The Silence Was the Vote

Lunch lady serves up the processed slop, The clown show consumes. Illustration: Monster News

The question took less than a minute to ask.

On the evening of September 10, 2026, Wayne County Board Chairman Daryl Hargrave asked his board whether anyone had objections to appointing Linda Tucker — the owner of Pollard Realty, and not a resident of the Wayne County Housing Authority — to the Housing Authority’s Board of Commissioners. To the seat that federal law reserves for a resident. Hearing none, the appointment moved forward.

No roll call. No recorded vote. No aye or nay in the minutes. Fourteen elected county board members, and not one name attached to one of the clearest federal housing violations this county has ever produced.

That silence was not a lapse in procedure. It was the procedure.

Here is what the record shows.

Federal regulation 24 C.F.R. § 964.415(a) requires that a housing authority’s governing board include at least one eligible resident — an actual tenant of the authority — unless the authority qualifies for a narrow small-agency exception under § 964.425. That exception is not a formality. It must be earned, annually, through a documented process: the authority must notify its Resident Advisory Board of the opportunity for residents to serve, wait at least 30 days, and establish that no resident expressed interest.

WCHA satisfied none of it.

The Resident Advisory Board agenda is the proof. The RAB met on March 12, 2026. Its entire agenda survives: a roll call, the Five Year/Annual Plan, a grievance-hearing-officer panel, and adjournment. There is no mention of a resident commissioner. No notice of a vacancy. No solicitation of residents. No invitation to participate in anything. The one document the authority would need to prove it gave residents their federally required notice instead proves the opposite.

The residents are the proof. In February 2026 — months before the RAB meeting — a group of tenants at the Hi-Rise began asking about the seat. Ron Baker, the sitting resident commissioner, told them his term was expiring in June and the process should run through the RAB. ‘Resident N’, a resident, recalls seven people interested: ‘redacted list of resdent names’, and himself. Baker even offered to drive residents without cars to WCHA’s campaigning locations so they could participate in the process.

There was no process to participate in.

When residents asked Executive Director Kimella Musgrave about the election, ‘Resident N’ was told, plainly: “We are not having elections.” Another resident, ‘Resident J’, asked Musgrave the same question at the office window. She said they were “going a different route” — and, in his words, “just shut the window and walked away without explaining.” No route was ever named. No meeting was ever announced. No resident was ever told how to put their name forward.

Residents only learned the RAB had met in March at all because a reporter requested the records and forwarded them to Commissioner Baker — who, notably, cannot get records from his own authority’s executive director when he asks for them. Residents learned the county board would vote on the new commissioner at 5:00 in the morning on September 10, from a radio station’s news post. Hours before the meeting.

The chairman knew. The board knew. The State’s Attorney knew. On August 8, 2026 — thirty-three days before the vote — Baker delivered written notice of his intent to continue serving, the only resident to formally do so. On September 10 at 12:25 p.m., hours before the meeting, he served a formal objection on every member of the county board, on Director Musgrave, on Chairman Hargrave, and on the Wayne County State’s Attorney — citing the specific federal regulations at issue, demanding seven items of documentation, and threatening referral to HUD. The press was copied.

So when Hargrave asked for objections that evening, the silence in the room was not the absence of an objection. It was the presence of fourteen people who had a written, federaly cited objection in their inboxes at noon and chose to say nothing out loud. Silence, in that moment, was a decision — made with knowledge, made on the record of their own sworn obligations, and made, conveniently, in a format that left no individual vote to answer for.

The grand architect. None of this happened by itself. The appointment of Linda Tucker was requested in the agenda by Executive Director Kimella Musgrave — the same official who told interested residents “we are not having elections,” who would not explain the “different route,” who staffs the Resident Advisory Board with her own office (Musgrave and her hand-picked Section 8 coordinator successor both sit on the resident-advisory body), and whose March RAB agenda contains the deafening silence where resident notice should be. The executive director of a housing authority occupies seats on the very body that exists to represent residents against her. Then, when the moment came, she supplied the agenda item naming the non-resident. The board supplied the silence. The structure did the rest.

A pattern of defective processes that always leads to a predictable outcome — as one Hi-Rise resident put it.

What comes next. The authority now claims a commissioner it cannot lawfully seat, having skipped the process it cannot document, over the objections of the only resident who asked to serve, on behalf of a realtor who does not live there.

Baker has not yet referred the matter to HUD — he is waiting on documents. On September 10, the same day as the vote, he filed a FOIA request with the county for every record concerning the Tucker appointment: Musgrave’s request or recommendation, supporting materials, board communications, and any documents concerning Tucker’s qualifications. On September 14, State’s Attorney Kyle Ellis responded with responsive documents — the review of what the county has been holding is underway. A second request, filed September 11, seeks the recorded Certificates of Appointment for Tucker and every current WCHA commissioner — records that 310 ILCS 10/3 requires to be filed with the County Recorder of Deeds. That request is pending.

HUD asks a simple question in cases like this: was there notice, and was there a real opportunity for residents to participate? The residents of the Wayne County Housing Authority already know the answer. They asked to participate. They were told there was no election. They were told a different route existed. Then the window shut.

The board’s eyes, it turns out, shut with it.

Source Documents

Signed resident statements concerning these events exist in the record and are available to oversight bodies — including HUD, the Illinois Attorney General, and the Wayne County State’s Attorney — upon request. They are not published here to protect the privacy of the residents who provided them.

Sources: Formal notice of Ronald Baker to the Wayne County Board and WCHA Board of Commissioners, September 10, 2026 (with attachments: Aug. 8, 2026 notice of intent to serve; Aug. 11, 2022 Certificate of Appointment; March 12, 2026 RAB agenda); resident declarations of Nathan E. Grubb and Jeff Rankin, September 19, 2026; 24 C.F.R. §§ 964.410, 964.415, 964.425; 310 ILCS 10/3; Monster News reporting!