Listen carefully; read carefully

Be sure to read this morning's Northwest Herald article (Page 1C) about the Nygrens' homestead exemption in Florida. It sounds pretty good, if you don't know any more about it.

"On Tuesday he denied any wrongdoing..." wrote the NWH reporter after speaking to Sheriff Nygren.

Is he speaking only for himself or for his wife and him? She signed an affadavit on 1/29/07 that she knew that they could not have more than one residency-based homestead exemption and that they were responsible for removing any other homestead exemption. Did she read it? Did she forget to tell him? Is he saying that he didn't do any wrong, but she did?

"political mudslinging"? I don't think so.

In the same article (10/28/09) Nygren told the reporter that "he asked to have the homestead exemption for the house in Florida removed after his wife became a Florida resident and sought a homestead exemption for a house they own in Cape Coral, Fla."

Did his lawyer write out that statement for him? Just examine how carefully it is constructed.

Mrs. Nygren sought the homestead exemption on January 29, 2007, when she signed the affidavit for the Florida homestead exemption on that date. In March 2009 the Lee County (Fla.) Assessor's office contacted the McHenry County Assessor about the Hebron residence homestead exemption and wrote to the Nygrens.

So, it is true that Keith asked to have the Hebron house exemption removed "after" Marge filed her affidavit. But he asked 26 months "after" and apparently only after the Lee County Assessor wrote that it intended to cancel the Florida homestead exemption!

I loved this morning's headline on Page 3C: "Candidate questions tax exemption." Thank you, NWH, if you are referring to me, but I don't want to take credit where none is due.

It was the Lee County Assessor who questioned the Illinois homestead exemption, and after they got a tip that the Nygrens had the exemption here on their home in Hebron. And that was back in March. All I did was write about it and then only after I read about it elsewhere, where another sharp blogger had pulled the issue into public view.

Nygren told the reporter, "My wife spends probably seven months of the year there. If I spend a couple of days there a year, that's it."

If that's true, then who ate all the meals and drank all the booze purchased in Florida by Nygren's political campaign funds between January-June, 2009? Expenses were listed on this blog, after first being published on www.mchenrycountyblog.com/

How does Keith get to Florida and back? Commercial airline (tickets would verify how frequently he traveled and how long he stayed); private aircraft from political friends? drive the Tahoe?

What would the mileage log for the Tahoe show for 2009? It's only 9.8 miles from home to office, so that's 20 miles/day. Twenty-three days a month, and that's 460 miles, and those are all "commuting" miles and should be taxable to the employee. In six months? 2,760 miles, less "a couple of days there (in Florida) a year." How many miles were put on the Tahoe in the first six months of the year?

It's a County vehicle, so the records should be publicly available.

When I'm Sheriff, I plan to continue driving my "basic undercover car" and save the County some big bucks. And I won't even gas up at the County pump for my 4.4-mile commute.