. He did not specify then whom he contacted besides Council President Sue Lynch.
Stidham said the investigation stemmed from his wife working for the clerk-treasurer's office prior to her marriage to Stidham.
The situation was brought up during the trial of former Mayor James Snyder, who was convicted on bribery and tax evasion earlier this year. Stidham testified during the trial, and his wife's former employment was brought up during cross-examination.
Cannon on Friday called for an ordinance requiring two-signatures on all checks issued by the city.
According to a news release from the mayor's office, the measure stems from three transactions the confidential report said were unapproved by the board of works and signed by Stidham's wife.
Cannon said there were 19 checks signed by her between 2015 and 2016 for Keeping the Books, Paramount Technology Solutions and ERG Advisors, which were worth a total of $70,000.
The release states there had been no evidence presented to the mayor's investigation committee that the the transactions were ever approved by the Portage Board of Works and that one committee member, who was a board member, had no recollection of them either.
Treasurer Stidham fights back in Portage: ‘I’ve been defamed’
Chicago Tribune
June 28, 2019
https://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/post-tribune/ct-ptb-portage-clerk-mayor-st-0630-20190628-7j3b55ihy5e67n66krolkp5t64-story.html
The blooming battle between Portage Mayor John Cannon and Clerk-Treasurer Chris Stidham over Stidham’s hiring of his then-girlfriend to work as a contractor took a new twist Friday, as Cannon said checks made out to her businesses never cleared the board of works as required by state law.
In response, Stidham called the mayor’s actions “defamatory,” adding the checks, along with others from the city, didn’t come before the board because of a procedural matter.
The call and response came Friday, the day after Cannon announced he had formed a three-person executive committee to investigate Stidham. Cannon has called for Stidham, who’s term ends in December, to resign.
“He may not like the vendor that I selected. He may not like that we were in a relationship. He may not like that we got married, but at the end of the day, that’s not his job as mayor,” Stidham said.
The committee, Cannon said, found almost $70,000 in unapproved transactions from the clerk-treasurer’s office paid to three entities, Keeping the Books, ERG Advisors and Paramount Technology Solutions.
The board of works is expected to seek repayment of the invoices from those vendors at a meeting Wednesday because the transactions were not approved, Cannon said, adding the State Board of Accounts will meet with the committee about their findings Monday. Cannon has said two Democrats and a Republican, representing, in no particular order, the city council, the board of works and a department head, make up the committee. Cannon has declined to name them.
According to documents available on the Indiana Secretary of State’s office website, Keeping the Books and ERG Advisors both list Rachel Glass as owner. They had separate addresses on Valparaiso’s north side for four months each in 2015, with some overlap on when they were active.
Stidham confirmed that Glass, now Rachel Stidham, was his girlfriend at the time. The state did not have a listing for Paramount Technology Solutions.
“I believe that one was simply an assumed name registered through the county,” he said, adding not all of her businesses were registered through the state.
The invoices, he said, totaled somewhere around $50,000, not as much as suggested by Cannon, and covered a span of a year to 18 months.
Of the invoices, Cannon said some of the checks were sent to the Valparaiso addresses and the rest were sent to UPS stores in Merrillville and Valparaiso. He declined to say how many checks there were.
“There was no record of this. No one knew this money was coming out,” Cannon said, adding that state law requires the city’s board of works to approve all transactions, including contracts with vendors and those for the clerk-treasurer’s office.
Despite repeated requests since April, Cannon said, Stidham has yet to provide proof that the board of works approved the claims or the contracts for the work. Stidham has said he did not receive those requests until Tuesday, and they were similar to ones he fulfilled in the spring.
“The day before the wedding (between Stidham and Glass), there was a $6,000 check written to one of these companies,” Cannon said.
Stidham didn’t specifically know about the check before his wedding.
“I don’t dispute it but it would make sense,” he said, adding once he married, he and his wife would have been in violation of nepotism rules so final payments were likely being wrapped up before that date. He has said his wife has not worked in his office since they were married.
