Chicken (dinner) Came Home to Roost

At the end of July it became widely known that the Plainfield Township Community Center was going to be used for a partisan political fundraiser for Tonia Khouri on August 23rd. At the township meeting on August 12th, the board of trustees was confronted about the open--and continued--support of several in that government in the organizing of this fundraiser in a venue where it wasn’t allowed. There was denial of any knowledge or accountability in this, and Supervisor Fremarek even tried to blame this mess on the Plainfield Township Park District, which was both wrong and poor leadership. If that drawing above of the chicken looks like it’s holding a pitchfork, there’s a reason.

The fundraiser moved, but the bigger problem is for Debbie Kraulidis, a township trustee, a co-chair of the fundraiser, a PTRO member, and the current Legislative Assistant to Rep. Mark Batinick, because:

1. Documents--linked here--show that Deb Kraulidis booked the PTCC for the Khouri fundraiser that was to be held there on August 23rd, and she started that work before mid-July.
   
2. Kraulidis claimed she didn’t know about the location until the advertising flyer was out at end of July. That’s clearly a lie.
   
3. The signature on the contract doesn’t look like Kraulidis’. That doesn’t take her out of the loop of responsibility, but does advance the question of “whose signature is that?”.
   
4. The $150 for use of the PTCC was apparently not correct. It’s mentioned that an updated cost will be determined. Nothing shows this was done, but it could be that once they were caught and the booking had to be cancelled, this no longer needed doing.
5. The Khouri campaign pretty much ducked taking any real responsibility and played the word-parsing clueless card, too. Nice.
   

I thought that this fundraiser booking was just a dumb mistake. If those responsible just owned their mistake and worked to straighten it out, that would be fine. Mistakes happen, they don’t have to be fiascoes.

Unless you blow it and decide that lying to cover your mistake is good. That‘s not a mistake but a willful act. What does the choice to lie by Kraulidis indicate about her ethics and attitude?

It’s a fact that some local Republicans have the kind of double-standard they constantly accuse Democrats of practicing. But, Republican isn’t any more of a synonym for ”right” than Democrat is. In the vernacular, these PTRO folks think theirs doesn’t stink. Or, maybe they just think the rest of us should like the smell.

It’s clear that Deb Kraulidis never saw what she was involved in as wrong and, worse, lied about what she knew and did. That makes her not fit to serve as a legislative assistant to anyone. If Mark Batinick keeps Deb Kraulidis in the role, he’ll be admitting that he has an equal disregard for the taxpayer and for values of honesty and responsibility. That it’s about who you know, not what you do.