Going to Congress and being President of the Cook County Board are mutually exclusive. He can remove himself from the ballot for any and all, but he is required to either remove his name from the ballot for U.S. Representative or President of the Cook County Board.
My opinion is that Forest Park Review does a better job with the stories it does cover, but the Proviso Herald is more comprehensive. It aspires to be the paper of record for the local communities. Forest Park Review focuses on Forest Park.
Riverside/Brookfield Landmark (like Forest Park Review, owned by Wedneday Journal, Inc.) is also good, but while Brookfield is half in Proviso Township, the Landmark doesn't cover Proviso issues normally.
The other print outlets (Suburban Life, West Suburban Journal, Neighbors and the various village propaganda outlets) sometimes write a good story, but they have shown no ability or inclination to fill the void that will be created by the demise of the Proviso Herald.
Democracy needs effective journalism to work. And losing Proviso Herald is a big blow. (Remember, Proviso also lost "Viewpoints From the Other Side" when Arnie Bryant died.)
We've got a bunch of new voters. Some of them need to know where their polling place is.
It took me about 35 minutes to vote this morning. When you go to vote, leave enough time.
The ballot layout is confusing on the question of the Constitutional Convention. The Con-Con question is to the side. It's easy to miss because of all the text associated with it, the fact that there are no candidates in the column and the column is a different width.
If you have feedback on your experiences voting you can post them here or at Capitol Fax Blog.
I found the story linked from Capitol Fax Blog where Rich Miller asked readers for their opinions.
In April one high school student in Peoria was elected to the board of education. While I think that reducing conflict of interest in school politics is a good thing, I think IASB is behaving badly in this case.
If one added up all the conflict of interest problems in the whole state of Illinois that are caused by students serving on school boards, it would be far less of a problem than the conflict of interest issues at any one of a number of Proviso school districts.
IASB should quit wasting its energy on straw man problems. The fact that IASB can overlook serious problems and waste time on non-issues detracts from the credibility of the organization.
Peraica was something of a media darling when he ran against Todd Stroger for President of the County Board. Media people liked Peraica because he was accessible, gave good quotes and reflected back the media's perception of Stroger. Peraica railed against the cronyism, corruption and incompetence.
On election night Peraica's campaign was celebrating, including drinking. Mike Manzo was at the location where the ballots were being tabulated by the Cook County Clerk. There had been a number of irregularities and Manzo witnessed a bunch of Stroger people being on the inside.
Manzo called Peraica and informed him that the campaign should get there people to come over to prevent any cheating.
Peraica marched his campaign staff, many under the influence of alcohol, to the location and they were not allowed to get the equivalent access that the Stroger campaign had.
The media saw and filmed Peraica's celebrants, including intoxicated people, marching like an angry mob. This became the defining image of the campaign: Peraica's angry mob.
The Democrats and their allies in the media are now playing-up stories that re-enforce this image. This is somewhat analogous to the media deciding Howard Dean was unhinged for opposing the Iraq War (before it was socially acceptable on the DC cocktail circuit to say the invasion was a bad idea). So, when the media got an image to match the story they already told themselves, they repeated it over and over again.
For Democrats that want to pooh-pooh Peraica, his complaints about election fraud in Cook County were quite similar to complaints Democrats were making about electronic voting in other parts of the country. The basic complaint is that the dominant party has access to the machines and the votes and if the votes were tampered with the tampering is exceedingly difficult (impossible?) to detect.
I imagine if the Peraica campaign would have had it to do over again... they would have done certain things differently.
But the image of Peraica as the leader of an angry mob is getting re-enforced by other stories now. Capitol Fax Blog (Rich Miller) tied together a couple stories under the title "More thuggery from Peraica".
There are those who say that Peraica’s infamous march to the County Building on election night last year was simply an unfortunate, isolated incident, despite the obviously stupid move of leading a drunken mob across town. But Tony apparently loves him some thugs, and likes to have them do his bidding.
I like Peraica. And the need to reform Cook County government, and especially law enforcement in Cook County, doesn't disappear because the reformers are uncouth.
I think Cook County Commissioner Liz Gorman, who is chair of the Cook County GOP, is closer to the mark on Peraica than the image the media is trying to sell.
“Peraica thinks everything is a fight, but it takes two to fight, and I won’t be part of this,” Gorman said. “He’s tossed too many grenades. One was bound to backfire on him.”
