Over the last four years, Dolton Mayor Tiffany Henyard has turned her town into a national laughingstock with one allegation after another of reckless and improper government spending.
But the final summary of a financial investigation released Monday by former Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot now details what Dolton residents and the news media have suspected all along: That Henyard has likely misspent hundreds of thousands in taxpayer funds — maybe millions — while defiantly refusing to detail where the money went and why.
She then compounded the alleged financial misdeeds by hiding financial information from trustees and the public, and avoiding efforts aimed at making village spending more transparent, the report said.
“Beginning at least as early as late 2021, there was a concerted, systematic effort on behalf of Mayor Henyard and others in her administration to hide the true financial condition of the Village of Dolton from the trustees and from members of the public,” Lightfoot, who was hired by village trustees last year to conduct the non-criminal investigation, told a full house at the town’s Lester Long Field House.
This editorial board has said it before: Dolton residents and taxpayers deserve far better than this leadership mess.
Among the findings in Lightfoot’s report was $779,000 in village credit card charges rung up under Henyard’s watch, without receipts or an explanation of what was bought.
Lightfoot found the village used credit cards to fund a delegation to make trips to Las Vegas in May 2022 and May 2023, to attend an economic development convention held by the International Council of Shopping Centers.
That might make sense, if it indeed brought back business to the struggling suburb. Lightfoot found none.
The village rang up more than $171,000 in travel expenses from 2021 through June 2024, to pay for airfare, excess baggage fees and rental cars, without any account given.
Lightfoot found more than $51,000 was spent at area restaurants, with vague explains such as “meals” or “donuts.” That’s a lot of both.
And perhaps the most concerning, Henyard offered no explanation of why the village went from having a general fund balance of $5.61 million in 2022 to a deficit of $3.6 million in 2024.
We’ve long argued that Henyard, who has dubbed herself “Super Mayor,” is not fit for office. In addition to her spending habits, there is her combative temperament with residents and trustees — she purposely attended a village meeting dressed as drug kingpin Nino Brown in the 1991 film “New Jack City.”
Henyard, who is also Thornton Township supervisor and collects $224,000 a year from that post and as mayor, is also under FBI investigation.
With Election Day in the village happening this month, perhaps the suburb will get the change it needs.