Mudslinging in local Orland Township elections

Like many residents in Orland Park and Orland Township, I have been inundated with political mailers

Candidate Gerald Maher comes out swinging

Politics is starting to come alive in Orland Park with less than four weeks left to the April 7 election. That might tell you about how tough it is for non-incumbents to find the resources to challenge incumbents.

Gerald Maher is running a second time against Orland Park Mayor Dan McLaughlin. They're both good men. They both love Orland Park, but one of them is the incumbent with a huge campaign warchest. The other is not, with a huge hurdle -- convincing voters to take notice.

While McLaughlin's warchest is significant -- I've written about it -- it does reflect his 16 years in office. He's built up a lot of alliances, good will and a decent track record. The current economy has put the spotlight on the village's taxes and the decision to trim back the property tax rebate has ruffled some feathers.

But it still takes a lot to mount a campaign.

Maher is focused squarely on the taxation issue, a smart move with taxes rising all around Orland Park and revenues dropping like fundamental words out of Chicago Mayor Daley's sentence structure. It is the heart of a two-sided, yellow flyer with black ink that was inserted into the weekly home-mailed edition of former Senate candidate Jack Ryan's Orland Park Prairie newspaper. It's an affordable way to get the word out, but far from what is needed.

His single disclosed campaign contribution came two days ago from Kang Lee, the restaurant in the heart of the controversial dust-up of the village's stalled multi-million dollar "Main Street Triangle" project and the planned razing of the Orland Plaza Shopping Center. It's the last parcel of land the village needs to begin plans to create an old town atmosphere around the train station west of LaGrange Road at 143rd Street. But the $2,000 from Kang Lee two days ago is small change to fuel the ambitions of the Concerned Citizens of Orland Park and its admirable slate of candidates. (Between now and the election candidates need only disclose contributions of more than $500 so the donation amount may not be a true indicator of what he has available.)

There are five positions up in the April 7 elections in the village. Mayor, clerk and three trustees. Two of the incumbent trustees running with McLaughlin are vulnerable, Kathy Fenton and Jim Dodge. The other incumbent is trustee Brad O'Halloran and the Village Clerk Dave Maher.

Dodge, who has more ambition than successes in politics, has a campaign photo that haunts him with a smile that looks like a bent tin can. He's close to Orland Township Republican Committeeman Elizabeth Doody Gorman, who doesn't have a great record in terms of helping the Republican Party at all, but that her friends in politics keep insisting has great potential. I've yet to hear from her and can only go by her public record. Gorman's biggest anchor is her political ties to Ed Vrdolyak, who pled guilty to corruption but managed to skate out of a jail term only through what observers conclude is either the senility of U.S. District Court Judge Milton Shadur, or political cronyism.

While Maher is known by many, his slate is not as well known, but courageous. They are Patrice Pykett, the candidate for clerk, and trustee candidates Kenneth Wzorek, Kenneth Houston and Marian Klemme.

Although Maher is basically a Republican, and McLaughlin a Democrat -- he's the Orland Township Democratic Committeeman, in fact -- party labels won't help much.

Maher's literature makes some good points, like addressing the village's mounting debt of $94.2 million. But using the term "pay-to-play" goes a bit too far. When asked about Maher's candidacy, McLaughlin asked where Maher has been the past eight years since the last election, but then took a swipe quoted in the newspapers that was too negative. Still, the election will help bring out issues citizens of Orland Park need to understand.

The expected turnout for April 7 will probably be low, though past mayoral elections have drawn some 9,000 votes.

But without deep pockets and more Kang Lee's, it will be very tough to mount the kind of campaign one needs to bring out the votes and crack McLaughlin's very tough to beat record.

It's going to take a lot more than an insert in the Orland Park Prairie to move people to vote on April 7 and Maher's people, despite a soft campaign warchest, are promising more. Money is the measure of a candidate's viability, not just the issues.

The Township race is also starting to percolate, too, with Maher's brother and Orland Township Supervisor Robert Maher being challenged by Paul O'Grady, who is not related to the former sheriff nor any of the powerful O'Grady clan. O'Grady's blue and white signs have already popped up on LaGrange Road.

For more information, you can visit Gerald Maher's web site at www.CCOP.us. McLaughlin's slate does not have a campaign web site that I know of and I couldn't find one for Robert Maher, either, but you can find info on both McLaughlin and Robert at their official government sites, www.orland-park.il.us and the township's web site is http://www.orlandtwp.org/. Paul O'Grady's web site is www.otfp2009.com for the Orland Township First Party.

-- Ray Hanania
http://www.radiochicagoland.com/

Bolingbrook epitomizes suburban election failures

Last week, Bonnie Kurowski-Alicea, a mild mannered college professor housewife with two children and a consulting business, was thrown off the April 7 Bolingbrook mayoral election ballot.

