Orland Park officials are criticizing the state comptroller’s office for imposing what it calls “punitive sanctions” on the village due to delays in filing financial audits.
The Village Board approved a resolution Monday accusing the comptroller of singling out Orland Park for harsh treatment while dozens of government entities throughout the state have been late in filing audits but not subject to the same treatment.
The comptroller has “decided to try to inflict harm on the people of Orland Park,” Mayor Keith Pekau said.
He called the comptroller’s actions “capricious and unacceptable.”
The comptroller recently notified Orland Park it was late in filing audits for the 2022 and 2023 budget years. Village officials said they are making progress and last week filed an audit for 2022, according to the comptroller. Orland Park says it expects to file the 2023 audit by early next year.
While Comptroller Susana Mendoza has threatened a forced audit, something that’s happening in Dolton, her office is also holding back offset payments to Orland Park, money the state collects from state income tax refunds and other sources for things such as past-due traffic tickets and other fines.
“She should immediately release our residents’ money,” Pekau said at the board meeting.
The resolution states the money is “important to Orland Park’s community services, which serve the public’s needs and well-being.”
Pekau previously portrayed the dollar amount of withheld offset payments as insignificant in comparison with village’s overall budget, which relies on millions of dollars in sales and property tax revenue.
Orland Park gets about $120,000 a year in offset payments from the comptroller’s office, with much of that coming after residents file income taxes in April, according to the comptroller.
The office said it did not have a running tally of how much money is being held back, but once Orland Park files its fiscal 2023 audit the payments will resume.
The Orland Park resolution states “government units across Illinois, including Orland Park, face substantial and ongoing challenges in securing qualified auditors to complete external audits in a timely manner.”
In a Sept. 30 letter to the comptroller’s office in response to notice of the potential forced audit, the village stated it has “encountered significant and unavoidable internal and external factors” that delayed the 2022 and 2023 audits.
Orland Park said hundreds of government units across the state haven’t filed audit reports, and the state has been tardy in filing audits.
The resolution said those government bodies “have not faced similar punitive actions from the Comptroller’s Office, highlighting a deeply concerning lack of consistency in enforcement.”
The village said copies of the resolution will be forwarded to the comptroller, Illinois Municipal League and state representatives and senators whose districts include Orland Park.
The comptroller’s office said when municipalities are delinquent, it works with them, sometimes for years, trying to get them compliant with the law to submit their financial reports.
“Orland Park is hardly the first suburb we have had to threaten with a forced audit to get them to file past-due reports,” Abdon Pallasch, spokesman for the comptroller said.
He said the comptroller has used the threat of forced audits on south suburbs including Ford Heights, Dolton, Harvey and University Park.
“Often, the tool works,” he said. “The municipality gets up-to-speed and becomes a model citizen again, as we are hopeful will happen with Orland Park.”
“We also have the statutory right to fine municipalities for being late. We have not yet exercised that authority with Orland Park,” Pallasch said.
The comptroller has withheld offset payments from Dolton, which this year was on pace to be about $135,000.
The office did require a forced audit in Dolton, where there is no annual report for the village beyond fiscal year 2021 and no audited financial statements are available after that point, an investigation by former Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot revealed. She had been hired by some Dolton trustees to look into village finances.
The Dolton Village Board earlier this month approved the hiring of an auditor to delve into village finances.
Pallasch said Orland Park and Pekau “suffered a minimum of social media and local media attention on this issue but seems to crave an even greater spotlight on his village’s failure to file.”
“One would think that to avoid bad publicity, the Pekau administration would put their heads down, get their reports in, and have the problem gone like most municipalities do.
this,” he said in an email.
The comptroller acknowledged an interim audit of state finances was filed in January, but said the issue of when the state’s comprehensive financial report is filed is out of its control.
The office said Illinois is the only state in the country that requires the state auditor general to complete audits of every major state agency before releasing the comprehensive audit.
mnolan@southtownstar.com
