Geneva Township Highway Commissioner Race—Why Keep Expenditures Secret?

As I shared yesterday the Geneva Township Highway Department no longer keeps an office at the Township Office resulting in records for the Highway Department being kept elsewhere and difficult for the public to access.

As perplexed as I was at Mr. Wissing’s reluctance to share the 2012 expenditures, I felt compelled to make a FOIA request.

After being made to wait the entire five days allowed by law to reply, Mr. Wissing supplied me with a one-page budget minus any explanations or copies of bills or receipts. I was disappointed at Mr. Wissing’s lack of cooperation and so I submitted a reworded FOIA request. I’ll spare you the play-by-play of what happened over the next few weeks, but the Reader’s Digest version is after five FOIA requests, very little of what I requested was supplied and in some cases completely ignored. No letter of denial was received as required by law.

Once again I met with the FOIA officer and asked what was the next step in obtaining this public information. There was no other alternative but to appeal to the Illinois Attorney General. Instead of complying with his legal obligations, Mr. Wissing has now elected to hire an attorney, I’m assuming at taxpayers’ expense, to keep me from seeing taxpayer records.

Mr. Wissing’s attorney has now informed me that as Highway Commissioner, Mr. Wissing can appoint his own FOIA officer rather than use the Township’s. So now the FOIA officer has been replaced with Mr. Wissing’s attorney at the taxpayers’ expense.

While I was able to get copies of some records before the change of FOIA officers, it seems like I’m back to the drawing board.

Unless things have changed since I was President of the Geneva Park District Board, what little information I was able to get seems to suggest Mr. Wissing’s spending of taxpayers’ money is not always in the taxpayers’ best interest, and I can’t help but wonder what taxpayer information is so confidential that it can’t be available to the taxpayers.

In upcoming days I will share with you some of Mr. Wissing’s expenditures that I have been able to obtain and let you decide if Mr. Wissing has been working in the best interest of the taxpayer.

On April 9, vote for change.
VOTE MIKE ABTS as your new Highway Commissioner.
I’m dedicated to serving the public rather than serving myself!