Indicting Palazzolo is not in good form

The furor and effort expended on indicting ex-Champaign-Urbana Public Health District director Vito Palazzolo seems to be much ado about almost nothing.

As near as I can glean from The News-Gazette story, Palazzolo made some minor personal charges on a district credit card; bought himself lunch and represented it as a business meeting; took some wood cabinets of questionable value; and made a bad administrative decision to reimburse a dentist for student loans "value uncertain."

I do not excuse his alleged behavior. But I am puzzled about the level of attention devoted to the issue. These are the items it took two years to investigate? And – excluding the undetermined cost of the reimbursement to the dentist – for most likely less than $1,000 in cumulative offense?

If we are going to start indicting for bad administrative decisions, there should be a lot of county officials gnawing on their fingernails. I question the tremendous taxpayer-funded resource cost to pursue these offenses, two years after the man was fired.

It smells like a personal vendetta. Surely those resources, and the taxpayers' dollars, can be focused on resolving more critical cases.

STACY WISEGARVER

Champaign