Proviso Taxpayers Footing Board Prez's Legal Bills Over Blog

The president of Proviso township's school board is being sued for allegedly defaming the district's ex-law firm on a blog. And Proviso is footing the board member's legal bills.

Chris Welch, a lawyer, is apparently a contributor to Proviso Insider, a town-centric blog whose stated goal is to "be a beacon of light in the midst of Proviso's darkness." All the posts are posted under the same handle, but he says he didn't write the allegedly defamatory material, which has since been taken down. The lawsuit names him as the blog's author, though.

Board member Theresa Kelly says the district shouldn't be paying Welch's legal expenses when he wrote on the blog in his own time, and wasn't representing the school board; according to the Trib, Welch "would not say if contributing to the blog was part of his duties as board president, although he compared his posts to appearing in a newspaper story or a radio interview." How could Welch have been representing the school board if his name isn't even on the site? Well, except in posts about his own lawsuit against the firm that's suing him. What a tangled web Privoso weaves.

Kelly and Welch have a lousy relationship, according to Proviso's superintendent, and if Welch is behind the Insider, then the recent "Did SD209 Board Member Theresa Kelly Go On A Junket???" post certainly seems to reflect that. [Trib, Forest Park Review]