Mayor Tiffany Henyard Vetoes Town Resolution Calling For FBI Probe Into Her Overspending

The high-rolling mayor of a poor Chicago suburb has blocked an invitation for law enforcers to examine where millions of dollars have disappeared to.

Dolton Mayor Tiffany Henyard earns $300,000 for her public duties but has spent thousands more on first class trips, a professional hair and makeup team and a security detail.

She has been accused of unlawfully signing off contracts as dozens of unpaid suppliers threaten to take the town to court.

And she faced furious calls to resign on Monday as she batted away demands to open up the books while vetoing a bid by the town trustees to call the FBI.

‘I always stay the course, and I will be victorious when all the dust clears,’ she told them.

The town board voted through a motion to ask agencies including the FBI, the US attorney, the Cook County sheriff and Cook County state’s attorney to investigate Henyard, last month.

Henyard vetoed the invitation last night, but FBI agents are already talking to dozens of people in the town of 20,000 about the unpaid bills.

Henyard has admitted a $2 million deficit, blaming the trustees for incompetence, but some fear the true figure could be as high as $5 million.

WGNTV reported that the town owes more than $427,000 to a company that repaved its streets, and another $400,000 to a tree-trimming company that worked for it last year.

‘You lied to us as residents. You do not, you do not stand for me. And I want you to step down as mayor today and save our village from this deficit you have caused,’ Dolton resident Vivian Allen told her on Monday.

‘The mayor can blame everybody for what’s going on, but she has to look at herself,’ added former trustee Edward Steave.

Henyard, 40, had her charity ‘Tiffany Henyard Cares’ shut down last month by the Illinois Attorney General amid claims it used taxpayer money and the services of public employees.

She and other officials spent more than $67,000 of public money on trips to Portland, Austin, Atlanta and New York City, traveling first-class on some of the flights, and spending $13,000 on a stay in New York.

‘It’s unfortunate that politics are being played. What’s happened is a million dollars out of my budget have been cut because of politics,’ Dolton Police Chief Lewis Lacey said.

The first female mayor in the town’s 128-year history was at the White House meeting President Joe Biden in January, but she has been accused of shutting down businesses that refuse to donate to her campaign.

One resident, Lawrence Gardner, claimed that Henyard forced the closure of his trucking business after he refused to renew a $3,500 contribution to her political fund.

‘I made the payment,’ he said. ‘Then every year she started coming and required the same thing, and we had a problem about that.’

‘What is she, Nino Brown?’ he said. ‘Anything she wants done, she gets them to harass you. She likes nobody.’

She was slammed for hiring her former campaign worker as the town’s code enforcement officer despite the fact he is a convicted child rapist.

She also raised eyebrows after spending hundreds of thousands of tax dollars on security details, including one occasion where she pulled cops off the street to perform a protection outfit.

A successful recall vote was overturned on a technicality last year prompting her to dance on a podium at the subsequent board meeting to the strains of Rihanna’s ‘B***h Better Have My Money’.

‘I am and forever will be Dolton’s Mayor,’ she posted on Instagram.

But she has never been charged with an offense and is defiant against critics she claims ‘should be ashamed of themselves’.

‘You all forget I’m the leader,’ she told a meeting last month.

‘They want to hear from the mayor. You all ain’t learned that yet.

‘The mayor, not the trustees that don’t do nothing. They only run their mouth. You all don’t do no work, no work!’

She slammed her colleagues’ attempt to call in law enforcement as ‘unconstitutional and in complete disregard of the law’, after it was carried at a different venue.

‘I continue to be shocked by what the trustees simply do not know about municipal government,’ she added.

But trustees have already launched a lawsuit against her and have vowed to override her veto at their meeting next month.

‘When I say we are here to save Dolton, I mean that,’ said trustee Brittney Norwood.

‘We cannot survive like this, we have vendors calling us every day for nonpayment.’