Will County Gazette

The questionable professional practices of former DuPage Township Supervisor William Mayer and current Joliet Township Supervisor Daniel Vera have both been subjected to relentless examination by the Edgar County Watchdogs (ECW).

Mayer resigned last January under the ECW’s exposure of advance salary payments, unauthorized expenditures from township accounts, and other abuses of his position. Vera remains in office after a series of damning reports by ECW, published on its website Illinois Leaks, including having township employees work on his personal property, no-bid contracts, and other improprieties. Yet investigators are looking into Vera, but not Mayer.

“We have confirmed that a criminal investigation is taking place by the Joliet Police Department (regarding Vera),” Allen told the Will County Gazette. “Investigators have interviewed Road District personnel, me and John Kraft of ECW."

Daniel Vera

He added that he had no explanation for why Mayer's activities are not being investigated by the proper authorities. 

ECW started looking into Vera in October. The investigations into Mayer began in the spring of 2018.

In October, DuPage Township’s law firm reinforced ECW’s findings about Mayer. The firm of Odelson & Sterk Ltd. released an eight-page memo to township trustees detailing how Mayer’s practice of taking advance pay and his entering into a township employee health insurance plan on a pre-tax basis were at odds with the township code and the Illinois Constitution. Regarding the pay advances, the memo said that "the Supreme Court of Illinois has upheld felony convictions for similar conduct." In addition, the law firm concluded that accounting and financial practices involving expenditures of township funds under Mayer were at “best incompetent.”

“While many of his defenders chose to insist we were wrong on our information, or that certain things Mayer did were not illegal, it now appears the Township’s legal representatives have confirmed and validated some of the very issues we raised,” Allen wrote on Illinois Leaks.

In November, Allen wrote “Supervisor Daniel Vera MUST resign” in a headline to a story reviewing a list of improprieties.

The story went on to say that it’s “beyond clear he (Vera) has no concept of how a Township is supposed to operate. It appears the same is true for the legal counsel he had as well as the board members who allow this stuff to go on. Don’t take my word for it. Read the exposure to date in these articles.”