The feud between Cook County Board of Review Commissioner Tammy Wendt and the Board of Ethics has escalated to the courts after Wendt continued to defy a rule against nepotism by refusing to fire her cousin.
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The county’s ethics board filed the lawsuit Tuesday naming Wendt and her first cousin — and top staffer — Todd Thielmann as defendants. The complaint calls for a judge to uphold the county’s ethics code, which forbids Wendt from employing Thielmann, and for Wendt to fire him and to pay the $2,000 fine the board imposed when it originally found she violated the nepotism ban.
The lawsuit also demands Thielmann reimburse the county for all the compensation he earned working under Wendt, who most recently gave him a $150,000 salary, according to the public records.
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“Commissioner Wendt has flagrantly violated the Cook County Ethics Ordinance by hiring her first cousin into a senior position in her office, and she has steadfastly refused to comply with the order requiring her to correct that violation,” Thomas Szromba, chair of the Board of Ethics, wrote in a statement. “Orders from the Board of Ethics cannot simply be ignored.”
Neither Wendt nor Thielmann responded to requests for comment for this story, but Wendt has previously said the outcry over her cousin’s hiring is “an attempt to silence me” because she “did not hire who was sent to me.” Thielmann has told the Tribune he “will continue to manage Commissioner Wendts staff and do my job until she fires me.”
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In her April appeal of the ethics board’s findings, Wendt attempted to make the case that the countywide ethics ordinance does not apply to her because the Board of Review has a separate policy. The ethics board said Wendt’s argument was “meritless” because the county’s ethics ordinance applies to all its government employees and supersedes any rules by individual agencies such as the Board of Review.
At the time of Thielmann’s hiring, the countywide code banned the hiring of first cousins among other relatives, while the Board of Review’s rules did not include first cousins. The other two Board of Review commissioners have since amended their policy following a public flap over Thielmann’s employment.
Wendt, a Democrat from Palos Heights who ousted a Republican incumbent in 2020, is running for reelection to the property tax appeals board and faces Chicago Ald. George Cardenas, 12th, in the June 28 Democratic primary. Thielmann was hired in December 2020, immediately after his cousin took office, public records show.
Wendt was also one of the defense attorneys for Jason Van Dyke, the former Chicago officer convicted of murder in the shooting of Laquan McDonald.
In his March ruling, Szromba wrote that Wendt both violated a county ban on hiring relatives and failed to uphold her “fiduciary duty” to the county because she was still employing her cousin despite being given several notices about the nepotism ban.
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In addition to the ethics board, the Cook County Office of the Independent Inspector General also investigated Thielmann’s hiring. The county watchdog found that Wendt violated the ethics ordinance and should remove her cousin from his post, according to a January report. The inspector general’s office did not publicly name Wendt, but the ethics board ruling confirmed she was the subject of the watchdog’s inquiry.
Wendt’s primary opponent quickly weighed in Wednesday morning with a statement saying she acted “shamelessly.”
”I trust the people of Cook County will not re-elect Tammy Wendt on June 28th due to her incompetence and flagrant disregard of ethics,” Cardenas wrote.
