By: Diane Benjamin See the agenda for the April 15th 2025 meeting of the Illinois State Board of Elections: https://www.elections.il.gov/AboutTheBoard/Agenda.aspx A hearing was held regarding the complaint filed by Chad Berck. The complaint pertained to Lizzy Johnston and Cassy Taylor raising money on County Property to remove the elected office of Auditor. The complaint was […]
By: Diane Benjamin Below is the report the County received from the law firm it hired to investigate allegations made by a former employee regarding the solicitation of money on County property. Of course, the complete list of contributors was not reviewed. The elected officials and/or county employees who contributed to the effort to abolish […]
By: Diane Benjamin Anyone surprised? The law firm hired by the County to investigate the PAC created to abolish the Auditor’s office didn’t agree with the ethics commission ruling. See the WGLT story: https://www.wglt.org/local-news/2025-02-26/mclean-county-ethics-complaint-found-to-be-unsubstantiated-after-attorneys-investigation There is one glaring problem. Talking to County employees is nice but they are not central to what should have been […]
By: Diane Benjamin 2 very recent stories prove the title. Local corruption big or small will never be prosecuted locally. Start with this one: https://www.thecentersquare.com/illinois/article_0d368a40-efa7-11ef-9603-b321af6933ea.html What the local school districts put on their website to convince you to approve a 1% Sales tax was illegal. Evidence of that is the language was changed when people […]
By: Diane Benjamin The McLean County Ethics Commission referred both Taylor and Johnston today to the State’s Attorney for further investigation. This involves the solicitation of donations on County property to get the McLean County Auditor office abolished. I don’t have a lot of details, but they issued a statement that sufficient evidence exists to […]
By: Diane Benjamin No wonder trust in government is at an all time low among people who expect Public Servants to actually work for the public. Oaths of office are now meaningless. Did you know the County isn’t going to produce a report on the fundraising at the County to abolish the Auditor until March? […]
By: Diane Benjamin The name of the PAC to abolish the Auditor’s office was: McLean County Citizens for Government Accountability. If they actually believed that they would abolish the unaccountable Bloomington Election Commission. This PAC is not required to file reports with the State of Illinois unless contributions exceeded $5000. No reports have been filed. […]
By: Diane Benjamin Continuation of this story: https://blnnews.com/2024/11/29/alleged-illegal-activity-at-mclean-county/ Lizzy is Elizabeth Johnston. She plans to be the new County Board chair since the Democrats are now the majority. (I told you this is going to be fun!) The text messages below are between Trevor Sierra and Lizzy Johnson. Trevor is requesting a refund for the […]
Follow-up story: https://blnnews.com/2024/11/30/why-did-lizzy-refund-a-contribution/ By: Diane Benjamin The email below was written by a former employee of the McLean County State’s Attorney. Soliciting funds for any political purpose is illegal if it was done at or on government property. If anyone has WRITTEN proof of that please forward it to me: blnnews@blnnews.com Honorable Members of the […]
By: Diane Benjamin McLean County property taxes aren’t going down – look at this slide from last week’s County Board meeting and see if you can tell why I know that: Need more time? I can wait . . . . The overall spending is decreasing because the COVID bucks aren’t rushing into the coffers […]
By: Diane Benjamin What happened was democrats proved they have no problem raising your property taxes because government needs your money more than you do. Last year the Board voted to keep the property tax rate the same which means they grabbed all the increases in assessed value. That amounted to a 13% tax increase. […]
By: Diane Benjamin PDF page 32: https://mcleancountyil.gov/ArchiveCenter/ViewFile/Item/10169 The Finance Committee meets today at 4:30. The County Administrator wants to change the budget policy. Proposed: Anybody see a problem? I bet this comes up at the meeting!
By: Diane Benjamin Evidently your McLean County representatives don’t want you to know how much Cassy Taylor is paid. A salary increase was approved last Thursday with no mention of how much it was. The agenda said: A. EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE – Elizabeth Johnston The only transparency here is the County answered my FOIA request within […]
By: Diane Benjamin This is the only mention in the agenda attachments of the raise the County Board awarded to Cassy Taylor last night: Board member Chuck Erickson tried to stop it because salaries of Administrators are out of control. He couldn’t muster enough Republican votes to stop it. So, how much is it? I […]
By: Diane Benjamin Follow up to this story: https://blnnews.com/2022/07/02/mclean-county-goes-woke-without-a-vote/ I FOIA’d the County trying to find out. Start here, two employees include their pronouns on emails: Cassy Taylor, County Administrator, sent the email to all employees requiring them to take the DEI training. She didn’t use pronouns or her last name. Amy Baker was hired […]
By: Diane Benjamin The final words of the Declaration of Independence are: And for support of this Declaration, with firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our Sacred Honor. July 4, 1776. 56 men signed that document, all were marked for death by […]
By: Diane Benjamin The County Board never voted on forcing County employees to attend mandatory training in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Evidently County Administrator Cassy Taylor decided to fracture the work force all on her own. Maybe she should just visit the County Clerks office, I did several months ago to get a copy of […]
By: Diane Benjamin I posted this in an earlier story: I asked the County Administrator TWICE for an explanation. She failed to respond to either request. It appears the County collected a lot more cannabis revenue than they thought they would. The estimates were off by $390,000. The question still remains: Where is that money […]
By: Diane Benjamin https://mcleancountyil.gov/ArchiveCenter/ViewFile/Item/8520 The McLean County Justice Committee is meeting this afternoon. One item on the agenda caught my attention: PDF page 236: This item was placed on the agenda by Cassy Taylor, County Administrator. I emailed her yesterday morning for an explanation, no response yet. Appropriation means spending or possibly transferring the funds […]
