Readership is typically down during holiday periods, but it appears as if at least one reporter took a look on Monday.

That was the day McHenry County Blog revealed the United States Post Office’s investigation of the Huntley School District.

The source?

An answer from a McHenry County Blog Freedom of Information request.

So, what’s it all about?

The Daily Herald’s Jameel Naqvi reports that

“according to school board Vice President Tony Quagliano, (the complaint) alleges District 158 sent voters intentionally misleading information in a district newsletter before the 2004 referendum.”

So, not only was the B.E.S.T. tax hike political action committee sending out false information, but the school district itself was as well.

A Crystal Lake High School District 155 school superintendent, one whom I respected, came this/close to losing his pension for similar use of school resources in support of a referendum.

The news article reports that district officials say a former superintendent was named in a complaint, but won’t fess up who it was.

Not too tough a mystery to unravel.

“Officials would not reveal who was named, but the alleged activity occurred sometime before (Steve) Swanson left the district and after his interim successor, Robert Hammon, was hired,” Naqvi reported.

Steve Swanson was superintendent from 2001 until he and then-finance officer Paul Halverson resigned in 2005, after public outcry over misinformation distributed as part of the referendum campaign.

The blatantly false campaign information led to

• the election of Larry Snow,
• the re-working of tax cap legislation, in which Larry Snow and Tony Quagliano provided their expertise, to prevent similar lie-based referendum campaigns in the future and, subsequently, and
• the election of a second reform-minded inquiring citizen—Aileen Seedorf—to the Huntley school board.

This led to a blow-back by organizers and active participants in the B.E.S.T. referendum effort at a recent Huntley School Board meeting. The resignations of Snow and Seedorf were demanded. In addition, millionaire Michael Leucht ran a full-page ad in the Northwest Herald calling for two board members to resign.

No reason to let financial impropriety or mail fraud to get in the way of a fight to retain total control over a malfunctioning local government, I guess.