The decision was made by a Bolingbrook election board which adheres to a rotten and unfair suburban Illinois election process, a process which is among the most ethically challenged in the nation. It is the most abused in the six-county suburban Chicago region The election body ruled that Bonnie Kurowski-Alicea (http://www.bolingbrookmayor.com)/ could not run for office because:

1 -- The Bolingbrook election review board questioned why signatures on her petitions were not written in Cursive
2 -- Some of the petition signatures looked "sloppy"
3 -- Her own signature was challenged as a fraud because, according to the Bolingbrook election review judges, they didn't look the same and therefore she did not sign the petitions herself
4 -- the forms that the Bolingbrook election board gave her to fill out and submit to the village were inaccurate and wrong
5 -- 40 of the people who signed her ballot allegedly were not registered voters

But I suspect the real reason why Mrs. Alecia was kicked off the ballot is political. She was running against Bolingbrook Mayor Roger Claar who is never short of controversies and runs Bolingbrook like a Chicago Machine Ward organization.

The judges on the election review board included: Carol Penning, Sandra Swinkunas and Leroy Brown, all elected officials in the village and all political cronies of Mayor Claar. (Penning is the village clerk and Brown and Swinkunas are trustees.)

The big-shot attorney representing the challengers was quoted in the Chicago Sun-Times asserting incredulously, "Because Bonnie signed her own petition two different ways. . . . How do I know that the Bonnie Alicea on the bottom is the same Bonnie Alicea on line 14?"

Are you kidding me? I sign my signature so many different ways it's pathetic. The law doesn't say that Mrs. Alecia has to sign her petitions with a signature that is identical. It says she has to sign the stupid petitions herself. She says she does. The election board said she didn't, in questioning her signatures. But it is Mrs. Alecia who has the burden of proof, not her accusers. She appeared at the hearing and told the board the signatures were hers.

There's more. The partisan election review board sent her a package of material two days before the hearings started showing Mrs. Alecia the signatures that were being challenged. So, she spent time diligently getting the voters to confirm they signed the petitions. It turns out the names supplied to her were not the names challenged at the board hearing at all.

Suprise, surprise!

When she went to the hearing, they apparently saw she had confirmed the signatures and suddenly claimed other signatures were being challenged that were invalid.

The election hearing, which according to Mrs. Alecia was dragged out over days, ended with a closed door meeting in which the election judges, Mrs. Alecia said, were told how to rule on the challenge against Alecia.

This is one of the most outrageous, most egregiously pathetic examples of why our suburban elections are so unfair and unjust.

I emailed Mayor Claar the following letter. Hopefully he will reply (and I will publish it when he does):

Hi Mayor Claar:

I’m doing stories on Bonnie Alecia being thrown off the ballot by the
Bolingbrook election board and wondered if I could get a response from you
…. Also, I’d love to have you come on my morning radio show to defend the
decision …

People in Bolingbrook are speculating that you think you would lose a one-on-one election with a mild-mannered school teacher, mother with two children and would like to know if you want to respond to those feelings, too

Thanks so much and best regards

You can go to my RadioChicagoland web site and listen to the podcast radio interview with Bonnie Kurowski-Alecia on the village election board's ridiculous ruling.

-- Ray Hanania
http://www.radiochicagoland.com/

Special hearing called to review challenge to Orland Mayor's candidacy

It’s unprecedented. A challenge was filed against the election candidacy documents of Orland Park Mayor Dan McLaughlin and his running mates on the “Orland Park First Party" slate, Trustees Kathy Fenton, Brad O’Halloran, Jim Dodge and Village Clerk David Maher.

The challenge was filed by McLaughlin’s mayoral rival, Gerald P. Maher, and his running mates on the Concerned Citizens of Orland Park, trustee candidates Marian Klemme, Kenneth Houston, Kenneth Wzorek and clerk candidate Patrice Pykett.

Normally, challenges are filed by incumbents against their non-incumbent challengers, but McLaughlin’s party never filed any challenges.

This is all strange. You see, the people in power are usually the ones who decide if a challenger’s challenge will stand. So petition challenges against non-incumbents are frequent.

The review body that would normally consider the candidacy challenges in Orland Park would be the incumbents, and in this case, Mayor McLaughlin and Clerk Maher. But since the challenge is against them, they were forced to step aside. Two of his colleagues on the village board were appointed to take their places, Trustees Bernard Murphy and Ed Schussler.

At 4:59 pm on Wednesday, Clerk Maher’s office posted a notice of a special meeting to review the challenges to take place at 5:30 PM on Friday night, just slightly more than 48 hours notice, just meeting the requirements of the Illinois Open Meetings Act.

The challenge argues that the name being used by McLaughlin slate, the “Orland Park First Party” is not a "new" party, as designated in the election filings. Instead, and we all know this to be true, the name is an “existing” party that McLaughlin and his same trustees used in 2001 and in 2005, when they ran unopposed.

The law says you can't use the name of an existing "established" party and then file it as a "new" party. It's an important technicality, the kind of technicality that usually will get challengers thrown off of ballots, usually not incumbents. Technicalities like these cause election losses.

