Plaintiff in FOIA lawsuit won't accept former Dolton Mayor Tiffany Henyard's affidavit
Henyard's attorney, Beau Brindley, reached the agreement ahead of Wednesday's hearing held via Zoom after Cook County Judge Kate Moreland said Henyard would be fined $1,000 for each day she failed to either produce documents requested by the nonprofit Edgar County Watchdogs, or submit an affidavit explaining she didn't possess them.
Despite being filed Tuesday, the affidavit is 'deficient … and must be disregarded,' attorneys for the Edgar County Watchdogs said in a response filed Wednesday. They said the affidavit does not include a certificate that it was made under penalty of perjury and that it lacks both specificity and credibility.
Brindley said he had already begun amending the affidavit to meet the requirements and would work with the Edgar County Watchdogs' attorneys to ensure both sides were satisfied before filing the amended document.
'We can try to fix this thing so we can get it resolved, which is in everybody's best interest,' Brindley said.
Edward 'Coach' Winehaus, one of the attorneys representing the Edgar County Watchdogs, told the Daily Southtown via email that he believes Moreland's fines will remain in effect until the amended affidavit is filed. That would mean that, as of Tuesday when the first affidavit was filed, Henyard would owe $8,000 in fines.
Henyard was held in contempt of court last month 'for her repeated and flagrant violations of the court's orders' in the lawsuit the Edgar County Watchdogs filed against Dolton for FOIA violations during Henyard's tenure as mayor, according to an order Moreland filed Monday.
At a hearing Friday at the Richard J. Daley Center in Chicago, Brindley told Moreland Henyard no longer had the documents.
The affidavit filed Tuesday explained the steps Henyard took to look for the requested record, a document Henyard held up at a January public meeting as proof that trustees canceled a credit card.
According to the affidavit, Henyard does not recall the document the organization requested or where it came from. She said she did not take any village documents with her when she left office and the document in question would remain in the possession of the village.
'After becoming aware of the requested documents, I searched all of my personal documents to ensure I had nothing related to the January meeting,' Henyard said in the affidavit.
She said she also searched her email with terms related to the January meeting, such as 'credit card' and 'cancelled credit card,' without success, and sent emails to Mayor Jason House and Village Administrator Charles Walls requesting they locate the document. She said neither House nor Walls responded.
'I have no other mechanisms through which to seek a single document, the content of which I simply do not recall,' Henyard said in the affidavit.
The Edgar County Watchdogs' attorneys said the affidavit failed to include steps taken to comply with the FOIA while Henyard was mayor, as was the case when they filed the lawsuit.
'If the 'search' was performed only recently, then the steps she performed when in office — such as potentially destroying the documents — would be available for testimony and therefore must be included in the affidavit if she hopes to purge the court's contempt order,' the response said.
Edgar County Watchdogs filed its lawsuit in February 2024, a month after failing to receive those records along with copies of all credit card statements since Oct. 1, 2023. Dolton, which since last month has been under House's leadership, complied in providing the credit card statements but said they lacked the document Henyard held up at the January meeting.
The Edgar County Watchdogs claim in the lawsuit the only response to their Jan. 5 FOIA requests came from Village Clerk Alison Key, informing them the village administrator at the time, Keith Freeman, instructed staff not to reply to requests that she entered.
Henyard's tenure as mayor, which ended last month, showed a pattern of ignored or denied public records requests.
ostevens@chicagotribune.com
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