Heilmann Details His Reasons for Founding the Anonymous Oak Lawn Leaf

After Patch discovered that former mayor Dave Heilmann was behind the anonymous blog Oak Lawn Leaf, he requested that we publish his full response.

Tom Phelan admitted writing the document. Who cares how it gets cut and pasted onto a website? Is that the issue? Are you suggesting that would make the document less true? Less offensive?

This is exactly why there needs to be another source for information Lorraine, because instead of focusing on the potential criminal conduct and millions in lawsuits from paybacks and political retaliation, your concern is to investigate and go after those questioning that conduct. Websites cost taxpayers nothing. Paybacks and retaliation do.

But I am happy to answer your question. I secured the name Oak Lawn Leaf and like it. When you sign up for Go Daddy you give them an email address as an administrative contact. It’s quite legal and I certainly hope that as a journalist who operates a website that you’re not suggesting there is anything wrong with that.

As for anonymity, no I didn’t author the post but I do hope to contribute articles. Hope many will because I think it can be refreshing to get different viewpoints. But it would be too time consuming for me personally. I just don’t have the time to operate a website or blog. I was ripped apart by lies for 4 years and still put my name on the ballot. I’m not afraid to put my name out there and disclose how I feel on any issue.

But yes, absolutely people are going to be watching. They got caught and they are being called on it.

Lorraine, this is history repeating itself. Bad history. Four years ago I was the guy who received a document authored by Tom Phelan asking that “we reward support”. Just like now it was the May following an election where we won all the seats. He asked that the Village give legal business to his friend because he “supported us” and helped Phelan personally. I objected to that but they went ahead it with it anyway. That put our village under criminal investigation. Despite that, despite an FBI investigation into the exact type of conduct that is being recommended again 4 years later, we are worried about how the information is sent out to residents instead of the fact that it could walk our village into another criminal investigation? This is something everyone should know and I wish it happened four years ago.

This article was originally published on May 28, 2013, due to technical difficulties with our new platform, this story did not immediately migrate over. It has been republished it in its original entirety.”