All heads were bowed except the photographers’...and Jeremy Stroud’s, at the Saline County Board meeting January 25.
SALINE CO. – What many believe was an attempt to distract from the release of audit results turned out to be a display of Saline County’s belief systems…and a hope that the audit will finally bring about some reform at the County Clerk’s office.
The audit results were as stinging as the backlash experienced over an agenda item placed there by the newest hire, Jeremiah (Jeremy) Stroud, a young 20-something with little-to-no experience in the field who has been made “First Deputy” and “office manager” of County Clerk Kim Buchanan’s office.
But even more stinging was the announcement that the county, still not operating under a budget, is experiencing a $1.3 million shortfall, and as such, taxes are going to have to go up in some form in order to cover it.
The shortfall wouldn’t be there, however, said county board member Joe Jackson, if Buchanan had been conducting business properly in her office.
And the audit, unfortunately for Buchanan, shows exactly that.
‘Humanists’
The Stroud situation came up when a letter was submitted to the county board by an attorney claiming to represent him, Monica Miller, of the Appignani Humanist Legal Center in Washington, DC.
“Humanists,” it must be noted, are people who have a “philosophical and ethical stance that emphasizes the value and agency of human beings, individually and collectively, and generally prefers critical thinking and evidence over acceptance of dogma or superstition.” To the “humanist,” belief in God equals “dogma or superstition” and should be avoided in order to be rational. They believe that each person should lead a life of personal fulfillment without a “supreme being” directing them as to what they should do.
Effectively, they’re snooty atheists.
The letter, dated January 16, directed to board chairman Jay Williams, advised that the “Humanist Center” had been “recently contacted” by Stroud “regarding a situation that he correctly perceives as a serious constitutional violation.
“Mr. Stroud reports that the Saline County Board has been starting its regular meetings with unconstitutional prayers. Specifically, board meetings for years have begun with sectarian Christian prayers led by one particular local minister who also happens to be a board member.”
Miller claimed that this practice “violates the guidelines for so-called legislative prayer as set forth by the United States Supreme
Marti Craig, of Assessor Sheryl Pearce’s office, gave a well-researched and well-received presentation about Constitutional separation of church.
Court.” She fills her next paragraph with case law from both 1989 and 2005 cases wherein it’s cited that “The First Amendment’s Establishment Clause ‘commands a separation of church and state,’ and requires the ‘government to remain secular, rather than affiliate itself with religious beliefs or institutions.’
“By implementing a policy and practice that repeatedly allows one individual cleric to commence board meetings with Christian prayers, the county is conveying an endorsement of religion that violates these standards,” Miller wrote.
“Mr. Stroud reports that each county board meeting begins with an instruction from the board chair to rise for a prayer. The prayer is also typically listed on each meeting agenda as one of the first items of business. After the audience is instructed to rise, one particular board member, Rev. Joe Jackson, gives an invocation lasting perhaps two to three minutes, usually invoking the name of Jesus or making other Christian references. When Mr. Stroud pointed out that these practices could be constitutionally problematic, he was admonished by an employee of the clerk’s office, who incorrectly insisted that prohibiting this exclusively Christian board practice would violate the religious rights of the participants.”
Citing case law
Miller then reached back in time with other case law regarding the “Establishment Clause” of the Constitution, correctly noting that a 1983 case “carved out a narrow exception for legislative prayer based on the long and unique history of the practice dating back to the First Congress.
“In Marsh,” Miller wrote of that case, the Court cautioned, however, that legislative prayer practices are permissibly only if they do not ‘advance any one…faith or belief.’”
She correctly cited, however, the Town of Greece v. Galloway case, a 2014 litigation when two people who probably cared about as much as Stroud does about the matter brought suit against the Greece, New York, town board.
State attorney Jayson Clark explains how prayer has not only been part of the fabric of the country but that the Supreme Court has determined that praying prior to a meeting is legal.
