At a heated meeting Tuesday night, Thornton Township trustees refused to approve events they say invite reckless spending by Supervisor Tiffany Henyard, who has faced ongoing scrutiny for financial mismanagement as both township supervisor and Dolton mayor.
Henyard criticized trustees Chris Gonzalez, Carmen Carlisle and Gerald Jones for voting to cancel the upcoming Gospel Fest, House Fest and bingo, saying those events predate his administration. The board approved the monthly Tech Savvy event that offers technology skills training on a shoestring budget.
“I don’t understand why this is an issue now that Tiffany Henyard is supervisor, when it wasn’t an issue when Frank Zuccarelli was supervisor,” Henyard said. “It’s exactly the same thing.”
An ordinance passed by the City Council last month requires the council to approve event budgets before money is committed or spent. Henyard scheduled a special meeting for Aug. 29 to similarly attempt to approve some events as well as amend recently passed ordinances, but no trustees showed up.
Trustees Carlisle and Gonzalez said Tuesday that the township needs to control its spending because it is operating without an approved budget.
“We can’t continue to spend money without it,” Gonzalez said. “And even beyond that, I mean we’ve had a couple of events here in the last month where an extraordinary amount of money has been spent unnecessarily.”
The administrators also again denied paying invoices for goods and services that they said were symptomatic of Henyard’s excessive spending.
Before the bills were put to a vote, Henyard demanded that Carlisle, who proposed excluding 160 items she considered unnecessary to the township’s operations, read each expenditure aloud to those watching the meeting in the interest of transparency.
When Carlisle failed to do so, Henyard asked CFO Robert Hunt to do the same, reporting tens of thousands of dollars spent on township credit cards, including at retailers like Amazon and Walmart, and for services to media and entertainment companies.
“People just nitpick about things they don’t want to endorse and don’t do what’s right,” Henyard said after Hunt read all the material.
Carlisle responded by saying Henyard’s office failed to comply with a recently approved ordinance requiring regular audits of event-related expenses and services and said vendor contracts were not approved by the council before services were rendered.
“We’re not here to try to destroy anything,” Carlisle said.
The council unanimously decided to hire attorneys from the Chicago firm Leinenweber, Daffada and Sansonetti to represent the township in three cases.
ostevens@chicagotribune.com
