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December 23, 2024

Marshall Advocate’s inaccurate reporting on its Love-Fest with Terry Stepp –

By John Kraft & Kirk Allen

On June 28, 2017

MARSHALL, IL. (ECWd) –

Gary Strohm, Marshall Advocate, printed a piece of misinformation (unsubstantiated rumor) while bidding Terry Stepp goodbye from the Clark County Park District.

He claimed that “According to his [Stepp’s] best estimate” the district received FOIA requests for 55,000 pages of information at a cost of well over $40,000. (both claims were debunked over a year ago)

Both of those “best estimates” are outright lies and another reason Terry Stepp’s resignation is welcomed across the County as one giant step in moving the Park District forwards towards bigger and better things. Recent elections took care of the rest of it.

His tenure was filled with (although not all are attributed directly to him):

The “55,000 pages” is a complete fabrication – leading people to believe they actually printed 55,000 pages, when the actual fact is the overwhelming majority of those so-called pages were in the form of a database (spreadsheet) that was emailed and never printed or even asked to be printed.

The $40,000 for FOIA costs cannot be substantiated either – that number is greatly exaggerated and due to the Park District’s own dishonesty and its failure to follow basic requirements of law. Any funds they expended on their attorney was a decision they made attempting to hide public information from the public, which failed miserably. No FOIA lawsuit against the Park District was ever won by the park district. No lawsuit for Open Meetings violations was ever won by the Park District.

That should give you a hint as to the level these people stooped to in order to hold illegal meetings and try and hide public records from the public. They failed on every turn.

Nice try Gary, the people didn’t buy it.

Sure, we’ll miss him being on the board – gives us less to write about, but most importantly, allows the Park District to move forward by complying with appropriate laws and doing what the voters want them to do – keep the park district as a park for all to enjoy, not as a subdivision for only a few.

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1 Comment
  • Warren J. Le Fever
    Posted at 13:17h, 28 June

    Yup. ‘Nuff said….

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