Ethics Complaints Against Steve Jones, Allison Swisher

JOLIET, IL — There is even more controversy than usual this week at Joliet's City Hall after Joliet Water Commission member John Herko filed an ethics complaint against city of Joliet Public Utilities Director Allison Swisher and interim city manager Steve Jones.

Hertko's ethics complaint states Swisher provided questionable financial records to the Joliet City Council and Hertko's water commission in November. Hertko states the city has known since May 3 that DuPage's Water Commission as well as Aqua Illinois Co. have not submitted any requests for information to the city of Joliet.

According to Hertko, the DuPage Water Commission issued a letter to his commission and the city council on Nov. 25. "DuPage and Aqua Illinois had made it clear they did not intend to be part of Joliet's Water Project," Hertko's ethics complaint against Swisher and Jones reflects.

In spite of that fact, "adding their company names to official city of Joliet documents may be viewed as a deceitful act and a violation of the Illinois False Claims Act," Hertko writes.

Patch called Swisher for comment on the ethics complaint on Thursday, but she did not call back nor provide any written statement.

Jones, on the other hand, did issue a written response.

"Many professionals from City staff and their consulting firms have provided a thorough, diligent and honest effort to guide the community to a historic decision regarding water. It is sad that an individual has chosen to disparage that effort through a baseless ethics charge against several individuals and two firms," Jones wrote.

On Nov. 25, James Zay, chairman of the DuPage Water Commission sent a two-page letter to Joliet Mayor Bob O'Dekirk, however, the letter does not mention Swisher by name.

"Recently, the DWC was surprised to see, on Joliet's website, the estimated costs for Joliet to become a DWC customer. The DWC believes that these estimated costs are totally and completely inaccurate. We believe in some areas the estimates are over-exaggerated by hundreds of millions of dollars. One example from your slides is how could constructing a 30 MGD system be hundreds of millions of dollars more than building a system twice the size."

The DuPage Water Commission chairman posed the following questions to the Joliet mayor in his two-page letter:

• "How and why did Joliet get these erroneous estimates?
• "What engineering firms made these assumptions and calculated these estimates?
• "Since the DWC never submitted any formal information about our system, or infrastructure, where did this information come from?"
• "Why wasn't the DWC ever given the chance to review or verify any of the estimates before they were presented at a public meeting?"

So why is Hertko going after Jones as well as Swisher in his ethics complaint case?

"By allowing the questionable financial numbers to remain on the city of Joliet website ... this act further places Joliet in an unfavorable light and may violate their fiduciary duty to the taxpayers," Hertko wrote.