Juan Moreno’s election-related legal issues go beyond a hearing Monday in which the first-time Joliet City Council member will defend his legitimacy to hold office.

The Illinois State Board of Elections has fined Moreno $21,901.80 for failing to file timely disclosures of big contributions to his campaign in the April election.

Moreno must survive the hearing on Monday to stay in office. Then, he will have to resolve the state fines if he ever intends to run for office again.

Moreno said he intends to resolve both matters.

“I’ve been focusing on the hearing,” he said Friday.

Later, Moreno said he will hire a lawyer to seek a settlement on the almost $22,000 in campaign disclosure fines.

Moreno was fined for not filing A-1 reports, which list big donors as the money is received, in the first three months of 2025, although he did list them in a quarterly report filed after the election.

Those donors included 15 construction groups and unions, including Moreno’s employer, Austin Tyler Construction, which donated $1,000 to his campaign in that period. The 15 donors contributed more than $22,000 to Moreno’s campaign.

Moreno said “the person who was in charge” of filing campaign reports “did it wrong.”

“I have to get an attorney to fix it,” he said.

He now has three attorneys working on the challenge to his legitimacy to hold office.

Moreno’s hearing on that case was slated for Thursday. But the hearing was pushed back to Monday morning after Moreno’s attorneys told the judge that Burton Odelson now has been hired as the lead lawyer in the case, but could not be there on Thursday.

Will County Judge Jennifer Lynch said she would not push back the hearing again.

“Make it clear to Mr. Odelson that I am going to proceed with or without him,” Lynch told Moreno’s attorneys.

Odelson is one of the top election attorneys in Illinois. He successfully defended Joliet Township Supervisor Cesar Guerrero against an attempt by the Will County Clerk’s Office to keep him off the ballot in April.

That case, handled by Will County Assistant State’s Attorney Scott Pyles, figures into a motion for a summary judgment filed by Moreno’s attorneys to end the case against him.

Pyles also is handling the case against Moreno.

The motion for summary judgment is blistering at times in its criticism of Pyles, saying that he has gone beyond the limits of his office in seeking Moreno’s ouster from the City Council.

It calls the state’s attorney’s case “an attack on councilman Moreno’s personal life” and “an abuse of power.”

It refers to the Guerrero case and another case handled by Pyles that successfully removed Karl Ferrell from the elected office of trustee in Joliet Township.

Pyles, who handles election cases for the state’s attorney’s office, also was the lawyer on the Ferrell case after it was learned that Ferrell had previous felony convictions before running for office.

Convicted felons are barred from running for public office in Illinois.

“This motion [for summary judgment] is in part a personal attack on me,” Pyles said in court Thursday. “I’m not a zealot, which is portrayed in that motion.”

Pyles said he intended to file a response to the motion.

After the hearing, Pyles commented on claims in the motion that the state’s attorney’s office has a pattern of seeking to interfere in elections.

“I would dispute that this office seeks to remove elected members from office,” he said. “We follow the law.”

Lynch indicated during the hearing on Thursday that she is not likely to grant the motion for summary judgment.

That means Moreno is likely to be put on the witness stand.

The case against him alleges that Moreno did not live in the city for the required one year before he ran for City Council.

In a court affidavit, Moreno has said that he lived separately from his fiancée and children, who lived in unincorporated Troy Township, and in the city of Joliet when he ran for City Council.

Ironically, the Illinois State Board of Elections case may support Moreno’s case.

His campaign committee, Friends of Juan Moreno, lists Moreno as chairman and treasurer. It also lists 3916 Jonathan Simpson Drive, the Joliet address where Morena said he lived while running for City Council, as the address for the committee.