Will County Gazette

William Mayer has been asked to resign from his job as DuPage Township Supervisor by Kirk Allen of the Edgar County Watchdogs (ECW), over his alleged mishandling of township funds.

Allen asked for Mayer’s resignation during the township’s often heated board meeting recently in Bolingbrook. Allen and John Kraft, who with Allen founded ECW in 2010, charged that Mayer received advance pay in the form of loans from the township, and that he signed township checks made out to non-profits without the consent of the board. 

Mayer is listed as an officer of the non-profits. Mayer did not respond to Allen’s request that he resign, or to the allegations of financial mismanagement.

William Mayer

Kraft said that the advance payments violate the township municipal code; the law forbids a township officer from receiving compensation “for future or anticipated days of duty.”

He asked Trustee Ken Burgess if he were going to notify the state attorney’s office to look into the matter. Burgess had no comment.

Allen said that one of the non-profits that received checks from the township has no record of registering with the state as required by law; another, “Youth and Friends,” has no record of ever having met.

Allen called the arrangement a “clear conflict of interest.”

Kraft and Allen have posted numerous additional instances of fiscal irregularities on their watchdog website, Illinois Leaks. 

In July, they posted a story “DuPage Township gives away $459,812.00 of your tax dollars." And ECW found some township expenditures from this past August that are not authorized under the state’s township code, including: a $100 membership in the Romeoville Chamber of Commerce; a $175 membership in the Bolingbrook Rotary Club; and $25 "driving testing" with the Illinois Secretary of State.

“After bouncing these off of the Township Code, we found no authorization for a township to pay to become a member of any Chamber of Commerce or Rotary Club," Kraft wrote. "We cannot find any authority to pay for ‘driving testing.’”

ECW was alerted to the financial irregularities in the township by Trustee Alyssia Benford, who has been battling Mayer for over a year trying to sort out the township’s books. Benford is a certified public accountant who specializes in local government finances. She is also a candidate for the 98th state House seat.

The fight has turned ugly. After the meeting Monday night, Mayer’s wife, Christine, confronted Allen and admitted that her husband had misused funds from General Assistance but that he had apologized for it. The exchange was caught on video.

The next day a Benford supporter posted the video of the exchange on Facebook, with the comment, “Did Christine admit to Bill Mayer’s crimes on camera? Wow!” A woman identified as one of Mayer’s friends replied: “You are as delusional as the bitch you support. If Christine got in Alyssia’s face the way Alyssia did to Christine….it would be a racial thing….Dontcha think????? Maybe you should put your bitch on a choke collar because CLEARY she’s turned rabid over getting called out.”

William Mayer did not respond to a request from the Will County Gazette for comment.