Dolton, Illinois Mayor Tiffany Henyard Was Booed out of a Town Hall, but Why?

It's rare that the mayor of a small village in the middle of Illinois becomes the subject of national headlines, but the mayor of Dolton, Tiffany Henyard, has become just such a figure. Henyard has captured national attention after a video of her being booed at a town meeting went viral.

After the video went viral, many wanted to better understand exactly why so many people in Dolton seem to hate the mayor that they had elected. Here's what we know about why so many people hate Tiffany Henyard.

The reason Tiffany was being booed at the meeting seems to stem from a dispute with trustees in the village over where meetings should be held and whether the meeting she showed up to was even an official one.

In the video, Tiffany can be seen asserting that she is the mayor, a remark that receives boos and cheers from those she is speaking to.

“Hold on, respect, guys, respect," she says over the racket. “Let me make my statement or I’m going to leave your illegal meeting.”

She said that she was there to fill vacancies, but after seven minutes of being heckled by the crowd, she left. “Another thing I want you to understand about the board of trustees is they are all corrupt, every last one of them up here is corrupt,” she added as she walked out.

The appointments that she tried to make were previously blocked by a judge, and now, the latest reporting suggests that Henyard is suing the village trustees for hosting an illegal meeting.

Essentially, the lawsuit states that the meeting that Henyard attended and was mocked at was not held legally, which is something she made reference to in her attempt to speak to the assembled audience.

The meeting, which was held on Oct. 7, was held at the Park District building after the Illinois attorney general ruled that Village Hall does not have the required amount of space to accommodate those who might want to attend. Henyard tried to host a separate meeting at Village Hall, but canceled that meeting and then showed up an hour late to the meeting at the Park District building, which led to the booing.

Henyard said that she took steps to bring Village Hall into compliance with the accommodation requirements and that the trustees did not respond to her outreach. In her lawsuit, the mayor is asking a judge to declare Village Hall the site for the town meetings moving forward, and asking the judge to invalidate any business conducted at the Oct. 7 meeting or at a similar meeting that took place last month.

All of this is to say that Henyard seems to be unpopular with at least some of her constituents for reasons that mostly have to do with local town drama. However this susses out (and at the moment everyone is pointing fingers at everyone else), it doesn't seem like an issue of national proportions.