Judge partially denies request to dismiss McHenry County recorder's 'integrity fund' probe

A Woodstock attorney was granted another chance to prove the entity behind a series of insulting campaign mailers didn't bother to look at public records before accusing McHenry County Recorder Joe Tirio of misusing taxpayers' money.

McHenry County Judge Kevin Costello instructed attorney Philip Prossnitz to refile a petition seeking answers about the faceless group that calls itself the Illinois Integrity Fund.

In a final effort to question Janice Dalton – who lost the Republican nomination to Tirio for the McHenry County clerk seat – and Chicago printing company Breaker Press about the integrity fund, Prossnitz will need to prove in court that whoever thought up the "defamatory" flyers ignored public records that directly contradict the flyers' accusations.

“Those records do exist, and they knew they existed,” Tirio said.

Prossnitz and Chicago attorney Natalie Harris argued their cases at a hearing Thursday afternoon. Harris long has claimed that references to Tirio’s alleged “taxpayer-funded slush fund” is political speech protected under the First Amendment.

“It’s too broad – it’s too vague to be considered defamatory, per se,” Harris said in court.

Costello partially denied Harris’ request to dismiss the petition seeking to question Dalton and Breaker Press. Although the judge did not necessarily disagree with Harris’ arguments about the benign nature of individual phrases used throughout the flyers, he could not overlook the accusations those phrases alluded to in a broader context.

“I think it’s clear that the context and meaning here is that this fund that [Tirio’s] allegedly in charge of is for the use of illicit purposes,” Costello said.

The judge asked Prossnitz to clarify in an updated petition a point the attorney argued in court Thursday: whoever concocted the flyers should have known the accusations they portrayed were false.

In February and March, hundreds of McHenry County households received flyers that accused Tirio of keeping a “secret taxpayer-funded slush fund” to take trips and pad his payroll with “patronage workers.” Each of three variations of the mailers had a return address made out to the Illinois Integrity Fund, 2815 Forbs Ave., Hoffman Estates.

Prossnitz filed his original petition in April, detailing why he thinks the Chicago-based printing company Breaker Press and Dalton might have information that could expose the faceless entity behind the mailers.

The matter will return to Costello’s courtroom Sept. 14.