The lack of approval by the board of works, Stidham said, was procedural because of how claims were docketed for the board, something that he’s changed in recent months.
The docket of claims could shift dramatically and typically wasn’t a full accounting of all the claims paid out. “It’s a gross mischaracterization” for Cannon to pull a handful of claims and say they are outside of the normal process since it happens all the time, Stidham said.
“It’s defamatory, frankly, and that’s going to be the next step of all this,” he said. “I’ve been defamed.”
Stidham, who, with two other candidates lost the Democratic primary bid for the mayor’s seat to Council President Sue Lynch, D-At large, has called Cannon’s claims political, and said he was “lockstep” with former Mayor James Snyder, forced from office in mid-February and awaiting sentencing after a federal jury convicted him on two public corruption charges. Cannon will face Lynch on the November ballot.
Cannon said he will ask the city attorney to draft an ordinance requiring two signatures on any city-issued check. Though he didn’t have time to get the matter on the agenda for a vote during Tuesday’s city council meeting, he does expect it to come up for discussion.
Stidham said he doesn’t individually sign each check anyway and uses a stamp.
“If the staff has to stamp two different signatures, it makes no difference,” he said.
Cannon has not discussed the proposed ordinance with Lynch yet.
“I don’t see a huge problem with it, but it’s got to come before the council and I have to see what the verbiage is,” she said, adding the ordinance doesn’t sound like it’s targeting the clerk-treasurer’s office. “It’s just something a lot of places do.”
Councilman Bill Fekete, R-4th, who took Cannon’s seat after a caucus selected Cannon to replace Snyder and is the lone Republican on the council, said he didn’t know what the content of the ordinance would be.
“I have to say, there has to be steps taken to assure citizens that funds are not being misused,” he said. “Unfortunately, I don’t believe all the facts have come out yet.”
UPDATE: Portage mayor calls for clerk-treasurer to resign
NWI Times
June 26, 2019
https://www.nwitimes.com/news/update-portage-mayor-calls-for-clerk-treasurer-to-resign/article_3a2b1cc1-fd79-56e0-8434-f6a39aaa0f0b.html
PORTAGE — Mayor John Cannon is calling for the resignation of Clerk-Treasurer Chris Stidham after the clerk failed to cooperate in an internal investigation into possible wrongdoing in that office.
In April, Cannon appointed a bipartisan executive investigative committee to look into potential malfeasance in Stidham's office. Cannon said he would not name the committee members out of respect for their privacy, but said it consisted of two Democrats and a Republican representing a city council member, a board of works member and a department head.
Cannon said the information was brought to his attention in March and he immediately wanted to investigate. The committee gave him a preliminary report in May and asked for more time to finish a final report.
Cannon said he could not get into specifics.
“I'm not allowed to talk about intertwinings of the report at this point,” he said. “It's confidential at this point.”
Stidham said it stemmed from his wife working for the clerk's office prior to her marriage to Stidham.
“It's an issue regarding work done for my office four years ago,” he said. “He's trying to make it something salacious because the individual doing the work, well, we had a relationship.”
According to Stidham, she quit working for his office shortly before they were married in 2016 so they wouldn't violate a law forbidding relatives from working for elected officials.
The situation was brought up during the trial of former Mayor James Snyder, who was convicted on bribery and tax evasion earlier this year. Stidham testified during the trial and his wife's former employment was brought up during cross-examination.
"It was slander when it was in court and it is slander now," he said.
In the course of Cannon's investigation, the committee sent the Portage Clerk-Treasurer's office a request for public documents.
The committee said Stidham did not respond to the request.
“At the end of the day, I am an independently elected official. I manage my office independent of the mayor,” Stidham said. “He has no oversight. He doesn't get to decide the people I hire or the work that I get done. That's left to my good judgment.”
Because it did not have the authority to issue subpoenas compelling a response, the committee told Cannon it could not affirmatively conclude violations of law. However, the committee said it predicted a "sufficient likelihood" of unlawful conduct, warranting further investigation by law enforcement and other officials.
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
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.
