Hillside Attorney Edward Porter was a vocal critic of the Financial Oversight Panel at the panel’s May meeting. Now he’s on the board.
Porter was appointed as one of two representatives from the community by the Illinois State Board of Education to replace Frank Montgomery, a former athletic director and vice principal at Proviso West High School, who took a job at the school as interim athletic director last week. Montgomery will receive $400 a day until a permanent athletic director is found. He had been absent from at least one FOP meeting in the past six months.
From the outside looking in, Porter was vehement in his criticisms of the finance panel at the May meeting, where insults were hurled at the panelists during public comments.
“You can’t speak on behalf of Proviso,” he told the panel in May.
“[The community members] don’t know you, they don’t know what you stand for and they didn’t elect you,” he said. “The people of Proviso deserve to be represented by the people they voted for and only those people. Go home, FOP. Please leave.”
Porter threatened to lead a “petition process to get rid of you guys.”
He also traveled to Springfield with a busload of protesters in May to protest the oversight panel and request that the Illinois state board dismantle it.
Porter did not return phone messages by deadline to comment on his being appointed to the panel.
District 209 Superintendent Nettie Collins-Hart said Porter’s input would “let the FOP know how some in the community view them, when they ask him.”
