By: Diane Benjamin
Remember this story? https://blnnews.com/2022/06/14/need-accounting-services-hire-the-town-of-normal/
MICA is Municipal Insurance Cooperative Agency. Normal’s Finance Director Andrew Huhn is on the Executive Committee. Normal is also doing their accounting while not bidding insurance purchased through them. The MICA website at best is lame, it doesn’t say if MICA is a non-profit or a corporation: https://affinity.marsh.com/mica/home.html. I could not find where they are a non-profit of a registered Illinois corporation.
I filed this FOIA request, on June 20, 2020 – Not January like the below states:
Note the FOIA was limited to a little over 18 months.
After extending the time to respond, I received an “overly burdensome” response that included this:
So:
- Normal is using their staff to do accounting for a vendor they buy insurance from and a Normal “professional staff” member is on the Board
- 8,413 emails over 18 months is more than 450 a month
- Normal is expecting Revenue of $50,000 this year from MICA
Next I asked for just contracts for services. This was the response:
The Town of Normal is pretending to be an accounting firm in yet another “Friends with Benefits” arrangement. Normal does not have a contract that specifies what services Normal is providing or what the cost per hour, month, or year is. Taxpayers get to cover salaries, benefits, and pension expenses for all employees actually working for MICA without any proof Normal is getting fully paid for the service they shouldn’t even be offering!
This is CIRBN 2.0 where the Town considered their 3 employees Town staff so they could get pensions and benefits. Luckily the Town ended that relationship when it became public.
How many other “arrangements” does Normal have? Maybe some other media will care enough to ask questions. (don’t hold your breath)
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How dare you! King Koss shall not have to answer as to how taxpayer money is spent.
Our tax dollars are paying for another “friend of Pam Reece” to get a municipal pension while doing non-Town of Normal work. This is wrong.
Scoot Preston, self-proclaimed conservative fighter, where do you stand to this? Or do you have to wait for Queen Pam to tell you where to stand? If you want my vote…Answer.
Assuming you won’t answer, or fight to end this, then you will be proving that you will be no better than electing your Democrat challenger as state rep.
Just to clarify, to handle this many emails in a year and a half Normal must have at least one staff person getting a pension and benefits they wouldn’t need if Normal wasn’t pretending to be an accounting firm.
It’s still misuse of funds and personnel, but your math is off – the email count is ~450/month, not ~850. The part that you added on was just the ones they had not processed, so they were included in the original number.
I deleted that part