By John Kraft, Edgar County Watchdogs
September 22, 2014 · 0 Comments
SPRINGFIELD, IL. (ECWd – News they don’t want you to know) –
In a surprisingly timed, but not unexpected move (for us), the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has ordered the Illinois Department of Transportation, Division of Aeronautics (IDOT-DA), to direct the Edgar County Board to suspend all work on the fuel farm and apron expansion projects until further notice.
The Office of the Executive Inspector General (OEIG) of the United States Department of Transportation (USDOT) is conducting a review of the documentation used in the justification of the project.
The FAA is asking the airport for submission of application and other information to reflect the true nature of what is used for justification.
Read the letter below (or click here).
The board was informed in a letter from Allen Mlacnik, IDOT-DA, that the county must resubmit the justification for grant funding in order to be considered for the grant funds for this project. This is a reversal of IDOT-DA’s letter dated February 20, 2014 (old letter here).
This falls right in line with what the Edgar County Watchdogs and others have been telling the board for almost a year now; that the current grant is based on fraudulent information and must be resubmitted. January 8, 2014, I told the Edgar County Board that they should resubmit the grant application because the current one was based on lies that Jimmy Wells, former airport manager, submitted to IDOT for approval. The Engineer firm is not innocent in this either.
You can see my statement at the 2:29 mark in the below video:
It took 8 1/2 months from my first public statement on this fraudulent grant until the FAA ordered the State of Illinois to direct the Edgar County board to provide updated information. This is shameful and every resident of the county should tell their county board members that this is not acceptable. There is absolutely no reason citizens should have to go to every meeting for 8 1/2 months, rehashing this information each and every time, to get the county board to do what they should have done when they were first informed of the problem and even provided proof, by way of their own documents, that is was wrong and needed fixed.
During the past few months we have been met with eyes rolling, smirking, statements that nothing will change, statements that IDOT says we are crazy and the grant application is fine, and board members ignoring what we were saying.
We can only hope that any new application will be based on factual data – and we will check and verify every single statement put into the new application. Why? Because public trust in Edgar County government has eroded and they can no longer be trusted to submit truthful grant applications.