Peraica, and the people around him, often refer to other Republicans as venal, corrupt or incompetent.
When Peraica kicked-off his campaign for State's Attorney he had a conference call for bloggers. Someone--not me--asked a question.
Peraica starting ticking through suburban townships where he had good words for the GOP committeemen, but they he got to Proviso Township and gave a more detailed analysis of the local political landscape.
Peraica said of Michael Corrigan, the Proviso Township Assessor and GOP committeeman, that he barely shows up for his township job, how could you expect him to do any work as committeeman?
However, Peraica seems to have trouble focusing on saying things that advance his cause of getting elected without adding gratuitous insults of others, especially local Republican officials.
Gorman may think Peraica's a jackass, but she's not hell bent on sticking it to Peraica. One Peraica campaign worker told me that when he approached Gorman--he'd known her for a long time--she got her people out to help Peraica's campaign.
My two cents is that Peraica and his staff should resist their inclinations to engage in conflict with others when it doesn't advance their interests in accomplishing something specific, like winning an election.
Patrick Collins said it best in a recent Chicago Magazine interview. "Any advice for potentially corrupt government officials?" he was asked. "Fast forward to your sentencing day," Collins replied.
US Rep. Luis Gutierrez just announced, at the Illinois Hispanic Chamber of Commerce Business Expo, that he has reversed his prior retirement plans, and will indeed run for re-election to represent Illinois’s 4th Congressional District.
I've heard rumors Gutierrez wants to go into real estate after leaving politics. I assume Gutierrez didn't make as much progress setting-up his next career as he hoped.
Gutierrez's move jerks around the politicians who wanted to run to be his successor.
But, as I suggested in the comments of the Capitol Fax Blog, one of them could probably win Cook County Recorder of Deeds with a diligent campaign.
Details of indictment of Melrose Park PD personnel
On Thursday, July 19, 2007, at the request of the U.S. Attorney, Northern Illinois District, a grand jury empaneled in December, 2005 returned indictments against seven Village of Melrose Park employees connected to the police department. The indicted include former chief of police Vito Scavo, two deputy police chiefs Gary Montino and James Caputo and one District 89 (Maywood and Melrose Park elementary schools) board member, Lt. G. Ric Cervone. The other personnel indicted were Michael “Mickey” Caliendo, Michael Wynn and German Cepeda.
The indictments were for extortion, ghost-payrolling, mail fraud, obstruction of justice and tax evasion.
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Scavo owned one private security company (DOD Security Consultants, Inc., “a for-profit unlicensed private security contractor agency”) and recruited clients for IFPC Worldwide, Inc. (Who are the officers and agent of IFPC?) Caputo and Caliendo, a civilian supervisor of part-time officers, also operated a security company called “Police Department Security” out of the Melrose Park Police Department.
The indictment alleges that these security companies used village police officers paid by taxpayers to provide security while the clients paid the private companies. In some cases the contracts were made under threat or misrepresentation. The security companies charged above the market rate for their services. Clients felt they could not decline the services without experiencing retaliation from the chief of police of the police department.
Taxpayers were also cheated out of legitimate police services because private security work took priority over village policing duties.
Montino is alleged to have billed Cinemark for hours he didn't actually work and ordered private security personnel to wear shirts and jackets identifying them as police in violation of Illinois law.
Also, Scavo tricked Navistar into letting him use their parking lot. Navistar thought it was providing a public service to the village. Scavo was charging people to park the cars and keeping the money.
The first grand jury investigation began in Spring, 2005.
Charges in the indictment returned Thursday include:
-- Scavo, 59: 10 counts of mail or wire fraud, nine counts of filing false individual or corporate federal income tax returns, and one count each of racketeering conspiracy, extortion and obstruction of justice; -- Montino, 51: one count of racketeering conspiracy and four counts of mail fraud; -- Caliendo, 64: one count of racketeering conspiracy and seven counts of mail or wire fraud; -- James Caputo, 63, former deputy police chief who resigned in 2004: four counts of mail or wire fraud; -- Cervone, 56: two counts of mail fraud and one count of obstruction of justice; -- Michael Wynn, 53, a part-time police officer: three counts of mail fraud; and -- Cepeda, 40: one count of extortion.
