HANKS & WILLIAMS NO TRANSPARENCY

OPINION EDITORIAL
SAUK VILLAGER NEWS

The administration of Sauk Village Mayor David Hanks and his lead Bobble Head Trustee Rosie Williams continue to do everything they can to prevent the public from obtaining information.  Including invoking the taxpayer funded attorney to do their dirty work instead off issuing a simple "form letter" that they could obtain from the Attorney General's web page!  What is more disturbing is that instead of being open, honest and transparent, this dynamic duo have led an effort to keep Village business closed off from the public, conducted in the back office and veiled in secrecy.  Without even mentioning the numerous other occurences about "consensus" votes via email to the village trustees instead of conducting actual recorded votes at public meetings, but we're talking about this budget that they put together with chicken wire from the Hanks farm!  Hanks plops it down and asks the Trustees to hurry up review it and let's ram rod this piece of crap down the taxpayers throats before they taste it.  Mayors in successful communities do not have a budget process so closed so cloaked and so stupid as David Hanks.

This year's budget is yet another example of this administration's lack of transparency.  Hanks submitted his secret clandestine budget to his so-called Budget and Finance Committee on April 12th.  Rosie Williams is the chairperson of the Budget and Finance Committee and her co-chair Trustee Ed Myers.  A Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request on April 12th for a copy of the documents submitted to the Budget and Finance Committee by Hanks was refused.  The Village, through their paid legal team, denied the FOIA request claiming that this was a "draft" and therefore this was "exempt" under FOIA. 

The Illinois Attorney General was asked to intervene and issue an opinion on this matter, since the Village's Ordinance #15-012 which created the Budget and Finance Committee states "The Village's Finance Director shall make ever effort to submit to the Finance Committee, on or before March 15th of each fiscal year, a proposed budget for the next fiscal year..."  Any document submitted to a public body, like the Finance Committee, is a public document subject to the act we contended in our response to the Village's denial.

The million dollar question to all of this?  What the hell are they hiding in the first place?  Why not put out for the public to see what numbers you are proposing in your budget?  Over the last several days we heard your numbers discussed in an open meeting!  Then your arrogant head Bobble Head Rosie Williams was heard saying during the meeting "oh look he has a copy of the budget already...".  Well newsflash know-it-all Rosie Williams, the budget I had and was following was from last year that you voted on!  It clearly wasn't balanced then as you voted YES to and from what I heard neither is this budget which you will vote YES to and offered no solutions to the many many problems that the Village faces. 


Rosie Williams wants solution to the Village's budget problems if anyone has the audacity to raise them or you shouldn't raise any at all according to her regular and routine diatribe.  Basically if you raise a problem you find in the Hanks/Williams unbalanced budget then you better offer a solution so they can say no!

So don't let the people know how you are spending their tax dollars while you discuss them Rosie Williams and David Hanks.  Insulting the public stating this is a "living breathing document" is horse crap!  People are not as stupid as you would believe.  They clearly got it right in 2015!  2017 is around the corner and now they can take this garbage out of Village Hall for good!