Title: City Mayor Uses Her Cancer Charity TO DO THIS SHADY THING!
Created On: January 18, 2024 at 10:25PM
From: Oshay Duke Jackson
Tiffany Henyard, Mayor of Dolton Illinois, is back doing something dusty.
Tiffany Henyard holds two elected offices and runs a charity for cancer patients. However, the Illinois Attorney General’s office says her namesake foundation has failed to file basic information about how it collects and spends money.
WGN Investigates found the Tiffany Henyard Cares Foundation also benefited from money, manpower and promotion from the village of Dolton and Thorntown Township, two municipalities led by Henyard.
Township credit card records show charges totaling $10,248 for hotels along the route of a ‘Tiffany Henyard Cares” walk from Dolton to Springfield in 2022.
“There’s a long list; Hotels, meals and more,” trustee Chris Gonzalez told WGN Investigates. “I saw the video. Township vehicles are being used. Township employees are being used. Were they paid? Were they given comp time?”
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The event occurred days after township trustees were asked to approve a $10,000 payment to the charity.
Neither Henyard nor the foundation’s registered agent, Keith Freeman, responded to requests for comment. Freeman also serves as Henyard’s village manager in Dolton and her advisor in Thorntown Township.
“I think it’s just about personal gain and trying to use it as a publicity type thing,” trustee Gonzalez said when asked for his view of Henyard’s charitable efforts and failure to file required financial disclosures.
The Illinois Attorney General sent the foundation a warning letter in mid-December demanding it produce the required financial disclosures by January 12 but received no response, according to a spokesperson for Attorney General Kwame Raoul’s office. The foundation now faces the possibility of fines and the ousting of its officers. Public databases show the charity is a 501(c)(3) organization with tax exempt status but has also not filed information about its fundraising or expenses with the IRS.
WGN Investigates: Investigating public corruption, crime & fraud
“There’s no foundation in the State of Illinois moving like we’re moving,” Henyard is heard boasting to participants during her 2022 cancer walk in a video posted on the front page of Thornton Township’s website.
Meeting minutes show Henyard also promoted the charity during government meetings.
“Supervisor Henyard mentions that she real big on cancer foundations and she created Henyard Cares Foundation which intel [sic] helping everybody within the 17 municipalities with services and resources, such as chemo, radiation, wigs, breast [sic], even helping with housing,” minutes from the township’s September 27, 2022 meeting read.
Henyard routinely shouts down – and shuts down – questions about how tax dollars are used in both Dolton and Thorntown Township.
“I shouldn’t have to sit up here and break all this down,” Henyard responded to trustees who requested more information about expenses at a November Dolton meeting.
Henyard was equally cagey when pressed by WGN Investigates to explain thousands of dollars spent on a trip to Las Vegas in which taxpayers were billed for hotels, meals at high-end restaurants, first class travel and other expenses.
Dolton and Thornton Township have stopped responding to public records requests from WGN Investigates made under the Freedom of Information Act. Dolton village clerk Alison Key, a Henyard critic who was previously responsible for responding to records requests, said Freeman stripped her of that power in December.
In Thornton Township, one of the people responsible for fulfilling public records requests is reportedly Henyard’s cousin.
WGN Investigates has appealed to the Illinois Attorney General’s office to require the two municipalities to comply with transparency laws.