McGuire to COD Board: "We won't approve 7th Board member"

After boycotting four straight College of DuPage Board meetings, grinding COD governance to a standstill, Trustee Diane McGuire has escalated her official misconduct. She, along with former Chair Erin Birt, sent a letter to Lazaro Lopez, Chair of the Illinois Community College Board, stating he will likely have to pick the replacement for former Board member and Chair Kathy Hamilton. Yet McGuire, Birt and their third boycotting Board member Joe Wozniak have 24 days to sit down with the other three Board members to vet and interview the 28 local candidates to replace Hamilton. That is their job pure and simple, but McGuire and company are on strike, telling the COD community to let an uninformed outsider pick the seventh member. That is a disgrace to public service, the democratic process, the community and the 28 locals who wish to restart COD governance. 

Many are calling for McGuire and her faction to resign forthwith. Many are calling for them to be indicted for official misconduct. Once out of office the public their record is complete. McGuire and Birt are down to their last 15 months; Wozniak has an additional two years. Adding the refusal to pick the seventh Board member to their disgraceful Board meeting strike, further diminishes their legacy. But if they swallow their pride, go back to work and cooperate in cleaning up the corruption and mismanagement which landed COD on academic probation and subject of several criminal investigations, they still have a glimmer of hope of going out on a high note. 

It's official: McGuire's 3rd, 4th COD Board boycotts are official misconduct

For the fourth time in less than a month, Diane McGuire, engineered a boycott of a College of DuPage Board meeting. Tonight was a twofer; her holdover faction boycotted Deanne Mazzochi's special meeting to address the DuPage States Attorney's request for oral and written record of 2014 closed Board sessions, and they boycotted their own special meeting immediately following. The crowd of a hundred or more were once again dismayed and disgusted by the McGuire faction absence. Important COD business and governance has been shut down for a month. Bills are not being timely paid, a violation of the Illinois Prompt Payment Act, making COD potentially liable for payment penalties. Importantly needed new employees are not being hired. New curriculum is not being approved. Supplies for students and faculty are not being ordered. The 28 applicants for the vacant seventh Board Trustee position are not being vetted. Most important of all: the Board is hobbled in its dire need to address the two year probation imposed on it by the Higher Learning Commission, which, if not addressed, will cost COD its accreditation.

But wait. McGuire is not finished with her boycotts. She informed Acting Chair Deanne Mazzochi her holdover faction will boycott the January 21 regular meeting because all three of her faction, including Erin Birt and Joe Wozniak, are unable to attend.

All of the dozen public commentators called for McGuire, Birt and Wozniak to end their boycott, resign or be removed from office. Acting Chair Mazzochi was infinitely gracious in her plea for McGuire and her allies to end it in person at the January 21st meeting. Mazzochi was correct in saying there are not two Board factions, one of which was absent, but simply one Board prevented from doing COD and the community's business by the three boycotters. In closing Mazzochi called for a fresh start January 21, with no hard feelings and no recriminations, if the McGuire group will simply show up. That statement brought heartfelt applause from those of us present. Unfortunately, her words were not heard by Dianne McGuire, Erin Birt and Joe Wozniak. They were too busy practicing official misconduct.

Will McGuire COD Board faction boycott third meeting tonight?

After boycotting the last two College of DuPage Board meetings, COD Board Trustee Dianne McGuire has threatened boycotting tonight's special Board meeting her faction called for and accepted by Acting Chair Deanne Mazzochi. McGuire takes umbrage Mazzochi has scheduled an earlier special meeting to address one issue: DuPage States Attorney Bob Berlin's request the Board provide records of the March 6, 2014 Board meeting that preceded by one day, then Chair Erin Birt advising then COD president Robert Breuder his contract was extended through 2019. That request is relevant since no public record exits of an agenda item or a vote on Breuder's extension as required by the Open Meetings Act.  One would think McGuire would welcome such a move in the interest of responsible governance, compliance with law enforcement officials and transparency. But instead, simply dealing with this highly charged request provokes another McGuire boycott  threat, her third since resignation of the Board Chair deadlocked the Board between Acting Chair Mazzochi's new reform group and McGuire's holdover faction. Since McGuire has already advised her faction won't be available for the next regular Board meeting scheduled for January 21, that makes two boycotts and two threatened boycotts all while COD 's two year suspension from the Higher Learning Center is ignored. McGuire's rational for delaying consideration of the States Attorney's request is stunning: the state's attorney's request for closed-session material from March 6, 2014 "is not urgent....it pertains to actions occurring nearly two years ago and involving an employee who no longer works for the college." In case you're wondering, that employee is not the janitor. Just like every documented charge of misfeasance and malfeasance by former President Breuder and his enabling Board, including McGuire, that landed COD on probation, McGuire's pat answer is 'no problem here, let's move on.' 

