At a Riverside-Brookfield Township High School District 208 school board meeting last month, a former candidate for the school board accused school board Vice President Sue Kleinmeyer of falsely filling out a required state form by not disclosing that her husband, Dave, works as a part time athletic trainer at RB.
“It is clear that these documents were filled with incomplete and inaccurate information,” said David Hilpp at the June 23 District 208 school board meeting.
However Cook County Clerk David Orr, whose office administers the required statement of economic interests form, said that he believes Kleinmeyer correctly filled out the form.
“It sounds like the right thing was done,” said Orr last week after Kleinmeyer’s situation was explained to him.
Orr said that his office only sends out and collects the forms that are required from all school board candidates and others running for and serving in public office. The county clerk’s office does not review the content of the forms.
“We’re only administered with making certain people fill out the form,” Orr said. “We have not set ourselves up as legal experts on this.”
Orr said that the questions on the forms, which are designed to disclose any financial conflicts of interest that public officials may have, are poorly written and confusing.
“There are no instructions as to how to fill out that form,” Orr said. “You could make more clearly worded questions. I’ve always suspected that the reason they’re not clear is that some of the powers that be don’t want them to be clear.”
Hilpp, who finished sixth in an eight person field in the 2007 RB school board race, gave copies of Kleinmeyer’s statement of economic interests forms from 2007, 2005, 2004 and 2003 to school board members at the meeting before making his public statement.
Statements of economic interests must be filed by every school board candidate and every school board member in the state of Illinois. They are intended to disclose any financial relationship between a board member or her spouse and the government entity they are seeking to serve.
“The goal is clear – to try and minimize conflicts of interest, by having a place where people have to publicly disclose those conflicts of interest,” Orr said.
The form consists of eight questions asking about various types of financial relationships between the person filling out the form or that person’s spouse, and the government entity that the person is serving on.
Orr said his office believes that an employee of the school district need not be listed on the form. But he noted that his office does not interpret the forms; it only sends them out and collects them.
“Mostly these are decisions, ultimately, frankly, that are decided by courts,” Orr said. “The clerk’s job is to make sure the forms are filled out.”
Hilpp said that he obtained Kleinmeyer’s forms by filing a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request wit the clerk’s office. He also filed a FOIA with RB and found that Dave Kleinmeyer was paid $22,538 for his work as a part-time athletic trainer at RB during the 2008-09 school year.
RB records indicate that the school has paid Dave Kleinmeyer more than $20,000 at least since the 2003-04 school year. Dave Kleinmeyer is one of two athletic trainers who work at RB. He has worked as an athletic trainer at RB for the past 27 years.
Hilpp said last week that he turned over information about Kleinmeyer’s situation to the Cook County State’s Attorney’s office of public integrity.
According to the form the penalties for willfully filing a false or incomplete statement of economic interest shall be a fine not to exceed $1,000 or imprisonment in a penal institution other than the penitentiary for a period not to exceed one year.
Kleinmeyer says that she has never willfully filed false forms. She said that when she was appointed to RB school board in 2002, she asked whether she needed to list her husband’s employment on the statement of economic interest.
“When I was appointed seven years ago, when they did the interview process and they were going to appoint me, I asked if they had checked with counsel, because I had a husband who was employed by the school district before I even became a board member and was that OK? And they said yes, they had checked with counsel and that was fine,” said Kleinmeyer who was the leading vote-getter in the 2007 school board race.
She also said she asked then-Supt. Jack Baldermann to check with the county clerk on the issue.
“I was advised ‘no’ at that time, and I have been following that ever since,” she said.
Baldermann said last week that he had spoken with Linda Hrebik of the Cook County clerk’s office at the time that Kleinmeyer was first appointed to the board.
“She informed me that school board members do not have to disclose the part-time employment of spouses,” said Baldermann in an e-mail.
“Our lawyer believes that was the correct advice,” Orr said.
