McDonough Co. (ECWd) –
The Colchester Fire Protection District held a special meeting this week and accepted the resignations of the Chief and Assistant Chief, who are brothers. We note that the Chief is also the McDonough County Sheriff’s Chief Deputy. While action was taken to accept resignations and make appointments, there were no agenda items related to the action taken at the meeting, which appears to constitute an Open Meetings Act violation.
How do payments exceeding $10,000 get made out of an FD Memorial Fund when those authorized for that account never made those expenditures? Why would memorial funds be used to pay two different credit cards, which the Department allegedly does not own? The math, according to the current acting chief, indicates there is over $2,400.00 unaccounted for. While preparing this article, we have been informed that a check was dropped off today to cover the missing funds. We are working on confirming that to include who wrote such a check and why.
Reading through the records, it appears malfeasance has been exposed, and the rats are running from it. From blocking passwords and email accounts to returning property such as a pair of $347.65 Ray-Ban sunglasses.
The entire department submitted a petition signed by all the members seeking that the board take action to remove the Board President by seeking his resignation. The public record provided indicated the Board President is the stepfather to the now-former Chief and Assistant Chief. The last family operation in a Fire District we covered was the Oakland Fire Protection District, where the husband, wife, and father of the husband were investigated over hundreds of thousands of dollars of malfeasance. The one trustee pleaded guilty and got a get-out-of-jail card by paying restitution for some of the identified theft, while his father still awaits his trial for Official Misconduct related to the matter.
We are submitting a Freedom of Information Act request for additional records and will update as we learn more about what appears to be improper use of public funds, possibly by an actual law enforcement officer.
You can review the records we obtained by downloading them at this link or viewing them below.
Colchester FPD
