DuPage board asks Birkett to look into Dems' health forum

DuPage County paid the bills incurred by a health care forum organized by three county board members.

The payments come two weeks after they were first submitted to the board's finance committee, which rejected the invoices at the suggestion of county Auditor Bob Grogan.

However, the committee asked DuPage County State's Attorney Joe Birkett's office to look into whether board policies were violated by the three members who organized the Sept. 15 event and if they can be charged for the $5,142.13 it cost. Most of the costs stem from overtime for more than two dozen Wheaton police officers who were sent to monitor the forum in case the crowd became unruly as had been the case at several health care forums elsewhere in the country.

The three members who organized the event - the county board's only Democrats - had intimated they expected upward of 800 people to attend. Grogan's report indicated just under 100 showed up and behaved themselves throughout.

County board member Dirk Enger, who served as the event's emcee, told the crowd that night that he would pay the bills if anyone complained about the costs. In addition to security costs, chair rentals and translators were part of the invoices.

Enger and the other two Democratic board members defended the expense at Tuesday's finance committee meeting. Tony Michelassi is the only Democrat on the finance committee. He said the trio followed county board procedures for emergency expenditures and received approval from board Chairman Bob Schillerstrom to spend the funds. Michelassi also expressed concerns about the cost of investigating the expenses.

"After the auditor's office already worked on this and now the state's attorney is going to look into it, we're going to spend more money considering this than we're debating about," Michelassi said.

Michelassi also said that the committee has never asked the three to pay the invoices.

Board policies require committee approval for any expenditures over $5,000. Republican board members complained that the three circumvented that rule by requesting "emergency" funds from Schillerstrom by scheduling the forum a week after they planned it.

"The problem as I see it is they avoided the committees and created hysteria of a public safety risk," said Republican board member Jeff Redick. "They said they were expecting 800 people and it was the fear of that, that the chairman reacted."

Grogan doesn't believe the county is wasting money to determine if county policies were violated.

"I don't want to spend $100 chasing down a penny," Grogan said, "but when it comes to elected officials, there is an overarching concept of everyone thinking politicians are corrupt, so you don't skimp when you look into questions of those elected officials."

DuPage Democratic Party Chairman Bob Peickert doesn't believe this is a partisan issue, but does believe the county board could spend it's time investigating more costly topics.

"Every year before the primaries and general elections, until this year, the county board and Schillerstrom spent thousands of dollars putting out mailers that have pictures and biographies of the Republican county board members," he said. "We were never given a direct answer about cost, but that's in the tens of thousands of dollars."

Redick argued that counterclaims of impropriety were smoke screens.

"That's the type of argument I would expect from my second-grader," he said.

County officials said those mailers are sent yearly to update residents on new programs and initiatives. The most recent newsletters were unanimously approved by the board.