DeKalb Times

Email communications between Nancy Suttenfield and Northern Illinois University (NIU) President Doug Baker’s secretary suggest Suttenfield, the school's former interim chief financial officer, was illegally reimbursed for commuting expenses, the Edgar County Watchdogs (ECW) allege.

Dori Hooker, Baker’s secretary, and Suttenfield exchanged emails in May about the expenses, the ECW says on its Illinois Leaks website.

"Perhaps I misunderstood," Suttenfield wrote, according to the ECW. "I thought that the add pay for my commuting expenses was to be reinstated effective April 1 and included in the April 30 pay amount.  It wasn’t."

Northern Illiniois University President Doug Baker | niu.edu

The ECW says Hooker's response confirms the illegal activity.

"We did reinstate effective April 1st, but it was too late to get into the April 30 payroll," she wrote, the ECW says. "It will appear on May 15th."

The ECW said its analysis of the university’s payroll shows that Suttenfield began receiving an additional payment of $920 around the time of the emails.

While the payment was explained as compensation for increased duties, the emails suggest that Suttenfield was given $29,440 for commuting costs over the course of her employment from November 2013 to February 2015, despite state law prohibiting employee reimbursements for their commutes, according to the ECW.

In a previous article, the ECW said Suttenfield was hired through a recruitment registry that collected $6,050 per month for the 16 months that Suttenfield worked at NIU, amounting to $96,800. With no state-approved mechanism to pay for this expense, the NIU Foundation wrote the check, according to the ECW. 

Further, around the time of the emails revealing Suttenfield’s commute payments, she was granted a retroactive raise, increasing her salary from $220,000 to $290,000, the group alleges.