Dolton has a budget deficit of at least $3.6 million and is sitting on more than $6 million in checks owed to village vendors that it cannot afford to pay, former Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot said Thursday.
Hired by Dolton trustees to investigate the village’s finances and Mayor Tiffany Henyard’s administration, Lightfoot told trustees and residents at a special village board meeting that spending and deficits continue to mount and said the village has failed to comply with state law by filing annual financial reports.
She gave a preliminary overview of her findings so far, which include monthly tables of income and expenses from the John Kasperek Co., the village auditor.
Lightfoot said the village’s general fund, used to pay most village expenses, has gone from a healthy surplus of several million dollars a few years ago to deficits.
General fund revenues were $24.6 million for fiscal year 2024, which ended April 30 of this year, and expenses were $30 million, she said.
Trustees said Dolton was spending beyond its means and accused Henyard and his administration of pushing the village into deep debt.
Trustees provided their comments after Lightfoot’s presentation to about 160 residents of the Dolton Park District’s Lester Long Fieldhouse.
“It’s sad, it’s sickening,” said board member Kiana Belcher. “We’ve been trying to stop this.”
Trustees have already laid off a handful of village employees and plan to impose a hiring freeze.
“We’re in dire financial shape,” said Trustee Jason House, who announced last month that he would run for mayor in 2025.
Trustee Tammie Brown said: “It’s ridiculous how recklessly our tax dollars have been spent.”
The village’s fiscal year runs from May 1 to April 30, and Lightfoot said no annual financial reports are available beyond the 2021 fiscal year.
Since then, no annual financial reports have been audited and Dolton has not filed a report on its expenses and revenues with the state, Lightfoot said. She noted that the village is already four months into the 2025 fiscal year and has no budget.
She said Dolton had a very small, if any, finance department and said she relied on monthly reports from Kasperek’s company to try to piece together the village’s financial situation.
Lightfoot said the village has a general fund surplus of $5.6 million as of April 2022, ahead of the start of the 2023 fiscal year.
She said the village’s police department’s spending has increased from $7.7 million in fiscal year 2022 to $9.2 million in fiscal year 2024, the budget year that just ended.
Police overtime has increased dramatically in recent years, with $800,000 spent on overtime in fiscal 2022 and that figure rising to $1.7 million last year.
Lightfoot’s report showed that two officers earned more in overtime than they received in base pay, and also revealed that Deputy Police Chief Lewis Lacey received more than $200,000 in overtime, even though he is not part of the police union and technically does not qualify for overtime.
Trustees said Henyard’s use of village police officers as private security was to blame for the increased overtime costs.
Lightfoot said village vendors who provided services or other work for Dolton are waiting to be paid, and that 589 checks totaling more than $6 million have been approved but not sent to vendors because the village is short on cash.
Lightfoot said she plans to do more work, including reviewing village officials’ travel expenses.
She said receipts for village-issued credit cards sent to officials are virtually non-existent and she was trying to take a closer look at how the money is spent.
From what she could glean from available credit card information, Lightfoot said it showed spending on online retailer Amazon of more than $43,000 in a single day.
“This has been a difficult investigation, to say the least,” Lightfoot said, noting the lack of cooperation from Henyard’s administration.
Four trustees who represent the majority of votes on the village board voted in April to hire Lightfoot as a special investigator at a rate of $400 an hour.
Henyard called the hiring “an unconstitutional violation of the powers of the mayor’s office” and vetoed the trustees’ decision in May, but trustees voted in early June to override the veto.
Federal investigators are also investigating Henyard and his administration, and have served subpoenas on Village Hall for financial records and other information.
When Lightfoot was hired, trustees said they wanted to be regularly briefed on the results of her investigation and knew that federal investigators were unlikely to share their findings with trustees. Although a former assistant U.S. attorney, Lightfoot does not have the power to issue subpoenas.
Attorney Burt Odelson, whose firm serves as legislative counsel to the trustees, said Lightfoot’s report sheds light on the true state of the village’s finances.
“The hiring of Mayor Lightfoot was not only smart but incredibly necessary,” he said.
Noting that the village is facing a financial crisis, Odelson said, “We’re going to have some tough months ahead of us. We have a lot of work to do to get this back on track.”
The Dolton village clerk was responsible for responding to freedom of information requests, but that role was eliminated and the village subsequently turned off the information spigot, failing to respond to requests or denying access to public records. Area residents and media outlets, including the Daily Southtown, have faced frequent obstacles in obtaining FOIA requests.
mnolan@southtownstar.com.
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