In the Galloway case, the Court ruled it unconstitutional if such prayer is “exploited to proselytize or advance any one, or to disparage any other, faith or belief,” adding that the Court “approved of the town’s prayer practice because the invocations were ‘led by guest ministers’ and thus board members themselves were not directing the public to participate or leading the prayers. The Court made clear that its holding would ‘be different if town board members directed the public to participate in the prayers.”
Through much legalese, Miller rattled on about how the prayer policy must be “nondiscriminatory” and the legislative body must “make reasonable efforts to include invocations from all members of the community, including atheists.”
The Court “indicated that a practice would fail if it reflected ‘an aversion or bias on the part of town leaders against minority faiths,” and “welcomed a prayer by any minister or layman who wished to give one,” including a member of the public. Greece, Miller seemed to proudly note, “even went out of its way to invite ‘a Jewish layman and the chairman of the local Baha’i temple to deliver prayers,” and “a Wiccan priestess was granted an opportunity as well.”
Continuing with case law references, Miller stated with citation that “to pass muster, a legislative-prayer practice must be ‘an internal act’ to ‘accommodate the spiritual needs of lawmakers’” and noted that “a legislative-prayer practice is unconstitutional if it is ‘an effort to promote religious observance among the public.”
And the final stab…?
Miller was able to find a couple of other examples where a county’s legislative-prayer practice had been struck down with a finding that “because the commissioners were the exclusive prayer-givers…the invocation practice falls well outside the more inclusive, minister-oriented practice of legislative prayer described in Galloway.”
The court deemed that board – in Rowan County, North Carolina – had a prayer practice that was “a conceptual world apart” from Galloway because it created “a ‘closed-universe’ of prayer-givers” dependent “solely on election outcomes.”
Citing another host of case law, Miller then wrote that a court in one case concluded “the active role of the Pittsylvania County Board of Supervisors in leading the prayers, and, importantly, dictating their content, is of constitutional dimension and falls outside the prayer practices approved in Town of Greece.”
In an earlier Pittsylvania proceeding, she said, the court “found that cases where the elected officials are delivering the prayers: ‘the Board impermissibly wraps the power and prestige of the County government around the personal religious beliefs of individual Board members.’”
Claiming the Saline County board’s practice suffers the same “deficiencies” as the cases that were lost, Miller launched into more case law explaining why she believed Saline was violating the law, and ended the letter with “It is our hope that, without our having to take this further, you will do the right thing and discontinue the county board’s prayer practice. Should the county decide to initiate another policy in the future, it will be important to ensure that it abides by the appropriate guidelines set forth by law.”
Agenda item raises hackles
The matter was placed on the county board agenda at the behest of Stroud and immediately raised hackles among the community.
The item was entered on the agenda as “Chairman Jay Williams to address a letter received on Jeremy Stroud’s behalf (Saline County Clerk Kim Buchanan’s First Deputy) to cease prayer at the beginning of County Board meetings.”
That was followed by “Requests received from Public to comment on above letter.”
The agenda items were entered under “New Business” and as such weren’t the first item to be addressed, as “Minutes” and “General Discussion” were held first, both of which will be covered momentarily.
The pertinent part is where the public was given the opportunity to express their sentiment about ceasing prayer at the outset of the meetings.
Traditionally, county board meetings are rarely attended by the general public, and mostly are attended by those with an interest in what’s going on in their section of the county, including four years ago when the massive upset was going on about coal operations and eminent domain in the Cottage Grove area.
This meeting eclipsed even that.
Board members listen to Danny Gibbs
The courtroom typically can hold a few dozen people, seated in the audience area, as the county board sits in the jury box and officeholders up at the bench or at the defense/prosecution tables.
This time, not only was the courtroom at capacity, but the overflow was seated out in the lobby of the courthouse. This was anticipated, and so a televised system was also set up in the lobby, so that those outside the courtroom could see and hear what was going on in the meeting.
All totaled, it was estimated that about a hundred people were in attendance – and they were fired up.
‘New Business’
As it was, also under New Business was “Possible action on movement of authority for Payroll/Insurance,” this agenda item also pertaining to Buchanan and her apparent inability to keep things flowing smoothly in her office, under this particular auspice of operations.
That item was moved to the end of the meeting so the public could be accommodated for comments.
