Comptroller’s Office comments on Pekau Administration’s “resolution”
Illinois State Comptroller Susana Mendoza responds to lies and exaggerations made by beleaguered Orland Park Mayor Keith Pekau and his rubber stamp board which has mishandled the village’s finances distinguishing themselves by being among only a few governments that have failed to file two annual financial audits in a row, hiding debt and manipulating data for their political re-elections
By Ray Hanania
Orland Park’s controversy-plagued, pro-tax hike Mayor, Keith Pekau, continues to use the Village of Orland Park resources to fight for his re-election and to coverup the village’s failures that he is responsible for, including the failure to protect the taxpayers of Orland Park.
Pekau issued a press release attacking Illinois State Comptroller Susana Mendoza who sanctioned the village administration when it failed to file its two annual financial audits for 2022 and 2023, which apparently are hiding massive debt that Pekau has incurred but doesn’t want the public taxpayers to see.
Pekau falsely claimed that many municipalities fail to file their financial audits and he hid behind politics to accuse the Comptroller, a distinguished financial expert who happens to be a Democrat, of targeting him because he claims to be a Republican. The truth is, Orland Park is one of about 75 to 200 municipalities that failed to file its annual audits. And Orland Park is one of the few to fail to file TWO ANNUAL AUDITS. The fact is that more than 9,200 government agencies in Illinois file their financial audits on time without delay, and that makes Orland Park one of the state’s worst exceptions to the rule.
In other words, Pekau’s failure to file an audit is far worse than any other community in the state including Dolton, which failed to file its audit for last year. The fact that Pekau has positioned Orland Park to be compared to Dolton in the far south suburbs is an indicator of how poorly Orland Park has fallen under Pekau’s failed leadership and financial mishandling of expenditures, borrowing and growing debt.
Additionally, Pekau is making false claims that his predecessor, former Mayor Dan McLaughlin and former Trustee Jim Dodge, who is running for Orland Park mayor to save Orland Park taxpayers from Pekau’s incompetence, is responsible for the recent massive debts that have been inncurred and written off by the Downtown Triangle TIF (Tax Increment Financing) District.
The truth is that the TIF was running smoothly and with little impact on property tax owners and schools, until Pekau took over six years ago and started messing with the TIF funding to support his developer cronies and off-set his extravegant borrowing and excessive accumulating debt.
Orland Park is in a mess today because Pekau and his rubber stamp board have dug the village and its taxpayers into a sinkhole of debt and spending and the only way to get out of it for Pekau is to manipulate the financial books — withhold the annual financial audits until AFTER the April 1 election in the hopes it wouldn’t become an issue.
Mendoza has nothing to do with the failed politics and mismanagement in Pekau’s government and her actions to put a spotlight on Orland Park were a sound warning to taxpayers and the community to be aware of what was happening, that Pekau hoped nobody would notice.
Here is Mendoza’s statement released by her press office this morning:
Comptroller’s Office comments on Pekau Administration’s “resolution”
We’ve used it on Dolton, Harvey, University Park, Dixmoor, Ford Heights and others. Often, the tool works: the municipality gets up-to-speed and becomes a model citizen again, as we are hopeful will happen with Orland Park. We also have the statutory right to fine municipalities for being late. We have not yet exercised that authority with Orland Park.
The only new addition to our practice was cutting off “off-set” funds – past-due traffic and other fines collected from state income tax refunds and other state sources – to municipalities to incentivize them to turn in past-due reports. Orland Park was not the first municipality we invoked that on. It was the second. Dolton was the first. Many of the other past-due municipalities do not participate in the program so we can’t threaten to withhold funds from them they’re not getting.
We take our charge to collect and share these reports very seriously. When residents hear an Orland Park trustee say at a village meeting, “How do we make a $450,000 mistake and just find out about it now?” they want the ability to go to our website and read the village’s financial report themselves.
The mayor suffered a minimum of social media and local media attention on this issue but seems to crave an even greater spotlight on his village’s failure to file. One would think that to avoid bad publicity, the Pekau administration would put their heads down, get their reports in, and have the problem gone like most municipalities do.
Orland Park and the other suburbs participating in our office’s off-set program get the lion’s share of their money after people file their taxes in March and April.
So if Orland Park gets all its past-due reports filed before then – as they tell us they are on-track to do – they won’t be out a penny. They already filed FY22 last week, so they may very well do this.
Our office filed our Interim ACFR back in January. The issue of when the state’s final Annual Comprehensive Financial Report gets filed is entirely out of our office’s control. Illinois is the only state that requires the State Auditor General to complete audits of every major state agency before it can release its ACFR.
Our office releases an Interim ACFR, which has most of the information people need from the ACFR, in January every year containing all the information our office controls. The bond rating agencies have said they appreciate our interim reports. When the Auditor General’s office completes its audits, we attach those and release the final ACFR.
Hanania also writes about Middle East issues for the Arab News, and The Arab Daily News criticizing government policies in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Hanania was named "Best Ethnic American Columnist" by the New America Media in November 2007, and is the 2009 recipient of the SPJ National Sigma Delta Chi Award for column writing.
Email Ray Hanania at rghanania@gmail.com.
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