Missing SWANCC money leads to policy changes
No one knows, or is answering, exactly how significant amount of money disappeared from the ledgers of the Solid Waste Agency of Northern Cook County.
But agency officials said this week they are reviewing policies, and already have changed at least one, in hopes it never happens again.
SWANCC officials are disclosing few details about the allegations, saying the Cook County state's attorney's office advised them to say nothing that would compromise their investigation of the agency's longtime executive director, C. Brooke Beal.
SWANCC on Monday placed Beal, 47, of Chicago, on paid leave from his $160,000-a-year job while both its auditors and county prosecutors probe the missing funds. No charges have been filed.
Repeated efforts to reach Beal or a representative since Wednesday have been unsuccessful.
Daily Herald sources said $400,000 is missing from the current year's budget, though SWANCC officials won't confirm the amount. They're investigating financial documents from past years to determine whether more money is missing, but said so far that does not appear to be the case.
Suspicions arose last week when an independent auditor found what officials called a financial discrepancy. SWANCC Board Chairman George Van Dusen said the audit also revealed what officials believe to be a falsified record, but declined to specify.
Officials did confirm that the missing funds were linked to a budget line item for staff continuing education. Any expenses from that line item should have been approved by the chairman of the board's executive committee, but Van Dusen said that never occurred.
Hoffman Estates Village Manager James Norris, that village's representative on the SWANCC board, took over chairmanship of the executive committee in May, after the suspected discrepancies occurred. He succeeded Doug Williams, the former Winnetka village manager. Neither is suspected of wrongdoing.
However, because of the investigation, SWANCC is adding a second layer of oversight over future expenses.
“In the past all personnel reimbursement was supposed to go through the treasurer, who is the chairman of the executive committee,” said Van Dusen, also the mayor of Skokie. “Henceforth, all of those will not only be reviewed by the chairman of the executive committee, but will also go to the executive committee itself.”
SWANCC, established in 1988, manages garbage collection for 23 communities, including Arlington Heights, Barrington, Buffalo Grove, Elk Grove Village, Hoffman Estates, Inverness, Mount Prospect, Palatine, Prospect Heights, Rolling Meadows, South Barrington and Wheeling.
Beal joined SWANCC in 1989, becoming executive director in 1993. He's also served as a program analyst for the Illinois Capital Development Board and received master's and bachelor's degrees in political science from Illinois State University.
SWANCC's executive board will again convene on Wednesday, Oct. 27 for its regularly-scheduled meeting. They'll likely again call for a closed executive session to further address the situation.
The agency's 2011 budget projected $16.1 million in revenues and $16 million in expenditures. Van Dusen, who described himself as “thunderstruck” by the allegations, said neither the ongoing investigation nor the missing funds would affect SWANCC's operations.
Meanwhile, Steven Schilling, the agency's assistant executive director, has been named interim executive director for the agency.