07032019 - News Article - Portage official promises to turn over documents by Friday deadline

Portage's Attack On City Clerk-Treasurer Chris Stidham, RETALIATION? 18 U.S.C. §§1513: Federal Protection Against Retaliation

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.