Supervisor Tries To Fire Assessor's Son For Bullying, Drug Talk

BUFFALO GROVE, IL — Two men working in the Vernon Township assessor's office engaged in a months-long campaign of bullying and misogynist harassment against women working alongside them and should be fired, according to Supervisor Daniel Didech. The pair of male staffers, who include the son of Assessor Gary Raupp, also allegedly "used taxpayer resources to distribute illegal drugs," according to the notice for an emergency meeting held Tuesday night.

Didech says he started getting complaints over the summer about the behavior of Phillip Raupp and Joshua Cohen toward the three women who worked alongside them in Raupp's father's office. Since July, there have been four complaints made to his office about their behavior, the most recent of which involved a cell phone photo revealing vulgar conversations and talk about buying drugs in online chats on township computers, he said.

"How can they go to the assessor and make a complaint about how they're being bullied by his son?" Didech told Patch. "It's an impossible situation for them, that's why they're coming to me."

After the first complaint, the staffer said she feared retaliation and asked Didech not to take action, he said. Didech said he responded by sending out a professionalism memo about employee conduct.

When the unhealthy work environment continued, one of the women requested to be able to move her desk and Raupp allegedly refused. Didech said the woman asked him to intervene, he sent a memo to Raupp and the woman's desk was moved.

Within a couple months, Didech said staff complained to him a third time of an openly insulting environment and public humiliation, but they worried of retaliation of word got back to the assessor that they had gone back to him. He said the township adopted a "comprehensive anti-harassment and anti-bullying policy” a short time later at its Oct. 11 meeting.

But the photographic evidence Didech said he received last Sunday was the last straw for the first-term supervisor, as a whistleblower allegedly provided him images of online conversations between the two men on township computers discussing the acquisition of marijuana and using vulgar and degrading language to discuss their co-workers.

Didech said he went to Raupp first thing Monday morning.

"I showed him the messages and I told him that he needs to fire his son and the other guy that works in the office," Didech said the assessor refused but offered to talk to the employees. He estimates they had a discussion that day for about a half-hour on the subject.

"I said, ‘These messages are beyond the pale. The women in your office, it's totally unfair to expect them to continue to work in this environment. You need to fire these guys,’" Didech recalled.

But Raupp, who has close to 40 years of experience in the township assessor's office, was "insistant" he was not going to terminate the pair.

So Didech decided to do it himself. He fired Cohen that day and sent him home. (The younger Raupp has been on vacation and was not in the office this week.)

The lawyer for the embattled employees argues Raupp has full control of his staff and Didech overstepped his authority by trying to firing them.

"I made the decision to do it anyway,” Didech said. “Because I did not think it was appropriate for the women in the office to have to spend a single day in the office with these guys, with the way that they had been treating them – now that the messages have come out and we can see clear as day how serious this is.”

The next day, the assessor brought Cohen back into work.

"That's when I called the emergency meeting," Didech said. "State law allows emergency meetings when there's a bona fide emergency, and I'm confident that we met that standard."

Didech laid out two reasons why he believes the situation constituted an emergency and why a meeting needed to be held Tuesday without the usual required 48-hour public notice.

"The work environment in the assessor's office had deteriorated to such an extent and was so hostile to the women in there that I do not believe that it can adequately perform the governmental duties of the office. It is a completely dysfunctional office, and something needed to be done immediately," he said.

The second factor relates to public safety, Didech alleged.

"The emails that I saw contained evidence of illegal drug use. The two individuals–part of their job duties are using township vehicles to do field work at the properties they're assessing," he said. "So I felt it was a sufficient danger to the safety of the public that we have evidence that these guys who use our vehicles all the time are trying to get drugs while they're on the job."

The lawyer for the two employees argued that Tuesday's emergency meeting was held in violation of the Open Meetings Act, since there was no bona fide emergency.

A lawsuit alleging a violations of the act and seeking attorney’s fees was filed on Raupp's behalf Wednesday afternoon.

"We seek an injunction against the Township Supervisor and the Town Board and its members enjoining them from conducting illegal meetings," said attorney Keith Hunt.

Hunt warned that "the township supervisor has chosen to violate my clients' civil rights, to disparage them, to defame them, and to set both himself and this board up for very serious personal liability," Pioneer Press reported. Hunt also suggested the employees' conversations were covered by privacy laws, a claim Didech disputed.

Raupp's attorney, Megan Mack reportedly told the board that the only complaint the assessor's office has received relates to "the unlawful conduct of reading employees' personal emails and disseminating those emails." She also alleged the doors to the meeting had been locked after it began in violation of the law in an affidavit attached to the lawsuit.

Three of the township's four trustees were in attendance at Tuesday's emergency meeting, and each indicated they believed the behavior was inappropriate and intolerable, the Vernon Hills Review reported.

Trustee Roger Addelson said he found the messages disheartening and supports a policy that would call for immediate firing in response to that kind of behavior.

"At the very least, it's unprofessional...Even if someone were to dismiss it as immature locker room talk, it did not occur in a locker room. It's unacceptable," Trustee Adam Broad said.

"Nobody should have to tolerate that type of environment...we cannot tolerate that environment in our government in any way, shape or form," said Trustee Philip Hirsh.

The township supervisor and the assessor are each independently elected officials that run their own offices with separate budgets.

Township records indicate the assessor's son was hired in 2013 as a deputy assessor with a salary of more than $40,000. Cohen was hired in 2016 as an assessor staff member with a $30,900 salary, Pioneer Press reported.

Neither Cohen nor either Raupp have responded to requests for comment. The two accused employees and Raupp deferred to their attorneys and declined to comment on the matter to the Vernon Hills Review.

"We're seeing this across the country, where women in all sorts of contexts are standing up and saying, 'Enough is enough.' They're not going to stand for it anymore," Didech said. "We have to get rid of these employees that are relentlessly harassing and bullying these women." On Thursday, he posted a social media message calling for Raupp to resign over the incident.

The Vernon Township board meets again Wednesday, Dec. 13 and is expected to discuss the situation again.

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Top photo: (From left) Daniel Didech, Gary Raupp | Official portraits