Dolton has a spending deficit of at least $3.6 million and is sitting on more than $6 million in checks owed to village vendors that it can’t afford to pay, former Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot said Thursday.
Hired by Dolton trustees to investigate village finances and the administration of Mayor Tiffany Henyard, Lightfoot told trustees and residents at a special Village Board meeting that spending and deficits continue to rise and said the village hasn’t complied with state law by filing annual financial reports.
She gave a preliminary overview of her findings, which included monthly tabulations of revenue and expenses by the John Kasperek Co., the village’s auditor.
Lightfoot said the village’s general fund, used for paying most village expenses, went from a healthy multimillion-dollar surplus a couple of years ago to deficits.
Revenue for the general fund was $24.6 million in fiscal year 2024, which ended April 30 of this year, and expenses were $30 million, she said.
Trustees have said Dolton is spending beyond its means and blame Henyard and her administration for driving the village deep into debt.
Trustees offered comments following Lightfoot’s presentation to some 160 residents in the Dolton Park District’s Lester Long Fieldhouse.
“It’s sad, it’s sickening,” Trustee Kiana Belcher said. “We’ve been trying to stop this.”
Trustees have already laid off a handful of village workers and plan to impose a hiring freeze.
“We are in a dire financial position,” said Trustee Jason House, who announced last month he will run for mayor in 2025.
Trustee Tammie Brown said “it’s ridiculous to see how our tax dollars have been recklessly spent.”
The village’s fiscal year runs from May 1 to April 30, and Lightfoot said no annual financial reports are available beyond fiscal year 2021. Henyard became mayor in May 2021.
There have been no audited annual financial statements since that time, and Dolton has failed to file reports on its spending and income with the state, Lightfoot said. She noted the village is already four months into fiscal 2025 and lacks a budget.
She said Dolton has a very small or non-existent finance department, and said she relied on monthly reports from Kasperek’s firm to try to piece together the village’s financial condition.
Lightfoot said the village had a general fund surplus of $5.6 million as of April 2022, before the start of fiscal 2023.
She said spending for the village’s Police Department escalated, going from $7.7 million in fiscal 2022 to $9.2 million in fiscal 2024, the budget year that just ended.
Overtime pay for police officers rose dramatically in recent years, with $800,000 spent on overtime in fiscal 2022 and that number increasing to $1.7 million last year.
Lightfoot’s report showed two police officers earned more in overtime pay than what they received in base pay, and also revealed that Lewis Lacey, deputy police chief, has received more than $200,000 in overtime pay, although he is not part of the police officers’ union and technically not entitled to overtime.
Trustees have said Henyard’s use of village police officers as a private security detail has been to blame for the rise in overtime costs.
Lightfoot said village vendors who performed services or other work for Dolton are awaiting payment, and that 589 checks totaling more than $6 million have been approved but not sent to vendors because the village lacks the cash.
Lightfoot said she plans to do more work, including looking into spending by village officials for travel.
She said receipts for village-issued credit cards to officials are virtually nonexistent, and said she is working to delve deeper into how money is spent.
From what she could glean from available credit card information, Lightfoot said they show spending at online retailer Amazon of more than $43,000 in a single day.
“This has been a challenging investigation to say the least,” Lightfoot said, noting a lack of cooperation from Henyard’s administration.
Four trustees who represent a majority on the Village Board voted in April to bring on Lightfoot as a special investigator at a rate of $400 an hour.
Henyard called the hiring an “unconstitutional infringement of the powers of the office of mayor” and vetoed the trustees’ action in May, but the trustees voted in early June to override the veto.
Federal investigators are also looking into Henyard and her administration, and have served subpoenas at Village Hall for financial documents and other information.
In hiring Lightfoot, trustees said they wanted to have regular updates from her investigation’s findings and knew federal investigators would not likely share their findings with trustees. While a former assistant U.S. attorney, Lightfoot has no subpoena authority.
Attorney Burt Odelson, whose firm is legislative counsel to the trustees, said Lightfoot’s report is shining a light on the true state of village finances.
“The hiring of Mayor Lightfoot was not only smart but incredibly necessary,” he said.
Noting the village faces a financial crisis, Odelson said “we have hard months ahead. We have a lot of work to do to right the ship.”
Dolton’s village clerk was responsible for responding to Freedom of Information Act requests, but the role was removed and the village has subsequently turned off the information spigot, not responding to requests or denying access to public records. Residents and area media outlets, including the Daily Southtown, have encountered frequent roadblocks in getting FOIA requests fulfilled.
In a statement released in conjunction with her report, Lightfoot said she and her team are “working diligently to swiftly and thoroughly conclude the investigation,” and that “further substantive updates will not be provided until our work is complete.”
“We continue to seek full cooperation from Mayor Henyard, her staff, village trustees, vendors, and all relevant parties,” Lightfoot said in the statement. “Our team appreciates the community’s patience as we continue the investigation.”
Henyard was elected mayor in April 2021, and Lightfoot highlighted that the general fund had a surplus of nearly $2.7 million as of April 2023, but that had reversed course and in a year the fund was running a deficit of more than $3.3 million.
Average monthly expenses in the general fund had been running at just under $2 million in fiscal 2022, then grew to $2.3 million in fiscal 2023 and $2.5 million in the last fiscal year, according to her report.
General administration expenses and administrative compensation costs have jumped, rising from $6.4 million in fiscal 2022 to $9.2 million in fiscal 2023 and $9.4 million last budget year.
mnolan@southtownstar.com.
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