Jim Dey | Warring Dems: Auditor's critics charge him with 'conduct unbecoming' (2024)

It’s time once again to dive in to another round of quick takes on the people, places and events that were being talked about over the past week:

Out in the open

The backstage war between members of the Champaign County Board and Auditor George Danos went public last week when board members proposed a “censure” resolution against him.

Danos quickly responded that the censure effort is the latest in a series of political attacks led by his fellow Democrats.

Board member Emily Rodriguez released a tentative draft of the censure resolution that she said still could be revised.

Among other things, it accuses him of using “intimidating actions and language” toward county employees, being “chronically” absent, failing to serve as an adequate “watchdog for taxpayers,” engaging in “inappropriate conversation of a sexual nature,” dressing “inappropriately” and accessing “images of a sexual nature” on county computers.

“These accusations are false and politically motivated. They are designed and timed to distract from my scheduled April 18 board presentation exploding three myths used to sell an additional quarter-cent sales tax,” he said in a brief statement.

Danos opposes a plan by some county board members to ask voters in November to approve a second quarter-cent sales tax increase to fund county government.

It’s possible Danos’ board presentation and the censure motion will come up at the same meeting.

Danos and county board members, including Rodriguez and finance committee chairwoman Stephanie Fortado, have been butting heads in recent months.

They led the unsuccessful charge earlier this year to abolish his office. Danos, however, was able to persuade a board majority to reject that move.

He subsequently drew board members’ ire when he revealed that an unknown individual slashed a tire on his car shortly after that vote.

Most recently, a board committee met on short notice to listen to review internal complaints about Danos that were released in response to an anonymous Freedom-of-Information request from “CookieCutter.”

Champaign County Board Chairwoman Samantha Carter subsequently identified the anonymous requester as Wayne Williams, the former Democratic Urbana Township assessor who now works in Cook County. Williams, however, continues to dabble in local Democratic politics.

The FOIA requested “all HR complaints involving” Danos dating back to Jan. 1, 2023, as well as computer records.

In addition to the issue cited in the censure resolution, one Danos employee complained that he “wrote (politically related) thank you notes” to supporters while in his office. That’s apparently one of the incidents suggesting he did political work on public time.

“I do believe he used personal postage stamps from my recollection, but he did plan to place the cards in the county outgoing mail,” the Danos employee noted.

At one point at that meeting, Fortado described Danos’ office as “dysfunctional.”

There is no indication, however, that the auditor’s office is not meeting its statutory obligations. Danos said “the office functions well.”

It is clear, however, that, based on employee complaints to human resources, Danos has drawn the ire of subordinates in his small office.

The veteran auditor is running unopposed for re-election in November.

Three cheers for futile acts

Those who like to waste time and public resources, take heart.

They have friends in Madison County, where members of the county board took another step toward scheduling a non-binding (of course) vote on whether their county should separate from Chicago and Cook County to form a new state.

There is precedent. West Virginia seceded from Virginia in April 1861, a consequence of the Civil War. Legal questions abound to this day about whether secession from the seceders was legal, but what’s done is done.

Things are not nearly that dire in Illinois. But those unhappy with being ruled by Cook County and its seedy politicians have decided to express themselves in a symbolic, but politically pointless, way.

A county board committee recently approved putting the question on the ballot. The full county board must approve.

Advocates of creating a new state argue the state would be better off without Cook County, a huge engine of economic growth for Illinois.

What they really want is all 102 counties in Illinois, but none of Cook County’s powerful, sometimes toxic politics.

But one can’t have one without the other.

One supporter called the board committee’s action a “win for the citizens to be able to voice their opinion.”

Perhaps it is, but only in a very narrow sense. Nothing is going to happen as a consequence of the vote in Madison County or any of the other downstate counties that have expressed a desire to leave Cook County.

In one way, the planned vote is similar to efforts by some downstate politicians’ desires to run candidates who can’t win statewide races.

That’s best reflected by the futile candidacy of 2022 GOP gubernatorial candidate Darren Bailey. He stood no chance to defeat incumbent Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker, but primary voters nominated him anyway. Bailey was soundly beaten in the general election.

These self-destructive acts reflect the general un-seriousness of those who view politics as a playpen in which to posture, preen and either fight and gain nothing or lose outright.

Buddy, can you spare a billion?

Those who feared multibillionaire Gov. J.B. Pritzker might be jeopardizing his vast fortune with his astounding level of political spending can rest easy.

He still has far more money than God.

Forbes magazine reports that Pritzker and some of his family members made its annual list of billionaires. Indeed, Illinois was well-represented by the fat-wallet crowd, which includes many people most people don’t know.

Among those people do know are White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf ($2.1 billion).

Pritzker’s inherited fortune is estimated to be worth $3.5 billion. His sister Penny Pritzker has an estate valued at $3.7 billion, and another relative, Thomas Pritzker, has $6.7 billion.

Forbes estimated there are 2,781 billionaires worldwide, 813 of them from the U.S.

Top dog — Bernard Arnault and his family — are reportedly worth $233 billion. Vying for the No. 2 and 3 spots are Elon Musk of Tesla et al and Jeff Bezos of Amazon, each worth about $194 billion.

The richest Illinoisan is Lukan Walton, heir to the Walmart fortune created by his grandfather Sam Walton.

Far better, but still not good enough

Gov. J.B. Pritzker has rightly praised the vast improvement in the state’s rainy day fund — the reserve the state maintains to address cash-flow issues.

The fund was practically nil when Pritzker was sworn into office in 2019.

“Five years ago, when people said we couldn’t do it, many of us went to work eliminating our bill backlog and balancing five state budgets in a row. We created a $2 billion Rainy Day Fund. We achieved nine credit upgrades,” Pritzker boasted in his budget/State of the State Address earlier this year.

For the 2024-25 fiscal year that starts July 1, Pritzker hopes to deposit an additional $170 million.

Those are big numbers, but states are big operations. If the rainy day fund increases to $2.3 billion, it would cover just 15 days of state spending.

So while things are better, they still are bad. Comptroller Susana Mendoza wants to increase the fund to nearly $4 billion.

The Illinois Policy Institute noted that while Illinois can fund just 15 days of state government from its rainy day fund, other states, including those surrounding Illinois, can do far better — Missouri, 169 days; Kentucky, 119 days; Indiana, 775 days; Michigan, 100 days; and Iowa, 111 days.

Illinois has come far under Pritzker. But it has so much further to go to achieve solid financial standing, particularly when it comes to the state’s deeply underfunded public pension plans.

No acclaim

Michael Frerichs, Illinois’ state treasurer for life, frequently urges members of the public to claim unclaimed property from his office.

A Berwyn woman, Maria Michaud, took him at his word — kinda sorta.

The fly in the ointment is that Michaud claimed other people’s property — worth nearly $250,000 — and used four different people’s names to get it.

Michaud didn’t stop there. She used one person’s name to collect $20,275 from the massively abused Federal Paycheck Protection program.

Michaud filed her fraudulent documents in 2019 and 2020. But a treasurer’s employee spotted the potential fraud and referred the case to the attorney general’s office.

She faces 15 felony charges in Lake County, including money laundering, aggravated identity theft, theft of government property and forgery.