BREAKING NEWS – Dolton, Illinois – Last year, WGN Investigates sent the Village of Dolton a public records request, seeking copies of the agency’s credit card statements. But Dolton declined to release the records, in an apparent violation of state law.
WGN Investigates had been reporting how Dolton Mayor Tiffany Henyard and her allies spent taxpayer money on first class airline tickets, luxury hotels and high-end restaurants.
In a rare binding opinion, dated Feb. 9, the attorney general ordered Dolton to release the credit card statements, along with other requested documents.
Henyard then contacted WGN, stating that she would give them the documents, if they promised “not to disclose the “embarrassing purchases to the public”. When WGN refused to agree to those conditions, Henyard sent them a list of items that she said was on the credit card statements, that were handwritten, by her. And on the bottom of the piece of paper, she wrote, “I have no reason to lie, so I swear on a stack of bibles that everything on this list is true… up to a point.”