Dolton, Illinois is in a world of financial hurt, thanks to Mayor Tiffany Henyard. For those who remember, this “super mayor” of a small village seemed to think she had been elected as empress, not mayor, and her spending of taxpayer dollars followed suit.

Mayor Tiffany Henyard became famous nationally this last February, with her hit single “I am the leader” as she complained that she was being attacked because she was “a black woman in power.”

🚨Dolton Mayor goes off on a group of trustees after being questioned about her over spending – I'm The LEADER!

You all forget I'M THE LEADER. They want to hear from the mayor.  You all ain’t learned that yet”

“You all should be ashamed of yourselves because you all are… pic.twitter.com/shGJBnLWO2

— Unlimited L's (@unlimited_ls) February 7, 2024

The mayor then went on a media blitz to try and burnish her image. Taxpayers paid for THAT as well.

Henyard appeared in-studio for an interview with Roland Martin in Washington, DC in late February and then travelled to New York City to be on the “Way Up with Angela Yee” program.

Now, WGN Investigates has obtained credit card records that show Thornton Township taxpayers were billed for a portion of the media tour.

Township credit card bills show a photographer named David Dickerson was paid $3,259 plus an additional $561 for Dickerson’s airfare between Chicago, Washington and New York. Dickerson confirmed to WGN Investigates that we hired by Henyard’s team to take photos of during her interviews with Martin and Yee. He doesn’t know what became of his images.

Records also show township taxpayers were billed $1,100 for 13 Uber rides between February 27 and March 2, which coincide with Henyard’s trip to the East Coast. The charges were billed to township administrator Keith Freeman’s government credit card. Freeman is currently under federal indictment for bankruptcy fraud for allegedly lying about his income from his second job as Henyard’s top aide in Dolton. He entered a “not guilty” plea.

Here’s a quick reminder that Henyard, who serves in dual roles as mayor of Dolton and supervisor of Thornton Township (hence the “super mayor” moniker), is under investigation for more than just her profligate spending habits with taxpayer dollars.

WGN Investigates first began exposing Henyard’s questionable spending and conduct in 2023 with a series of reports that exposed unexplained first class travel and stays at luxury hotels that cost taxpayers more than $100,000 in one year. There have also been allegations that Henyard punishes her perceived opponents, denies permits and licenses to people she deems insufficiently loyal and awards contracts to cronies.

The Illinois Attorney General and the FBI have also looked into Henyard’s namesake cancer charity which received taxpayer money and used government vehicles and staff but failed to report its income or expenses. The AG ordered the Tiffany Henyard Cares Foundation to stop soliciting donations. All of it is the focus of a wide-ranging FBI investigation into her administrations in both the village and township.

Now, a recall against Mayor Tiffany Henyard happened in 2022, but then got tied up in the courts, where she eventually prevailed and got the vote tossed. The next mayoral election isn’t until 2025. The mayor is enjoying her position of power for as long as it lasts, including kicking people out of board meetings and delaying the meetings so nothing can get done that might stop her.

Interruptions, disorganization and shouting are par for the course during meetings in the south suburb, and it didn’t take long for tensions to escalate on Monday evening.

At least three women were escorted out by Dolton police officers after Henyard accused them of behaving ‘out of order.’

More would have been accomplished on Monday, if not for various delays.

At the start of the meeting, Henyard asked everyone who was already seated to get up and go through the metal detectors again, stating that the equipment had not yet been turned on.

“The fact that you would even make us get out of our chairs after we already sat down and got comfortable, to go back through a metal detector, because you weren’t here on time to say that ‘oh they shouldn’t have been let in’ – no you should have been here to let us in,” said one resident.

Well, at this meeting, one productive thing did happen. Henyard and other officials lost access to the village credit card.

A village “credit card spending freeze” was approved during the meeting, FOX 32 reported. That means only the director of administrative services can use the village’s credit card on “board-approved purchases” with a cap of $5,000 on a single transaction.