The comments began with board member Roger Craig – who is seeking the office of County Clerk as a Republican against Buchanan in the Primary, March 20 – who reminded the board that under their statutory organization of the board, they are given the option of both “prayer and pledge as outlined in Robert’s Rules of Order.
“That’s the form of government we chose,” he said, with a copy of Robert’s sitting to his right.
Board member Danny Gibbs gave a very impassioned presentation about the struggle he went through to place a monument or the Ten Commandments within the vicinity of the courthouse many years ago, which could not be placed on courthouse property, but which was sited to the east across the street facing the courthouse drive.
Board member Joe Jackson asked State’s Attorney Jayson Clark to render his opinion about “what the Constitution and Supreme Court says about meetings and prayer.”
Clark began by stating that it was his opinion that what the board was doing “does not equate to coercion.
“As long as it follows prayer practice of legislation,” Clark stated at the podium, “It’s okay. We’re not in the Ninth Circuit Court,” he said, referencing the extreme left-wing appeals court situated in the western states, where things are getting flaky as activist judges continue to subvert the Constitution at every turn. “We’re in the Seventh Circuit, and there’s nothing in the Seventh’s rulings that is opposing what the Supreme Court says. They look at the circumstances: Is your prayer trying to coerce people? No. It’s not in the middle of the meeting; it’s at the opening of the meeting. The principle audience for the prayer is the board; it’s solemn and respectful in tone; it lends gravity to the county’s business; and there’s nothing in it that’s designed to ‘compel.’ No one’s requiring anyone to stand. No one’s compelled to listen; they can leave. It’s not proselytizing; it does not advance one faith over another; it’s not disparaging of other religions and it’s not disparaging of non-believers.”
Chief Deputy Ken Clore presents department budget concerns.
Clark referenced Galloway briefly, stating it was his belief that what the board was doing could not run afoul of the Supreme Court ruling in a challenge.
More impassioned presentations
Following Clark was board member David Phelps, who had spent time almost two decades ago as the U.S. Congress representative. He gave an excellent and eloquent soliloquy about how prayer had been delivered at both the Illinois Statehouse and at Congress, which brought a round of applause…and was an appropriate lead-in for Stroud to briefly take the podium.
“There’s no connection to what Kim’s doing and what I’m doing,” Stroud, who appeared visibly nervous, stated. “Neither I nor my legal team are trying to cease prayer,” he said, apparently playing on the fact that few in attendance had actually seen the letter, the ‘conclusion’ paragraph stating the opposite, as can be seen. “Whoever typed it took it out of context,” he concluded, casting the blame on the creator of the agenda, the identity of whom he apparently didn’t know…but should, since it’s the duty of the county clerk to create the agenda, and apparently Buchanan hasn’t been doing that as part of her responsibilities, leading to the mess the county is in.
But perhaps the most impassioned presentation came from Marti Craig, who is a courthouse employee in Assessor Sheryl Pearce’s office.
Craig’s presentation was preceded by courtroom bailiff Lia Melton, who commented from the audience that “Marti speaks for us all,” referencing the courthouse employees.
Craig explained that she had researched the matter and explained that the “establishment clause that separates church from state was NOT to keep religion out of government, but to keep government out of religion.
“It was about a fear of imposing one denomination as ‘the’ religion,” Craig said, citing the Danbury Baptist Church fears of such as referenced in Thomas Jefferson’s remarks that sparked the “separation” clause.
Her presentation received a standing ovation.
Joe Jackson reads from the audit.
Nevertheless, the progressive left courts see it differently, and even in the Galloway case, have more or less imposed the burden on governmental bodies to open up deliverance of a prayer to not only all denominations of faiths, but to all “faiths” – Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Satanist, atheist, humanist, some of which don’t necessarily have a ‘prayer’ to deliver, rendering the court’s order somewhat difficult to follow under the circumstances – regardless of whether there’s a complaint about the prayer portion or not.
This is what the City of Harrisburg does for its meetings; representatives of the different denominations are invited to deliver the invocation at bi-monthly meetings, ensuring that all are represented.
