Complaint filed against Buffalo Grove trustee Stone

A private citizen has filed a complaint against Buffalo Grove Trustee Lisa Stone, stating that she improperly reported financial details on a campaign disclosure report.

Stone's semiannual report of campaign contributions and expenditures, which the state board of elections requires candidates running for office to file, shows her campaign "spent monies it didn't have," said Adam Moodhe, a Buffalo Grove resident who served Stone with a copy of the complaint during Monday's village board meeting. He said he thinks there could have been a commingling of Stone's personal and campaign funds.

Moodhe said Stone's report failed to indicate a source of income for related expenditures. On Feb. 26, Stone spent $3,027.34 on campaign signs, when her campaign only reported having $400 in hand at the beginning of the reporting period a day earlier. And a $5,000 loan from Stone and her husband Gary was made to the campaign on April 9 - two days after April's election - while the campaign had spent $4,579.94 before the loan, according to the complaint.

Stone's husband, who filled out the campaign disclosure report, said most expenditures were recorded as they were incurred, while the actual payments may have been made later. He said he will file an amended report if need be, and is currently having an attorney review the documents.

"All the money that was taken in and paid out is on there. The dates might not jibe. It's just a matter of date incurred versus date paid," he said.

The complaint also cites the campaign's failure to report any payment - either cash or in-kind - to Paramark Inc., a Riverwoods company that made Stone's campaign Web site.

The Stones responded that the Web site design and its header artwork were done free of charge by two friends in the community, and compared it to volunteers who go door-to-door distributing literature.

Moodhe said he looked at other candidates' disclosure reports, but that "pretty glaring things" were found in Stone's.

"Recently it's been a little ironic she's been holding herself to be a beacon of truthfulness and honesty and better than most in the way she speaks," Moodhe said.

Lisa Stone, a vocal critic of the village board's decision to approve an off-track betting facility, said the issues raised in the complaint to the state board of elections are "clerical issues" her opponents are using "just to hassle me."

"Because of the OTB thing, they're trying to find something. It's smoke. It's all smoke," Lisa Stone said. "My campaign cost me plenty of money and I reported it."

Moodhe described himself as an average citizen involved in the village and said that while he favored the OTB, it had nothing to do with his filing a complaint. And he denied any alignment with Trustee Jeffrey Braiman, the board member who has been most outspoken in his criticisms of Stone.