LTHS Demands $2M From Area Agency

LA GRANGE, IL – Lyons Township High School says an agency that handles finances for area schools owes it $2 million.

In an email to area superintendents last month, Lyons Township High School Superintendent Brian Waterman said his school was obligated to get the money from the Lyons Township Treasurer's Office, which handles finances for area school districts.

In 2021, after an eight-year court battle, a judge allowed the high school to withdraw from the treasurer's office. Now, the school can take care of its own finances.

The litigation started when the treasurer's office was mired in scandal. In 2015, the disgraced former treasurer, Robert Healy, was convicted of stealing $1.5 million in school money and sentenced to nine years in prison for the theft.

In the litigation, the treasurer's office claimed Healy wrongly gave the high school more than $1 million in investment earnings from 1995 to 2012, Waterman said. The judge ultimately rejected that claim.

State law required the treasurer's office to transfer all the high school's assets upon the school's July 1 withdrawal, the superintendent said. But the office did not transfer all the money and refused to meet with high school officials about it, he said.

Instead, the office announced it would transfer the more than $1 million to certain other districts, Waterman said.

As a result, the high school sued to prevent the wrongful transfer of money, he said. It was hard to determine how much was being withheld because the office was more than 14 months late on its audit.

"LT now knows that the (treasurer's office) failed to transfer a total of over $2 million in assets belonging to LT," Waterman said in the Feb. 22 email.

The superintendent said the high school has made every effort to resolve its dispute outside the courts. But he said the treasurer's office has refused to meet.

Waterman's email was prompted by a message from Michael Thiessen, president of the treasurer's office's board, to area superintendents. Thiessen later sent a copy to Patch.

Thiessen said high school officials rejected "our sincere desire to enter mediation." He said the school made numerous "unrealistic and highly unusual" demands for the mediation, but he said he was not at liberty to share them.

Thiessen said the office agreed to the demands to move the process along.

He told the other superintendents that $1.2 million was to be reallocated to the other districts because of accounting and distribution errors committed by "convicted felon" Healy.

"According to our review, the actions of this felon resulted in Lyons Township High School receiving an extra $1.2m to the detriment of other Lyons Township School Districts, quite possibly your district," Thiessen told the other superintendents.

In his email to superintendents, Waterman said Thiessen was not correct to say the treasurer's office proposed mediation.

"Now, due to the (treasurer's office's) continued refusal, the lawsuit against the (treasurer's office) will proceed to its conclusion, which likely will include a judgment in favor of LT in the amount of more than $2 million," Waterman said. "LT has a duty to its community and its taxpayers to recover all of its assets from the (treasurer's office), and we intend to fulfill that duty."

At one time, treasurer's offices across the state managed finances for school districts. In the early 1960s, though, the state passed a law abolishing the offices everywhere but Cook County.

Supporters of the treasurer's office say it benefits taxpayers by centralizing local school districts' finance functions into one office.