However, those are considered of the Christian “faith,” and probably wouldn’t appease Stroud nor his ‘humanist legal representatives.’
And that sentiment was reflected by Judy Simpson in the audience, who noted “This issue would have been taken care of if Kim had responded properly to employee contracts and followed legally what the county had agree to.”
Employee contracts, as it turned out, indicated that those with the most seniority in her office would be the ones given such a position as what Stroud, hired in late 2017, was given as “First Deputy Clerk” and “office manager.”
And while contracts are one thing, hiring is quite another.
County Clerk’s call
As Danny Gibbs brought out, “It’s Kim’s discretion to appoint a chief deputy.”
And if Illinois law is applied, it’s also Buchanan’s duty to run her office as she sees fit, including hiring and firing…which is why the board cannot attend to any matter as it pertains to an employee of the office. The employees are strictly Buchanan’s business.
This means that the “hiring freeze” the county board imposed for the officeholders last year is moot for them. The county can impose a hiring freeze on non-elective county offices, such as the highway department or a health department, both of which are overseen by the county board.
However, with such an office as County Clerk, Circuit Clerk, etc., the elected officers are solely responsible for their hires, and by the county board attempting to “freeze” Buchanan’s ability to do what she will with employees, they are skirting the law.
Buchanan ignored the directive last year and hired Stroud…which lead to the mess about the prayer, as it’s unlikely that he would have raised such an issue had he not been present to witness it and allow it to affect his tender sensibilities, since pretty much no one knew of him until he was hired (in other words, he hadn’t been at county board meetings listening to prayer and then making a fuss about it as a citizen).
Legally, the only thing the county board can do to impact Buchanan’s office is to set the budget for her office, as they do with all county offices, and ensure that her office is open and available to the public for stated courthouse hours.
The board has taken the budget step, to Buchanan’s continued complaining.
They also have attempted to get her office to comply with hours of operation, which literally is one of the handful of things she’s doing wrong: She’s closing the office over the noon hour, even after being directed to keep it open, and so those with property tax, deed, or other vital record needs who take their lunch breaks to contend with it are just out of luck.
Because these records come with fees, the county believes that the closure daily over the noon hour is costing the county money in the long run.
The bottom line concern, of course, is the overall county budget issue…which is looking more and more grim by the day.
Possible Public Safety Tax
Jackson addressed this in his agenda item.
After outlining that the county, still without an operating budget at this point, is “$1.2 to $1.3 million in the hole,” Jackson advised that it was his belief there would have to be a Public Safety Tax, supplied by a sales tax increase from .75 to 1.5 percent, placed on the ballot this fall as a referendum.
The discussion that ensued centered around the sheriff’s department (which is the most unpredictable budget of all county officeholders) and the time-honored complaint of why the Saline County Detention Center didn’t house more inmate from other counties as well as federal holding inmates, and where Public Safety Tax money could be distributed (in short, it can only be distributed to entities that ensure the public safety, including sheriff’s offices, jails, ambulances and fire…although there was incorrect assertion that it could be applied to “courthouse” matters as well.)
Health insurance increases have slammed the county with a half-million dollars of the shortfall; the rest is in severance pay, Jackson said.
Jackson followed that by advising that the budget committee has extracted $300,000 from Buchanan’s budget.
“If she wants to keep her office open,” Jackson said, “she can pay out of her special fees fund.”
The last slap
Following this segment by Jackson, board member Steve Karns, who is very ill undergoing cancer treatment, gave a report on insurance.
“In the clerk’s report to MetLife,” he said, referencing Buchanan, “she claims it’s an illegal police. But the auditors were told by the State Insurance Board that it is legal.”
He pointed out that insurance bills were paid on time in January (which is different than in December, when the insurers didn’t receive payments in a timely manner for whatever reason, and at least five individuals were in danger of losing their policy coverage, as contractually, the payments must be received on a “no later than” date, and they were not).
Because Karns is chairman of the insurance committee, his name is supposed to be on as guarantor of payments and this allows him to have access to policies that others might not have; this is primarily how he became aware of the problem, as well as another problem – his name had been taken off, somehow, which prevented him from accessing the policies to see to the payments and, as he said, “to make sure bills will be paid on time.”
