Tiffany Henyard, Mayor of Dolton
Dolton Village website
Tiffany Henyard, Dolton’s embattled first-term mayor, calls herself a “super mayor. “
But will the results of an investigation published last week that revealed the village’s outrageous spending during his tenure (adding up to the $40,000 spent on Amazon in a single day) turn out to be his kryptonite?
Lori Lightfoot, former Chicago mayor appointed by Dolton trustees as a special investigator to investigate allegations that Henyard misspent public funds, discussed the initial effects of her investigation at a special meeting last Thursday.
According to Lightfoot’s report, Dolton had a budget surplus of $5. 6 million in April 2022, a year after Henyard’s election.
But the village of another 20,000 people in the southern suburbs is now $3. 6 million in debt, Lightfoot found.
“The village has not been able to pay all of its monthly expenses with the balance of money available,” Lightfoot said of the money accumulated for the special meeting.
Henyard did not attend the meeting. She has done it. Dolton taxpayers deserve answers.
Other questionable expenses come from two police officers who doubled their base pay in 2024 by working six-figure overtime, Lightfoot found.
Even Deputy Chief Lewis Lacey, who was fired this month, earned $96,000 in overtime last fiscal year, though he was a salaried worker who was not entitled to that extra pay.
Coincidentally, a federal grand jury indicted Lacey, 61, on Monday for bankruptcy fraud. The federal government said it hid assets and sources of income from its creditors in an effort to illegally reduce what it owed in the bankruptcy process.
In addition to Amazon’s giant acquisition with a local credit card, Lightfoot said Dolton’s plastic purchases were made at Target, Walgreens, Wayfair ($7,700 was spent there on Sept. 1, 2023) and retailers.
The report identifies Henyard as the one who carried out the transactions. Lightfoot found that Henyard and his management rarely provided procurement receipts.
“What a slap in the face to everyone who lives in the 60419 zip code,” Dolton Administrator Kiana Belcher responded to Lightfoot’s findings at the meeting.
The allegations and others that have recently come to the attention of the FBI have made the city (and Henyard) a national laughing place.
We can only hope that the federal government also sticks to Lightfoot’s conclusions and can regain the trust of other Doltonians in their local government.
One or the other.
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