“This village has so many people with so many credit cards, they’re swiping like crazy and that’s why it had to come to a complete halt,” lawyer Michael McGrath, who represents Dolton’s trustees said, according to WGN-TV. “There’s thousands and thousands of dollars for Amazon purchases, for PayPal, for Target, for Walgreens, for Jewel-[Osco] in the hundreds and thousands of dollars.”

When the news broke nationally about Mayor Tiffany Henyard and her lavish lifestyle on the taxpayer dime, the Dolton board of trustees decided to hire former Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot (she didn’t have anything better to do) to investigate what Henyard had been doing with all the money. Naturally, Henyard vetoed the hiring of Lightfoot, but for once, the board overruled her. The mayor then went on to make the investigation as difficult as possible, but Lori Lightfoot presented her findings – while admitting that they were limited – last night to a very angry audience.

“I know how I felt when I started seeing some of these numbers so, I can imagine how all of you are feeling after all this time in the dark,” Lightfoot said.

Trustees on the Dolton village board hired Lightfoot after months of chaotic meetings, in which they accused Henyard of recklessly spending tax dollars on herself and her entourage.

The investigation found the small south suburb went from a surplus two years ago, to a nearly $5-and-a-half million deficit Thursday.

Lightfoot told a packed crowd she’s only been able to review some, but not all, credit card spending.

“We want to highlight a couple of credit card purchases,” Lightfoot said, to audible gasps from the crowd. “You’re having the same reaction that we did when we saw this.”

Lightfoot questioned three Amazon purchases in a single day that totaled more than $43,000, an unexplained Wayfair purchase of $7,699, along with PayPal money transfers and gift cards, all charged to the village.

Lightfoot also noted Henyard’s well-documented taste for travel, paid for by both the village, and Thornton Township.

WGN Investigates uncovered $67,000 in unexplained travel in just four months by Henyard and her allies. Some of it was first class, and included a more than $9,000 stay at a Four Seasons hotel.

Lightfoot’s full presentation can be watched here, for anyone interested in seeing just how crazy the spending was. Mayor Tiffany Henyard, of course, did not attend the presentation, and local media has noted that she had two criminal defense attorneys with her for the Monday meeting, and that she was telling people to speak to them instead of her.

One would think that any mayor would have resigned long ago. Well, I think we’ve pretty clearly established that Mayor Tiffany Henyard is not just ANY mayor, and that she has zero capacity for shame. Since it seems that the people of Dolton don’t have the ability or the will to remove her from office before her term is up (maybe they’re hoping the FBI will take care of that for them at this point), it looks like Henyard will simply milk her status for all that it is worth by being a petty dictator who will cling to power with her fake nails until the last minute.

Back in February, when Henyard’s spending sprees came to light, Adam B. Coleman wrote an op-ed in the New York Post about why this case illustrated the importance of local elections.

So how do we prevent being trampled over by an audacious ruler who masquerades as a public servant?

We must show up for local elections.

Too often our municipal elections are decided by low voter turnout, especially in the off years of a presidential election.

We’ve forgotten how detrimental one local election can be in such a short period.

The “super mayor” is far from the only municipal politician motivated by personal enrichment who abuses her might — she’s just incredibly brazen about it.

She’s always been morally corrupt; she only needed to obtain the power to exploit.

The problem is our news has become so nationalized.

We’ve ignored how many immoral actors in government get a pass because we’ve been obsessively focused on “what’s happening in DC” instead of “what’s happening near me.”

Local elections matter because if you don’t show up, tyrants can make your community hell much faster than the president can.

While national elections absolutely do matter (consider the chaos that Biden’s foreign policy has created), it is also true that local corruption can ruin your life a whole lot faster, because unless you move, you can’t get away from it. The people of Dolton and Thornton Township are now looking at crippling budget deficts, thanks to one woman, that will affect them for years to come. You think they might pay more attention to who gets elected next time? I certainly hope so.

Meanwhile, all images of Tiffany Henyard are being deleted by Wikipedia/Wikimedia editors. As in, official images taken as portraits for official town records, something every elected public official has. However, since the mayor was very happy to plaster her face all over billboards, I’m not sure how effective the deletion of official portraits is really going to be. Good luck with that, Mayor.

Featured image: original Victory Girls art by Darleen Click