A few months ago, former Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot was tasked with investigating the spending habits of self-proclaimed “Super Mayor” Tiffany Henyard of Dolton Village. The investigation findings seemed to confirm the outrageous misuse of taxpayer money.
Last year, the Dolton Village trustees sourced Lightfoot to lead an external noncriminal probe into the allegations of Henyard misusing taxpayer funds for her own luxury. In a jam-packed meeting Monday evening at the Lester Long Field House, Lightfoot revealed what she found in a 73-page presentation.
Lofty Spends of Village Funds
Lightfoot said six different credit cards were used by the village from January 2021 to June 2024. With no receipts and limited information about what was being purchased with said credit cards, there was barely any way to track the purchases, per The Chicago Sun-Times. Still, Lightfoot did find the cards were used to cover expenses of two Las Vegas trips Henyard took with several village officials in 2022 and 2023.
Lightfoot’s probe also found that the credit cards covered over $170,000 on travel, baggage fees and rental cars, about $50,00 on restaurants, $7,000 which was allotted for her personal hair and makeup team, and thousands of dollars were spent at stores including Best Buy, Wayfair, Apple and Amazon.
Along with bogus spending on nonessential goods, Henyard was also clocked for not disbursing funds accordingly. Lightfoot found Henyard failed to utilize millions of dollars of American Rescue Plan Act funds and pay back vendors for their services, the report says. Dolton currently owes $5 million to vendors.
How Henyard Hid Her Spending
To keep all of this from reaching the trustees, Lightfoot accused Henyard of making a “concerted and systematic effort” to conceal the finances. Lightfoot said this was partly due to the little oversight into Henyard’s spending and the fact her office went without a finance director for the majority of 2024.
In the interim, they tasked the village’s accounting firm to take over a variety of tasks including composing purchasing lists which were shared with the board of trustees, The Sun-Times reports. However, at some point in 2022, the probe found that the trustees were randomly blocked from receiving regular finance reports.
“Throughout our independent inquiry, we consistently encountered a mayor and administration that evaded transparency — skirting FOIA laws, failing to provide requested documents, and otherwise refusing to cooperate with the investigation,” said Lightfoot.
Dolton Moving Forward
So, now we know about Henyard’s dirty laundry. What’s next? Well, Lightfoot’s presentation included a list of recommendations including the establishment of a municipal code to keep better tabs on village finances, per the Sun-Times. However, Lightfoot also said she contacted the U.S. attorney’s office for possible further action, according to the Chicago Tribune.
Henyard didn’t attend the meeting. Though, she shared some words about how she felt about the findings through her attorney.
“Lori Lightfoot is a failed mayor whose fiscal irresponsibility was overwhelming. The idea that any credibility could be given to her ‘findings’ about another mayor’s financial decisions is preposterous. This is an effort by a failed political figure desperately seeking the limelight to which she is no longer entitled,” said Henyard’s attorneys in a statement.