Document deadline missed as mayor brings Dem opponent into the fray
Portage Clerk-Treasurer Chris Stidham did not meet Friday’s self-imposed deadline for providing documents to the city’s Board of Works and other officials relating to work his thengirlfriend did for his office because he said he was not able to access the fronts and backs of checks online.
He plans to provide by Monday morning all of the documents requested by Board of Works member Ron Necco, including 1099 tax forms by the city for work performed by companies affiliated with Rachel Glass, now Stidham, before the two married; copies of the fronts and backs of checks made out to the firms in 2015 and 2016; and board dockets with the claims listed.
Stidham said he found out Friday that the online bank website no longer has 2015 and 2016 available, so he has to go through two years of bank statements manually to make the requested copies.
According to his records, Stidham said that on April 12 he provided invoices and canceled checks to a threeperson executive investigative committee established by Mayor John Cannon. He did not provide the backs of the checks, he said, because the committee didn’t ask for them.
Cannon said Friday Stidham informed a member of the Board of Works by email that he couldn’t get the requested documents online in time to provide them that day and needed another business day.
“He did not provide in April the backs of checks or we wouldn’t ask again,” Cannon said, questioning why the checks were available online a few months ago but aren’t now, and adding that Stidham “ignored” a May Freedom of Information Act request for the same documents.
“Either you have them or you don’t,” Cannon said.
Stidham’s response is full of discrepancies, Cannon said, including the amount he claims he paid to Rachel Stidham’s companies. “We had $50,000 and added it up and it came to $70,000, so it’s worse than we thought.”
Stidham has repeatedly said that Rachel Stidham stopped contract work with his office once the two married, and that the committee’s investigation and allegations of improprieties are retaliation for his testimony earlier this year during the federal trial of former Mayor James Snyder, who awaits sentencing on two federal corruption charges.
Cannon, a Republican, has demanded Stidham, a Democrat whose term ends in December and who lost a primary bid for mayor, resign. Stidham has refused.
“There’s a clear design in his actions of harassment and personal animus,” Stidham said of Cannon, who is seeking election to a full term, adding of the executive investigative committee, “They’re not empowered to do anything. If they thought there was an issue, take it to the right people instead of this constant witch hunt to harass me and my staff.”
Stidham said he decided to wait until he had all of the requested documents in hand to turn them over because the partial list is documents he already provided in April.
On Tuesday, Cannon released a redacted, 15-page report put together by the committee, which he has said is bipartisan and comprised of a City Council member, a Board of Works member and a city department head.
The report notes that it is “sufficiently likely” that Stidham’s payments to his then-girlfriend for contract work for his office violated a number of state and federal criminal as well as civil statutes, and questions whether she performed the work at all.
Much of the focus of a We d n e s d ay B o a rd o f Works meeting, during which Necco requested the documents, focused on the claims process and why Stidham said they are sometimes added to a board docket after the board has met and signed off on claims for the city.
Cannon said that what “really upsets” him is that City Council President Sue Lynch, D-At large, received the documents from Snyder during Snyder’s trial. He claimed she did nothing with them until Cannon was selected by caucus to fulfill the rest of Snyder’s term, through the end of this year.
He also claimed Lynch was aware of the committee’s initial charge to come up with a preliminary report before the May primary and Lynch, who will face Cannon on the November ballot for mayor after besting Stidham in the primary, said she didn’t want the matter to be political.
“She may have more documents than we have because of what Snyder provided her. We don’t even know,” he said.
Lynch said she looked through the documents when she received them from the mayor’s office and didn’t think the matter belonged with the City Council.
“I don’t even have that stuff anymore,” she said.
Signing contracts and disbursing checks, she said, are the work of the Board of Works, not the council, and she feels this is a Board of Works issue.
Cannon has said he and committee members met with representatives from the State Board of Accounts about the matter earlier this week; he has declined to say what other agencies may be involved, but Lynch has said the Porter County prosecutor’s office is in the process of bringing in a special prosecutor from Lake County to look at things.
She, like Stidham, wonders why the matter is coming up now.
“If it was such an egregious crime, why didn’t officials do something about it?” she said, adding she wants to keep the council from getting involved. “We need to sit back and let the authorities do what they need to do.”