Chicago- After revelations that he racked up $1,462 in Chicago strip club charges on his government credit card, one of Will County’s most prominent municipal leaders found himself on the defensive Tuesday.
Though Mike Smith, the president of New Lenox, reimbursed the village for the charges with a personal check, he conceded he made “a very, very bad mistake. I can’t say anything else about that; just very poor judgment.
“I’m very apologetic to the community for it,” said Smith, president of the Will County Governmental League, a member of the Metra commuter rail agency board and past president of the Northeastern Illinois Planning Commission. “I’m hopeful that this has not tarnished the community in any way.”
Village Trustee Nancy Dye, a member of the Finance Committee, expressed a similar sentiment.
“It’s very unfortunate, but the mayor has done a lot of good things for New Lenox, so I don’t want to judge him solely on this issue,” she said.
Trustee Annette Bowden, chair of the Finance Committee, called the charges “totally inexcusable. Using the card for personal expenses, let alone that kind of expense, is something I think he deeply regrets at this point,” she said of Smith.
Though she said it was common sense not to use a government charge card for personal expenses, an explicit ban on such behavior is likely to soon become village policy.
According to his village American Express card statement, Smith accumulated four charges on March 10 and 11 at VIP’s, a strip club on the Near Northwest Side. The establishment’s Web site, which one must be 18 to enter, bills the club as “Chicago’s premiere adult cabaret.”
Smith said the charges were made during one visit to VIP’s, where he picked up the tab for himself and friends attending a bachelor party, before and after midnight the same night.
He said he left his wallet in a different pair of slacks, but found the village AmEx card in his coat, so he used it.
Also on the AmEx invoice were charges of $1,782 at Chicago restaurants. A total of $1,300 was charged March 11. It’s listed under Chicago Food & Beverage, but Smith said he couldn’t recall the precise name of the restaurant. A day earlier, he charged $313.34 at MK Chicago, a River North restaurant. Two other lesser charges were made March 3 at Chicago eateries.
Smith wrote a check on his and his wife’s account for $3,244 to reimburse the village last Friday, which Bowden said was before the bill payment was due. Smith said he has been charging personal items on his village card since he was elected seven years ago.
“At the end of the month you get an invoice, and you just reimburse the expenses on there for anything that wasn’t village business,” he said. “That was the practice prior to my administration also.”
Bowden said Smith always has reimbursed his personal expenses, often with a check from his political campaign fund.
The Star newspaper requested the AmEx invoice, along with the reimbursement check, at a time when the Finance Committee was debating Smith’s prepaid lodging expenses for a coming International Council of Shopping Centers convention in Las Vegas.
The board of trustees also was debating a proposal to convert the village president’s total yearly stipend of $1,800, plus $125 per meeting attended, to an annual total salary of $65,000. Village trustees’ pay, now $100 per meeting attended, would be converted to a $10,000 salary.
Bowden said she expects that proposal, backed by Smith, to be killed by the board as soon as next week. Meanwhile, her committee is trying to determine if some per-meeting payments made in the past to public officials were improper.
Smith, 54, a retired golf course owner, was first elected in 1999 to lead New Lenox, home to nearly 25,000 people. The village’s population is expected to exceed 101,000 by 2030, according to Northeastern Illinois Planning Commission projections. It will be the terminus of the Interstate Highway 355 tollway extension that is under construction.