State's attorney: No misconduct by board member

St. Charles school board member Jim Gaffney has been cleared of any wrongdoing after an investigation into a former colleague's complaint that he might have broken the law, officials said Friday.

"I am pleased with the outcome of the investigation," Gaffney said in an e-mail to the Daily Herald. "Now the school board and I can get back to focusing on the issues -- which is the students and their needs."

The investigation by Kane County State's Attorney John Barsanti was the result of a complaint filed in August by former school board President Bobbie Raehl, who claimed Gaffney might have acted criminally by trying to get undue perks for retiring District 303 Superintendent Barbara Erwin.

Barsanti said in a statement that, "this matter has been fully investigated" and "due to a lack of evidence and prosecutorial discretion, I am not authorizing or filing any charges of any kind against James Gaffney for the activities alleged in the complaint."

Raehl did not immediately return messages Friday seeking comment.

Her complaint centered on an undated, internal district memo that bore Gaffney's signature and incorrectly asserted the school board had agreed to credit Erwin with 340 sick days in 2004.

Raehl suggested Gaffney might have been attempting to help Erwin get vested in the state's pension system behind the scenes because, in fact, the school board didn't agree to the sick-day allotment until 2005.

The investigation into the memo began about a month after a previous probe that led the school board to admit it broke the law in 2005 by approving Erwin's contract extension without a public vote. That matter also was brought to Barsanti by Raehl.

A former board president himself, Gaffney defeated Raehl in the spring election, but she has adamantly maintained her complaints filed with the state's attorney were unrelated to the election.