Long before an Internet sex picture overshadowed his candidacy, John Heidelmeier was the popular police chief of Villa Park — and was facing secret accusations of mismanagement.

The newspaper's review of hundreds of pages of records previously denied to the public found that, before the ink was dry on last year's gag order, village officials had quietly begun accusing the chief of assorted mismanagement, including:
•Keeping an evidence room that was in disarray, with $10,000 in cash and a bucket of guns left unlogged.
•Hiring an officer against the advice of a psychological assessment who then was later accused of roughing up a teenage girl who had done nothing wrong.
•Giving a convicted felon wide access to the department, including riding along with officers on patrol.

I have personally dealt with this bumbling police department. About 2 and a half years ago I was less than a block from my house minding my own business when all of a sudden I was surrounded by 5 police cars. Guns drawn they yelled at me to put my hands in the air. They then proceeded to force me to the ground even though I had clearly given up. My neighbors had all tried to tell them who I was and that I had just come out of my house. I had asked my neighbor to please go tell my mom what was going on so that someone could find me at the police station. I was put into the squad car and driven away, everytime I asked the officer what was going on he told me to "shut the hell up" I was taken to an area aproximately a quarter mile from my house taken out of the squad to be identified. I will never forget the woman identifying me when they had asked her "is that him?" she replied "not even close" I was then put back into the squad car still handcuffed even though I had done nothing wrong. I was then driven home and dropped off in front of my house while the officer turned his lights on uncuffed me outside of the car for all my neighbors to see and then didn't even apologize. Too this day it makes my blood boil to think about this incident. To make matters worse when my mom who had just had heart surgery a few months prior to this incident, went to the police department to find out what had happened to me the woman at the front desk threatened to have her arrested. Real Classy VPPD. Don't believe me? you can ask multiple neighbors who saw what happened. If Heidelmeier can't run his police department competently how can we trust him to run Villa Park?

1. Three-fifths majorities in each house of the legislature (36 Senators and 71 House members, assuming no abstentions) must vote to put it on the ballot.
2. Once on the ballot, it must be approved by a three-fifths majority of everyone voting on the amendment, or by a simple majority of everyone who voted in the election even counting those who skipped this particular question.
3. With the amendment passed into law, the legislature would need to create a graduated tax rate plan and pass it through the normal legislative process.

DuPage Forest Preserve commissioners voted unanimously Tuesday to reduce their own salaries from nearly $57,000 to $53,500, but they disagreed on whether the cuts were deep enough.

Commissioner Joe Cantore suggested reducing salaries in October and on Tuesday fought to keep the issue from being tabled to next week’s commission meeting.

He urged fellow commissioners to cut their salaries to $50,000, roughly equal to the annual compensation DuPage County Board members receive.

“It was just time for some action,” Cantore said. “We needed to get it done. But I don’t think we reduced it enough and I guess you could call it a compromise.”

[Outgoing commissioner Carl] Schultz said one forest commissioner represents the same number of people as three county board members per district. He added that county board members also have offices, while forest commissioners keep offices in their homes.

You and your families are surely affected by high and rising gas prices. The average price is already over $3.50 a gallon! Unfortunately, some experts say they could rise as high a $5-per-gallon.

This is a disappointing but unfortunately not surprising reality. High gas prices and rising electricity costs are just some of the results of the Administration's energy policy designed to benefit political allies at the expense of lower American energy costs.

But House Republicans are fighting back. Find out how in my interview with Martha MacCallum here.

Tammy Duckworth, one of two Democratic Congressional candidates making a bid in the 8th District, challenged her opponent Monday to reject any contribution from Super PACs — political action committees that can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money.

Opponent Raja Krishnamoorthi said he’ll agree — but only if Duckworth also agrees not to accept contributions from international unions, lobbyists or other corporations.... He also proposed that the candidates get rid of “paid media (ads)” by holding one debate a week until the election.

Yesterday, I asked my opponents to join me in a pledge to keep Super PAC spending out of this race. An overwhelming number of you signed on to agree that unlimited, anonymous funding should have no role in our democracy. But unfortunately, my primary opponent refused to sign on to the same kind of pledge Elizabeth Warren and Scott Brown agreed to.

As I said yesterday, this will only work if my opponent agrees. Over 7,000 of you have contributed to my campaign--often in spite of tough financial circumstances--and I'm not willing to let your contributions be overwhelmed by millions of dollars in negative attack ads.

We've already seen the corrosive effect of Super PAC support in the Republican presidential primary. And frankly, I'm not surprised to see Republicans embrace unlimited, anonymous corporate funds. But using a Super PAC in a Democratic primary would be unprecedented. It's just not who we are as a party and it's not what we should aspire to be.