Digging locally to make a difference

We want to be indispensable to you.

That's nothing new. As we said earlier this week, that means we want to engage, surprise and delight you. We want to cover our community as no one else will. We must do more than record a meeting. We must do more than shoot a quick video at the neighborhood ice rink. We must do more than publish your pictures of the annual Thanksgiving touch football game.

Don't get us wrong. We revel in doing all of that, but we vow to do more. We vow, with your help, to be the local guardians. We renewed our commitment to this work this past year with a program called Daily Herald On Guard.

We attempted to look critically at local problems, public employees and programs. We hope you found that work helpful, useful and illuminating.

In 2010, we reported the indictment of McHenry County State's Attorney Lou Bianchi and one of his aides on corruption charges. The charges came after our relentless reporting of claims that Bianchi was ordering political work to be done on taxpayer time. We explored public school superintendent and teacher pensions in a multipart series that won national recognition. We turned a spotlight on the practice by several school boards to pay superintendents five- and six-figure sums to go away while providing little explanation to the taxpayers. We told you about car allowances at schools and municipalities.

We revealed that the DuPage Water Commission, unknowingly, spent all of its $69 million reserve fund. We raised questions about significant spending beyond what taxpayers authorized at a new rec center in Glen Ellyn. We alerted the community — and school district leaders — to a finance administrator they hired after being misled about his performance at a previous job.

We broke the news of theft allegations by the Hanover Township welfare director about six months before she formally was charged after $193,000 went missing from township funds.

And those are only a few highlights from dozens of On Guard stories.

We think these efforts make a difference. We've seen they have impact. Many of you have told us you agree. “This is the kind of information that sorely needs to be put before the public . . .,” Carpentersville resident Joe Miller wrote.

We hope you want more. We intend to do more.

But we need your help. We need your involvement, your tips and your talk about what's going on in the suburbs in 2011. We'd like to hear from you if you think you see a case where a government might be wasting money or acting in secret. We need to know if you hear of a public official who might be abusing our trust.

In the new year, we resolve to keep digging, looking for corruption, shenanigans and waste. We resolve to remain ever on guard.