From Crystal Lake City Council candidate Robert Miller’s wife Dianne:
Here is the latest on Robert’s court case….
Robert Miller filing petitions for Crystal Lake City Council. Photo credit: Dianne Miller.
Robert had a status hearing yesterday in McHenry County.
The attorney for the hearing board and a new attorney for Hopkins, Brady and Ferguson were in attendance.
Appears that Hopkins, Brady and Ferguson are still being represented by the law firm that Mayor Shepley’s wife works for.
Brady, Ferguson and Ralph Dawson were there too. (We have never seen Hopkins in court)
Robert came to court prepared with his legal brief in hand.
The attorneys had nothing.
The judge [Thomas Meyer] was surprised that Robert had his brief ready.
He worked his butt off researching case law and he found some interesting cases which he highlighted in his brief.
Since Bob is pro-se he also had to educate himself on the proper way to format and write a brief. I think he did a great job!
Robert discussed with the judge the importance of getting this resolved quickly.
It was decided that the attorneys have until February 5th to file their briefs and another court date was set for February 11th.
(February 11th is Robert’s birthday!)
The judge is supposed to give his decision then.
I was not able to find ANY information on the Marshall Lowe/Dell Miller election ballot challenge [which Lowe won in court under fairly similar circumstances].
I wound up doing a FOIA with McHenry County (both County Clerk and Circuit Court Clerk), the State of Illinois Election Board and lastly
Algonquin Township.
They all replied that they have no records.
I did find it interesting that the reply I received from Algonquin Township was a written letter from their attorney Jim Kelly.
What?
Their attorney handles their FOIA requests?
No wonder Algonquin Township is so messed up.
Every other place I have submitted a FOIA to has had a FOIA clerk respond to me – not an attorney!
Since Charles Lutzow is the FOIA officer – why is he having the attorney respond? What an incredible waste of money!
I have attached a copy of their response but if you decide to put that up on the blog, please remove my email address.
Bust em Kirk, even in this response they use Algonquin Township Highway Commissioner.
Shouldn’t that read Algonquin Township Road Commissioner?
I think you need to investigate this.
After all you claim to educate.
Maybe you need to educate the attorney.
Lutzow please resign.
If you don’t or can’t do your job, please let us get someone who will.
You were the past clerk and Lukasik is the current clerk, why are we still spending money to have attorneys do your job.
Are you both illiterate that you can’t even write a letter of response?
Karen Lukasik, you once messengered me that you wanted to discuss what was going on at the township.
I wasn’t really interested in what you had to say.
At the end of that message you said and I quote “all I want to do is serve.”
apparently that was BS. You are the elected keeper of the records.
DO YOUR JOB or please resign.
I would like to see the cases he cited in his brief.
Maybe if you simply look at the law you will find the proper name is Highway Commissioner.
60 ILCS 1/73-5
As far as the response, it appears it was not the attorney making the reference to Highway Commissioner.
They simply put the requester’s request in their response.
And you insinuate that I have a comprehension issue? LOL
I totally agree with the rest of your assessment and if you were to read ALL the court filings in our case you would have a better understanding of why we are pushing our case forward.
Kelly can not set himself up to deny FOIA’s and then turn around and defend his denials.
Stephen – you are on the wrong article.
This is a different ROBERT MILLER. that was to run for Crystal Lake City Council.
So the Crystal Lake city council has a board to decide whether people can run for council.
If the matter goes to court then the city will spend taxpayers money at the law firm the mayors wife works at to make sure that person interested in running for office cannot get on the ballot.
Do I have this right?
Yes Kirk reading comprehension is an issue with you. And you also don’t get Sarcasm at all.
Remembering what Shepley did to Sacha Chadwick.
It was despicable.
THIS CASE however is a bit different.
The candidate handed in his paperwork late and with an alleged altered document backdated by the old clerk (McClellan).
Both are wrong.
If you’re late, you’re late.
No official document should be allowed to be backdated.
Robert got a phone call from the McHenry County Assistant States Attorney a little while ago.
An Emergency Motion was filed today by the McHenry County Clerk Joe Tirio (via Norman D. Vinton, Assistant States Attorney) Titled “McHenry County Clerk’s Emergency Motion to Intervene”
The next court date that was set, February 11th, is too late for the County Clerk to certify the ballot and to have it printed according to State Statutes.
He states he only learned of Robert’s case yesterday, January 23rd!
We are on the docket for Monday January 28th at 9:00am, for the judge to hear the emergency motion and rule on it.
Hoping he will rule that Robert should be put back on the ballot.
I will keep you all posted.
Stephen, I think your pointing out sarcasm is a great point.
As I have said for years, texts, online social media, and other text-only communication is the biggest downfall when it comes to social interaction.
By only reading a text, a person has no clue of the voice behind it, loud, soft, normal, body language etc.
Thus, they are left with having to assume how the words are to be taken and that will be impacted on the reader’s personal situation and emotions at that time which may be nowhere near the real meaning of what the person was trying to get across.
I have no doubt I have faults, but I also am able to find answers to the most basic question, which is what I provided to you since there “appeared” to be a comprehension issue on the other end of the wire.
Stay tuned for some more great exposure of absolute lies that got all the way into the courts and we now have the records to prove it.
So much for Miller “trying” to scrub the hard drives!
Robert Miller will be on the ballot and Crystal Lake will have its first election in long time !
The only question is which one of the incumbents is going to lose …
Brady, Ferguson or Hopkins ?
Also, why is Dawson at this and shows the level of collusion on the current City Council and throw in the Fact that the Decades long Mayor’s wife’s employer is representing all three makes the City government no different than that of the old U.S.S.R. , all in lock step with the Mayor’s agenda !
In my opinion it’s time to change this monopoly and get new blood in the City government as well as new day to day management.
The Northwest Herald is transfixed on the Gasser investigation and would be interesting if they were doing likewise regarding City Hall.
Here is the latest update on Robert’s legal case:
Judge Thomas Meyer heard the “Emergency Motion to Intervene” brought by Joe Tirio through the McHenry County Assistant State’s Attorney this morning.
It was agreed that the attorneys must file their briefs by Wednesday, January 30th (Robert already filed his brief on January 22nd) and then Judge Meyer will hear the case and make his ruling on Friday, February 1st at 1pm.
We are hopeful that Robert’s name will be put back on the ballot!
Funny how I found these archived articles regarding Elections in Crystal Lake and similar to the circumstances of an article written last week but are quickly buried by a couple of people or is it the work of John Lopez censoring them?
Read the comments and parallel to the current Crystal Lake Elections.