Dianne McGuire has a small group of supporters who publicly call the new Board members  'liars, thugs, thieves and Teapartiers' as if those words promote resolving COD's disastrous two year suspension which jeopardizes COD accreditation. You won't hear those epitaphs from COD faculty and the great majority of the COD community supporting reform at COD. We simply call on Dianne McGuire, Erin Birt and Joe Wozniak to do the job we elected them to do.   

Do as I say...not as I do

IL governor Bruce Rauner made hundreds of millions buying, chopping up and then selling companies. If the CEO of a company he bought said he wouldn't implement a budget till he obtained non budgetary priorities, Rauner would fire him before he finished talking. Alas, those who bought Bruce Rauner to lead Illinois and those of us who worked desperately not to buy him, will have to wait three more years to fire him for the same offence.

Obama's 14 million private sector job growth still a job killer to Roskam

My lllinois Sixth District Congressman Peter Roskam won't utter a peep of praise about tonight's final President Obama State of the Union address during which Obama will tout the 14 million private sector jobs created once he smote the catastrophic Bush recession. That's because like Chicken Little, all Roskam's peeps (his version of tweets) will continue warning of  job killing Obama policies, which represent the acorns that drove Chicken Little to fearmonger the imaginary falling sky. Roskam's two word mantra 'job killer' started immediately upon Obama's inauguration. He called the Affordable Care Act a 'job killer'. He lamented Obama's sensible re-regulation of the Wall Street banksters as 'job killing' government interference. Medicaid expansion? Another 'job killer.' Raising taxes on the super duper rich was simply a 'job killing' attack on the job creators, who mainly create jobs in the overseas banking industry. In Roskam's bizarro version of the American economy we've been privileged to experience in place of the half million per month job losses in Bush's last year, the monthly average of 190,000 new private sector jobs is proof Obama is a 'job killer'. 

Tune in tonight and when the camera pans our congressman, see if you can decipher the words he seems to be mouthing over and over. Here's a hint: "Job killer, job killer, job killer." 

Does Dianne McGuire want the Supreme Court to rule on COD Board Acting Chair?

College of DuPage Board Trustee Diane McGuire sure has a strange way of addressing the two year probation imposed on the College of DuPage by the Higher Learning Commission (HLC). Rather than participate in the numerous reforms implemented since the new COD Board took charge in April, she has voted against every one. Rather than accept some responsibility for the myriad of educational, financial, ethical and administrative problems that prompted the HLC to place COD on academic probation, McGuire continues her 18 month campaign to deny any systemic problems at COD under her watch, laying its problems on the reform Board majority swept into office last April by a fed up community.

Simply voting 'NO' whenever her three member holdover Board faction was asked to participate in a reform vote for seven months afterward was not good governance. It contributed to the HLC citation about board dysfunction in their probation report. But at least her avalanche of NO votes could not stop the reforms she endlessly ignored from being implemented, putting COD on the road to recovery. With the resignation of the Board Chair, McGuire's intransigence has reached a new level of malfeasance. As apparent leader of the holdover faction, including former Chair Erin Birt and 'go-along' Trustee Joe Wozniak, McGuire orchestrated a boycott of the December 14 Board meeting, effectively shutting down COD governance. This action was prompted by resignation of the reform majority Chair, deadlocking the board at three votes apiece between the reform and McGuire holdover faction. McGuire, oblivious to the urgent need to address probationary status reforms, is laser focused on the strange theory that Acting Chair Deanne Mazzochi is not the acting chair, in spite of opinion from COD counsel and the Illinois Community College Board that she surely is till the state mandated annual reorganization next April. This led to the counter productive special Board meeting McGuire's faction scheduled for January 7, a meeting McGuire's group then boycotted because Mazzochi exercised her duly authorized powers to lead the Board agenda. McGuire has vowed to boycott the next regularly scheduled January 21 meeting, calling instead for a second special meeting January 14, demanding Acting Chair Mazzochi dare not tamper with McGuire's agenda .

Dianne McGuire has set herself and her two holdover Board members up as a bizarro, alternate COD Board that has nothing to do with dealing with the catastrophic probationary status for which McGuire and her holdover colleagues bear much responsibility. What's next? Will McGuire take Mazzochi's certified status as Acting Chair all the way to the Supreme Court to get it rescinded? Rather than squander her last 15 months as Trustee tilting at unproductive windmills, McGuire might consider the following opening statement at the next Board meeting, whenever it occurs:

"I'm from the community, I'm a lifelong educator, and I'm here to help get COD off probation. Let's get started."

If she says that, she will surely get a well deserved standing ovation.s