The former chief and six other former and current officers and employees of the Melrose Park Police Department operated the department as an illegal racketeering enterprise for at least a decade between 1996 and 2006, according to a federal grand jury indictment returned today, announced Patrick J. Fitzgerald, United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois. The indictment alleges that the former chief, Vito R. Scavo, and other defendants defrauded west suburban Melrose Park and its citizens by using police department personnel and property to operate several private security guard companies and provide personal services to Scavo; extorted village businesses into using security guard services provided by companies that Scavo and others controlled; and that Scavo committed individual and corporate tax fraud and improperly compensated police department employees who performed personal chores for him with compensatory time off that they had not earned. Scavo, who was village police chief from 1995 until he resigned in September 2006, was charged with racketeering conspiracy along with Deputy Police Chief Gary Montino and Michael “Mickey” Caliendo, former civilian supervisor of part-time police officers.
As part of the alleged conspiracy, Scavo and two other defendants, Guy Ric Cervone, a former police lieutenant recently promoted to commander, and German Cepeda, a former police department janitor and current code enforcement inspector for the village, allegedly obstructed a grand jury investigation of their conduct and tampered with potential grand jury witnesses.
Ric Cervone is the VP of the District 89 (Maywood and Melrose Park elementary schools) board of education.
Gov. Rod Blagojevich and fellow Democrats must forge a budget solution that addresses the disparities in school funding that have allowed rich districts to spend thousands of dollars more on each student than poor areas of the state can afford, Lightford said.
Let's compare what local high school districts spend per student. On the school report cards the expenditures are divided into "Instructional Expenditure Per Pupil" and "Operational Expenditure Per Pupil". I've combined them into a single figure.
* Elmwood Park--$14,217 * Leyden--$14,465 * Morton--$16,532 * York--$17,144 * Lyons--$21,456 * Proviso--$21,665 * Riverside-Brookfield--$21,745 * Oak Park & River Forest--$22,967
We know Proviso is 90th of 90 high schools in the Chicago area when ranked by test scores. But spending is almost as high as the highest cost districts in the area. (New Trier spends $25,186 per student.)
The numbers simply do not support the traditional liberal position--the position Lightford is arguing--that schools that don't perform are constrained by money.
Blagojevich has a proposal to significantly increase taxes on multi-million dollar businesses and using the money for schools, health care, property tax relief, funding pensions, etc. The new tax is called the "Gross Receipts Tax" (GRT). According to Wikipedia a GRT is used in the following states: Arizona, Delaware, New Mexico, Ohio, Texas and Washington.
Critics say the tax will have a variety of negative consequences. Businesses that have high volumes and low margins will leave Illinois. Businesses that can't leave Illinois will pass along costs to consumers.
Supporters of the GRT argue that some form of revenue enhancement is needed and the GRT hits the poor and middle class less than increasing other taxes, e.g. income tax, property tax and sales tax. (The Illinois Constitution prohibits charging wealthier citizens a higher income tax rate.)
Eric Zorn hits it right on the head today with a column about the governor’s gross receipts tax and business opposition. It all boils down to who you trust, Zorn writes. Do you trust that Blagojevich has come up with a reasonable, fair plan, or do you trust big business to take care of the uninsured and assume that their arguments against this “job killing” proposal are valid?
I think I like the GRT from the perspective of tax fairness. The United States has been shifting the cost of government onto the middle class and working poor. This trend should be reversed.
However, I'm not wild about Blagojevich's spending priorities.
As part of increasing the money for school districts we need to increase accountability for misspending money and we should really reflect on what constitutes a quality education in the modern era.
I am also skeptical of spending more money on health care at the state level. I think health care is too expensive a problem to be fixed at the state level. It really needs to be addressed at the national level.
What questions should defenders of Blagojevich's plan be asked?
US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald has scheduled a 2 o’clock press conference for today “to announce new criminal charges in an ongoing public corruption investigation.”
Participants will include: Patrick J. Fitzgerald, United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois; Robert D. Grant, Special Agent-in-Charge of the Chicago Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation; Kenneth T. Lag, Inspector-in-Charge of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service in Chicago; and James Vandenberg, Special Agent-in-Charge of Investigations for the U.S. Department of Labor Office of Inspector General in Chicago.
[UPDATE2: The Hispanic Democratic Organization is associated with Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley and is not active in Proviso Township as far as I know.]
