Why the City of LaSalle Is Quietly Abandoning LPAC Now 

2/2/2026 

by Jamie Hicks 

What the City of LaSalle is doing right now is not reform. It’s damage control.

Last year—on the record, in writing, and on audio—I warned city officials that the LaSalle Promotional & Advisory Committee (LPAC) did not legally exist as they claimed it did. I said it plainly because the facts were plain: there were no lawful appointments, no public meetings, no minutes, no audits, no executive director, and no independent financial structure as required by the City’s own ordinance.

At the time, city officials dismissed this. They told the public LPAC “exists,” while privately admitting—by text—that they didn’t even know who was on it.

In text messages from 2025, Alderman Jordan Crane stated:

• He had never attended an LPAC meeting in his life

• He didn’t know who was on LPAC

• He believed it was “people from outside the city”

• He guessed someone “might” be on it

• He described LPAC as “planning festivals and stuff,” with no reference to legal authority, votes, or records

That is not a committee. That is a rumor with a checkbook.

At the same time, the City was spending hundreds of thousands of dollars through LPAC—money approved by the City Council, paid by the City, tracked inside City systems, and never audited as a separate entity. The ordinance requires LPAC to be independent. The City treated it like a slush fund.

I recorded the meetings. I preserved the texts. I filed FOIA requests. And when those FOIAs came back, they confirmed exactly what I said: there are no records because there was no functioning committee.

Now fast-forward to today.

Suddenly, LPAC is being “restructured.” Suddenly, funds are being shifted. Suddenly, officials are distancing themselves. Suddenly, the City wants the public to believe this is a normal administrative change.

It isn’t.

They are backing away from LPAC now because the paper trail finally caught up to the narrative.

Here’s the problem the City can’t undo:

• You cannot lawfully appropriate public funds to a committee that does not legally exist.

• You cannot avoid the Open Meetings Act by pretending decisions happened somewhere off the record.

• You cannot retroactively invent compliance after the money is gone.

• You cannot cure years of illegality by quietly walking away once exposed.

The text messages matter because they show knowledge and intent.
The audio matters because it shows decisions being made without authority.
The FOIA responses matter because they show the absence of legally required records.

And today’s actions matter because they show consciousness of guilt.

This is why LPAC is being abandoned—not because it “ran its course,” but because continuing to operate it exposes criminal and civil liability for official misconduct, misappropriation of public funds, Open Meetings Act violations, and ethics violations under Illinois law.

To be clear: dissolving or sidelining LPAC now does not erase what already happened. It confirms it.

You don’t dismantle something quietly unless you know it can’t survive daylight.

To the people of LaSalle: this wasn’t a paperwork mistake. It was a deliberate workaround. And the reason it’s unraveling now is because the truth was documented before it could be buried.