The problem emerged from non-communication between Buchanan and the county board, which they’ve been attempting to rectify for months, including requesting – then passing a resolution – that Buchanan file a monthly spreadsheet of her office’s finances so the board could assess accurate revenue and expenses and make county decisions accordingly.
Buchanan has been at odds with doing the spreadsheet, at different times claiming she didn’t know what they wanted; that the spreadsheet didn’t have the proper fields to fill in the office’s financial activities; and other such excuses that the board has countered over the past couple of years as simply that – excuses.
“We received your spreadsheets on this,” Stroud spoke up and said to Karns. “Your spreadsheets were all wrong and that’s what affected five employees.” One employee, John Cavaness, had to pay for his insurance “out of his own pocket” in order to keep the policy intact contractually, Stroud advised.
The room was silent, with all eyes on the two…and that’s when the mic drop moment came.
“The spreadsheets came from the clerk’s office,” Karns shot back. “And I can provide you with the email to prove it.”
The audience, knowing about the ongoing spreadsheet issue, burst into applause, and Karns, who was very pale, advised that he had to go so he could get some rest. He left the room to the applause still thundering.
The audit
Jackson capped off the meeting with a brief summary of the recent $30,000 audit conducted by Marsh Minnick out of Oregon, a financial crimes consulting firm.
The audit focused only on the previous two years, and within its 80-plus pages, “shows mismanagement, waste and abuse have occurred based on the evidence discovered by examiners with an estimated impact on the County being at approximated as $1.084 million.”
The 87-page document was made available by email request to county board secretary Helen Dunn, but Jackson highlighted the high points.
“While the cost was $30,000,” he said, referencing the audit he was holding, “we believed it was justified, and now it’s more than justified.”
He outlined that there were 41 complaints that fell within the realm of taxes, levies, payroll and insurance.
“She (referring to Buchanan – ed.) transferred social security funds to IMRF, over $400,000, which can’t be done; that’s co-mingling of federal money with state money. No one on the board knew before she’d done it,” he said, to which Buchanan was muttering, loud enough for some to be able to hear, that they did indeed know it, and that she’d told them not only that she was doing it, but that she had authority to do so. “The recording fees in 2016 switched from 30 percent to 7- percent. Internal controls and procedures are horrendous. The payroll has been horrible,” Jackson said, then referenced a move that had happened earlier in the meeting, that of taking away payroll responsibility from Buchanan and assigning it to Jeff Murrie, County Treasurer. “On insurance, some are paying for insurance that they don’t even have.
“In a summary of findings,” Jackson said, “Controls are dysfunctional and mitigate risks; there is willful non-compliance; and there is direct evidence of concerning and suspicious activity.”
In his own mic-drop moment, Jackson stated, “The recommendations are extensive,” and the next step, as that question was asked by Lia Melton from the audience, “was to “confer with Jayson Clark as to charges.”
Buchanan bucks; board bucks back
Buchanan took opposition to the findings.
She advised that a local auditor was aware of moving the funds from social security to ECCO (a variation of IMRF, all of it having to do with retirement), and said “I’ve not mismanaged anything. It says ‘potential mismanagement.’”
Jackson was able to get in one more dig.
“In this audit report, you’ll see they find you hired your father to do concrete work, and paid him two times to do the same job. You paid him to do a job at Tate Township, then two weeks later you paid him a second time for a total of $1,400.”
Amidst considerable buzzing from the audience over this revelation, Buchanan began to explain that the concrete work was in multiple townships, not just Tate, and it was “not done with taxpayers’ money.”
But the audit’s the audit, and the auditors were extremely thorough, this according to those who were questioned at length by Marsh Minnick and who, at the time it was underway, believed things to be going very, very well for Buchanan…which turned out to not be the case.
The next issue is the 2018 Primary Election Edition. In it will be full analysis of the budget…and what it might mean as regards any potential criminal charges being filed.
That issue is on stands February 21.