DOLTON, Ill. — Mayor Tiffany Henyard’s grip on the reins of Dolton is loosening after the village’s board of trustees voted to freeze spending on village credit cards Monday night.
“That was the main goal — To cut off her access and other operators in the municipality,” said Burt Odelson, one of the attorneys representing the Village of Dolton’s Board of Trustees.
According to attorneys representing Dolton’s trustees, moving forward, expenses on village credit cards will be limited to those approved by the board for the village’s Director of Administrative Services to make.
“This village has so many people with so many credit cards, they’re swiping like crazy and that’s why it had to come to a complete halt,” said Michael McGrath, another attorney representing Dolton’s trustees. “There’s thousands and thousands of dollars for Amazon purchases, for PayPal, for Target, for Walgreen’s, for Jewel [Osco] in the hundreds and thousands of dollars.”
McGrath said that a snapshot of just five-to-six months of spending was revealed in the last couple of weeks by Henyard’s top aide, Keith Freeman, who is now cooperating with the village’s board of trustees.
Freeman has pleaded not guilty to a federal bankruptcy charge and is considered by some trustees to be a potential whistleblower.
At Monday night’s village meeting, Henyard announced Freeman’s termination, though the board of trustees insists Freeman is still the village administrator.
Henyard has retained a defense attorney, Beau Brindley, who said Freeman put Henyard’s safety in jeopardy by removing her security detail. Henyard doesn’t often speak to reporters and let her attorney do most of the talking with WGN News.
“How did [Freeman] put you as risk?” asked WGN’s Jenna Barnes.
“He just answered that,” Henyard said.
“Is it that there’s speculation that prosecutors are putting pressure on him to cooperate in their investigation into you?” Barnes followed up.
“We’re talking about the removal of security detail,” Brindley said.
This isn’t the first time Henyard’s safety has taken center stage.
Dolton’s acting chief of police, Lewis Lacey, has implemented capacity limits and metal detectors in the board of trustees’ meeting room, and just Monday night, he made everyone walk back through those metal detectors after the meeting had already started.
Dolton’s board of trustees placed Lacey on administrative leave, pending an investigation into his alleged mishandling of the Dolton Police Department.
“We’ve requested that he turn in all village equipment by the end of today,” McGrath said Monday. “And if he doesn’t, then we’ll seek a court order to enforce the administrative leave.”
That didn’t stop Lacey from reporting to work Tuesday, though. Lacey told WGN News the village board of trustees doesn’t have the power to put him on leave.
As for Dolton’s financials, former Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot is scheduled to present some of the findings of her investigation into Henyard Thursday.