Misleading on water commission probe

As the lawyer who conducted the DuPage Water Commission investigation, I have been disturbed to see blatantly misleading information being distributed by Ms. Moore's campaign for DuPage County Board regarding the findings of my investigation.

Simply put, Ms. Moore is misrepresenting the facts in her apparent zeal to defeat her opponent, Tim Elliott. A number of brochures circulated by her campaign have claimed that while Mr. Elliott was a member of the commission it "lost" $69 million. False. No money at all was lost by the commission; all was spent on legitimate purposes.

What actually happened is that before Mr. Elliott even joined the commission the staff made accounting errors that dramatically overstated the actual assets held by the commission. Based on those errors, the board decided in 2007 to reduce its income by rebating $40 million to its customers and reducing the rate it was charging for water. No money was lost. The money was spent for legitimate purposes but the accounting errors led the then-members of the board to believe that the commission had more money than it actually did.

Mr. Elliott was not even on the board when the commission staff made the accounting errors nor when the decision was made to spend money for legitimate purposes based on these mistakes. In fact, he helped lead the effort to uncover the facts.

Chris Gair

Chicago