Forest Park village email case Calderone gets off

Forest Park Mayor Anthony Calderone has succeeded in getting himself removed as a defendant in former-commissioner Theresa Steinbach's lawsuit about pilfered emails. See Forest Park Review (Josh Adams).

"It's hard to feel vindicated in any sense because I've always felt from day one that this was some kind of ridiculous lawsuit," Calderone said of the ruling.

Doesn't everyone think the mayor should have access to the emails of his political opposition?

A07, Trib covers FP mayor contest [FP]

Chicago Tribune (Victoria Pierce) has an article that summarizes the Forest Park race for mayor. This part was new to me.

The campaign turned negative this week when automated phone messages went out to Forest Park voters alleging unsavory connections between Calderone and nearby Melrose Park, where federal indictments and investigations have been ongoing in recent years.

"The whole notion of a weird alliance with Melrose Park, if that's the best they can do they have an empty bag," Calderone said, noting that these days just the mention of Melrose Park seems somehow tainted. "Even if the pope became mayor of Melrose Park it would have a negative connotation."

Steinbach said she has no connection with the group, Citizens for Honest Government, which created the phone messages.

The two officers for Citizens for Honest Government are Timothy D Mather, chair, and Lourdes Monteaguado, treasurer. I suspect the name is misspelled and it should be Lourdes Monteagudo. Mather lives at 1404 Ridgely in Naperville and Monteaguado gives his address as 1837 W Cermak in Chicago.

Monteagudo lives at 3307 N Harding in Chicago, according to Google. He has contributed to various Latino Democrats and the Blagojevich campaign. He was with Mayor Daley's United Neighborhood Organization at some point.

A07, candidate forum Village of Forest Park [FP]

Last night candidates for Village of Forest Park participated in a candidate forum. Forest Park Forums has a discussion.

Since, I'm a candidate it's hard for me to give an evaluation separate from my personal perspective. I was happy with the questions asked. I wasn't as smooth as I'd like, but I think I made my points.

The candidates for mayor are:

• Anthony Calderone
• Theresa Steinbach
• Nagele Jackson (write-in, did not participate in debate)

And the commissioner candidates, in order of seating:

• Anthony Lazarra
• John Plepel
• Rory Hoskins
• Carl Nyberg
• Mark Hosty
• Mike Curry
• Marty Tellalian
• Jerry Webster

Before the event Calderone said he was talking to the attorney who represented Illinois Supreme Court Justice Bob Thomas in his defamation suit against a local newspaper about suing Forest Park Review for Bill Dwyer's column.

Afterward, former village clerk Joan White was talking to school board member Steve Johnsen about White running as a write-in for the two-year position without a candidate filed for election. Apparently a number of people are interested in running as write-in candidates.

F07, Forest Park election results

Cook County Clerk has the results.

With five of twelve precincts reporting:

Theresa A. Steinbach 319 30.04%
Patrick J. Doolin 207 19.49%
Anthony T. Calderone 536 50.47%

[UPDATE: Final results:

Theresa A. Steinbach 738 29.66%
Patrick J. Doolin 456 18.33%
Anthony T. Calderone 1,294 52.01%

Vote total: 2,488. Forest Park Review (Josh Adams) says the 7,987 voters are registered in Forest Park. This would make voter turnout 31.1%, which I consider high for a local election primary.]

[UPDATE2: Rockford Register Star wrote about voter turnout. In the coverage area turnout ranged from 4.8% to 23%. So Forest Park voter turnout was exceptionally high considering the type of election.]

F07, predict outcome of Forest Park mayor's race [FP]

Vote for one:
Theresa A. Steinbach 1
Patrick J. Doolin 2
Anthony T. Calderone 3

It's like American Idol. Bottom vote getter doesn't appear in the next round (April 17 election).

I want to use one of my lifelines and poll the audience. Who will get insufficient support to make it to the next round? And for the bold, predict the percentages.

Please make predictions by 8:00 AM on election day.

[UPDATE: If you see anyone working your polling place you suspect of being a government employee shanghaied into service take a picture and send me a copy RadioNyberg circled "a" Yahoo spot c0m. We'll put the Proviso Probe team on identifying who these people are.]

F07, Calderone dominating the sign war [FP]

Yesterday I was out counting signs in Forest Park. At one point I had 85 houses (not businesses) with Anthony Calderone signs, twelve for Theresa Steinbach and four for Patrick Doolin.

Please remind your Forest Park family, friends, neighbors and co-workers to vote on Tuesday.

F07, Six days until mayor primary [FP]

The yard signs have been placed in Forest Park.

