Edgar County Watchdogs tell tales of their fight to keep government honest

The Edgar County Watchdogs, Kirk Allen and John Kraft, document hundreds of cases of local governments violating the Open Meetings Act, the Freedom of Information Act, misspending public money, doing inside deals or just plain breaking the law.

The pair spoke Wednesday as guests of the conservative Three Headed Eagle Alliance meeting at the Eagle Brook Country Club in Geneva.

Allen’s first foray into his watchdog role came while he was a volunteer EMT. He wanted to know is 911 dispatchers were CPR certified.

So Allen went to his first public meeting in 2009 and asked the 911 board if the dispatchers were certified.

The response: “Why do you want to know?”

“Because I’m a taxpayer and I want to know. Are they certified?” Allen said.

The response: “What difference does it make?”

Fifteen minutes later, Allen was told they are all trained – to which he restated that his question was, “Are they certified?”

“Are they licensed to operate? In Illinois, you are required to be an EMD – an emergency medical dispatcher. It’s a license issued by the Department of Public Health,” Allen said. “Just like I have to have an EMT license. ... That was my first FOIA.”

The FOIA – an open records request – showed that none of the dispatchers were certified in six years, despite it being an annual certification requirement.

Allen met Kraft at a sheriff’s banquet where a new sheriff was elected and he was looking into it.

Kraft got started paying attention to local government after he went to a school board meeting.

“I approached the school district to see if I could videotape their annual school plays and sell it to the parents,” Kraft said.

The board said they were not going to discuss it that night. The next day, they called and told him they had a videographer who had been doing it for 40 years and they were going to keep him, Kraft said.

“The school district lied to me,” Kraft said.

Kraft and Allen ended up sitting across from each other at a sheriff’s victory meeting, shared stories – and got started.

Their next project was the county’s animal control, which was being given over to the mayor’s wife’s nonprofit to run, complete with badges, trucks, the tax revenue and authority.

“We looked it up and they can’t do that,” Kraft said.

Amidst the 90-minute sometimes rollicking recitation of their fights and victories, they offered advice for questioning authority.

“I want all of you to remember two questions,” Allen said. “And apply it to everything in your life. ‘Says who? And with what proof?’ How many times have you been told something by someone that you fully trust, and after the fact – that what they said was not true or accurate?”

Penny Plumb, who is chair of the Campton Township Republicans and a precinct committee person, said she was “overwhelmed by the amount of corruption that is in our state,” from what the Watchdogs described.

“That’s my initial reaction,” Plumb said. “It does show the importance of citizen involvement.”