Jim Dey: Champaign County auditor plays defense as GOP contemplates offense
May 22—With a censure vote looming over him, embattled Champaign County Auditor George Danos issued an "open letter" to county board members that rejects misconduct accusations against him.
He said some current board members "may not know the whole story" behind allegations he contends are driven by political, policy and personality differences between him and his critics.
"I ask you to ponder the sheer improbability of all these charges being launched at once when they go back to 2020 and were not brought to you — or to me — until April of this year," he said.
Danos was referring to the anonymous Freedom of Information Act request that was submitted by a person identified only as "Cookie Cutter" who sought information on employee complaints and computer usage in the auditor's office. "Cookie Cutter" was later identified as local Democrat and former Cunningham Township Assessor Wayne Williams.
The 22-member board is scheduled to meet Thursday to consider the censure motion that takes Danos to task for failing to act as a watchdog for taxpayers and inappropriate "harassing" behavior toward his office's five employees.
Danos, a Democrat, is running for re-election unopposed for now. But that might not be the case for much longer.
Republican Alan Anderson, a self-employed computer programmer and University of Illinois graduate, said Danos' current problems with the board have prompted him to consider getting into the race.
"It's not 100 percent yet," said Anderson, 63, of Urbana.
He grew up in Champaign-Urbana, graduated with a finance degree from the UI and has lived here for much of his life. Anderson previously worked for Colwell Systems and Patterson Cos. before moving for nearly a decade to Colorado and then back to Illinois.
In the early days of the internet, Anderson said he was "part of the team that wrote the first program for HSBC Bank in New York" that "allowed customers to do online banking."
Since Anderson did not run for auditor in the March primary election, he must be slated by Champaign County GOP leaders. He'll also need to collect at least 250 signatures of registered voters by June 3 to get his name on the ballot.
Danos' lengthy letter states the censure resolution contains "five false allegations that become no truer with repetition," including one that is demonstrably false.
It concerns a charge that Danos failed to "complete the 2019 audit," a lapse that posed problems for the county.
But Danos said the facts showed — and contemporaneous news accounts confirmed — that that is false.
"It is a matter of record, acknowledged by the board and documented (in news accounts), that the audit of the county was held up by the accumulated failure from 2018 to 2020 of certain officeholders to supply their needed documents to the external auditor," he wrote.
Danos is referring to problems in the treasurer's office, then led by Laurel Prussing, to get its assigned work done. Prussing resigned two years into her four-year tenure.
Danos said he was among those who helped clear up the problem.
In what he called a "peace offering" related to the employee issue, Danos repeated an earlier offer to "devise a human-resources policy that includes, among other features, a mechanism by which tensions or complaints can be resolved confidentially and without fear of retaliation, interference by peer departments or jumping the chain of command."
He also expressed sympathy to board members who've been caught up in this ugly dispute.
"I know many of you have been lobbied to the point of exhaustion by the authors of this attack on my reputation," he wrote. "The peer pressure, the emotional intensity and the threat of shunning you is a lot to take. You have my sympathy."