The mayor primary is next Tuesday, six days away. It's the usual polling places. Please remind your families, friends and neighbors to vote.

Forest Park Review has letters from Steven Backman, Peter Nicholas Marafatsos, Patrick Tierney, Fraternal Order of Police Lodge #24, Carl Nyberg, Terry Steinbach, Melissa Johnson and Barbara Plona.

[UPDATE: The Forest Park Review did profiles of all three candidates: Anthony Calderone (campaign website), Patrick Doolin (campaign website) and Theresa Steinbach (campaign website).]

F07, Calderone, Doolin & Steinback take Qs together [FP]

Last night all three candidates for mayor addressed about 170 people at Field Stevenson Middle School. As school board member Steve Johnsen observed, pretty much everyone there had already picked which candidate they were supporting.

My take, for what it's worth is that Mayor Anthony Calderone and Commissioner Patrick Doolin did quite well at presenting what they had to say. Steinbach's presentation was fine, but the other candidates excelled at the style portion of the presentation.

On the issues:

All three candidates are against home rule.

All three candidates want to develop Roosevelt Road.

All three candidates committed not to use eminent domain to acquire homes for parking.

On the Roos property Calderone said Forest Park "should embrace progress" and seemed to indicate he was more inclined to let developers do what they think is profitable. Doolin said Calderone raising money from the developers was an example of pay-to-play politics.

Doolin favors removing administrative authority for commissioners to eliminate politicians meddling in day-to-day management of the village. Steinbach said the politicians getting involved was better than leaving decisions to unelected bureaucrats. Calderone claimed that the commissioner form of government gives commissioners the right to meddle and so Doolin's proposal didn't make sense.

Doolin seemed eager to put a car dealership or a big box store on the site of the reserve center.

Doolin accused Calderone of engaging in political meddling in the police department. Steinbach indicated that her solution to problems in the police department were to hire the "best and brightest" and have them practice good management. Calderone portrayed the conflicts in the department as getting rid of bad cops who were "cheating the system" and blamed the bad PR on the newspaper.

Calderone said, "Ninety-five percent of police officers think the police department is doing well. This is what I hear from the police chief."

Regarding District 209, both Doolin and Steinbach advocated for mayors to get out of school board politics. Calderone characterized involvement as not being about politics but "forging cooperation".

Steinbach used her vote against a water rate increase to contrast herself with Calderone and Doolin and put her on the side of senior citizens. Doolin responded by saying that the village was subsidizing the cost of water so the rate increase was the fiscally responsible thing to do.

LAWSUIT, new filings in Steinbach v. Forest Park [FP]

Forest Park Commissioner Terry Steinbach, a candidate for mayor, has filed a lawsuit against the Village of Forest Park and Forest Park employees for accessing her commissioner email account and sending emails to Mayor Anthony Calderone, a political rival.

Steinbach noticed that emails in her "sent folder" were forwarded to Calderone. She didn't do it. She assumed that Forest Park employees were the ones with motive and opportunity.

After naming three John Does as defendants Steinbach has named one of these people, Craig Lundt, the village employee who supervises information technology. See Forest Park Review (Josh Adams).

Lundt says he didn't do it. I've heard rumors that the village is pretty casual about protecting passwords, including Lundt's password. If someone had access to Lundt's account--say an employee who is a political partisan--it's possible this individual could have use Lundt's administrator account to access Steinbach's emails.

The village is claiming that the privacy policy protects the village from lawsuits.

The village's policy on municipally-maintained e-mail accounts clearly outlines that there is no expectation of privacy. However, the village clerk confirmed in November 2006 that there is no record of Steinbach receiving a copy of this policy....

"Forest Park denies that any e-mail communication sent to, from, or within the Forest Park e-mail system is private," defense attorney Matthew Iverson said in court documents.

This argument strikes me as bullshit. If one accepts this position the political majority (Calderone, Gillian and Hosty) would have complete access to the communications of the minority. And something tells me that the minority (Doolin and Steinbach) or citizens will not have equivalent access to emails of the majority.

But we'll see what the courts rule. Or maybe the case will get dropped after the election.

F07, Dooling & Steinbach appear at CUFP forum [FP]

I thought they both did well. Generally their positions were close enough that the second candidate answering seemed to amplify and expand on the first candidate's response. There wasn't much contrast.

Any comments?

[UPDATE: The three candidates have filed their campaign disclosure reports with the State Board of Elections: Citizens for Anthony Calderone, Citizens for Doolin and Citizens for Steinbach.]