Who decides these issues?

I'm going to say that Murphy and Schussler are very friendly and sympathetic to McLaughlin, their colleague and friend. In fact, I can't recall an instance where either trustee has ever seriously challenged any of McLaughlin's decisions. But Murphy and Schussler are under pressure to do the right thing and to follow the letter of the law. Chief Judge of the Circuit Court Tim Evans appointed a “third” person to join the review panel -- the name of that person was not immediately made public.

The law is very clear that candidacy petitions must be precise in language and form. The whole system of incumbent officials in a village reviewing their own challenges is really ludicrous because there is no real impartiality. It’s a serious flaw in the county's election system that should be changed, but won't. Usually, these challenges end up in the courts.

When the challenge was filed in the village hall offices of Clerk Maher on Monday, sources said McLaughlin came rushing down from his own office to Clerk Maher’s office. There, challenger Gerald Maher’s filer sat for 40 minutes until an official in Clerk Maher’s office finally provided a one-sentence typed receipt acknowledging the challenge was officially filed. Forty minutes to type one sentence. That's a record!

Not the most efficient re-election strategy

I’m going to say that this election is not going to be the synch for McLaughlin many had expected. The terrible economy, the dramatic increases in property taxes and village fees, the cutbacks in programming and new charges added to programs that previously were free have caused much alarm among village taxpayers.

When a proposal was made last week to hike the village vehicle sticker fee, even nominally, fear that it would be the hike that broke the camel’s back forced the village to decide to put it on hold – probably until after the election. (It's a strange thing. Taxpayers complain about but will accept property tax hikes, which are imposed a year after they are hiked and paid as a part of a monthly mortgage payment. But vehicle fees, for some reason, really tick voters off even though the increase are only a few dollars.)

In the shadows of all this are rumors that not all is copacetic in Camelot or in the Orland Park First Party where issues of egos seem to be clashing. Was McLaughlin really considering not running for re-election or, was it that one of his close allies wearing the robes of a 19th Ward Brutes, might have been planning a coup?

Who knows?

But I will be SHOCKED if the challenge is upheld. That, my friends, would truly be unprecendented.

-- Ray Hanania
http://www.orlandparker.com/

Race is on iTunes as to who is more popular: Chris Ciciora or Cindy Nelson Katsenes

I was able to interview two of the candidates running in the Orland Park Fire Protection District Race, a race that involves a taxing body that has been extremely taxing over the past year and under the leadership of a nepotistic politician.

The two candidates were on my radio Show, "Radio Chicagoland" on WJJG 1530 AM Tuesday Feb. 3, 2009 (www.RadioChicagoland.com), separately.

I podcast major interviews and I noticed this morning that the race is on to see whose podcast gets more listeners. They've raced up the charts and are neck and neck, which only goes to show you that sometimes local issuesa are far more interesting than the more explosive national and international issues.

The podcasts are available through several podcasting sites like iTunes, Podcast Pickle and others, and combined, the two have already broken through records in terms of downloads.

You can hear the podcast off the RadioC hicagoland web site (we have a green virtual iPod player on the web site and you can scroll through the podcasts to find either and then just click to listen, or go to the Radio Chicagoland iPod blog archive.)

Here are the links:

8:05 Cris Ciciora, candidate for Orland Park Fire Protection District Trustee (Listen to Podcast?)

8:45 Cindy Nelson Katsenes, candidate for Orland Park Fire Protection District Trustee (Listen to Podcast?)

I'm not sure if the skyrocketing hits represent votes or not but clearly these two guests have a HUGE following and will make an interesting race April 7.

Hopefully, one of them can help put a spotlight on the excessive taxation of the Fire Protection District and put an end to what Katsenes points out is excessive legal spending which averaged about $80,000 during ewach year from 2001 to 2006 but that skyrocketed to more than $300,000 in the years since.

No wonder the Fire Protection District chief Patrick Maher, the son of Orland Park Village Clerk David Maher, has ordered that fire department ambulances charge victims upfront instead of billing their insurance.

-- Ray Hanania
www.RadioChicagoland.com

Military veteran Gerald F. Maher to challenge Mayor Dan "Happy Talk' McLaughlin in 2009

THE SCOOP: Longtime Orland Park resident Gerald F. Maher will soon officially announce his candidacy for mayor of Orland Park, challenging incumbent Mayor Dan "Happy Talk" McLaughlin in the April 7, 2009 municipal elections. Maher will run under the Concerned Citizens of Orland Park independent party.

Maher challenged McLaughlin once before in 2001 and while he did good, McLaughlin was riding high and won. Maher will do better this time.

Immediately after his election, McLaughlin imposed a .75 % home rule sales tax increase and then bought off citizen outrage by promising to rebate homeowner property taxes. That, McLaughlin promised, would off-set the increased sales taxes we would have to pay and put the tax burden on outsiders who shopped in Orland Park.

But the McLaughlin tax Hike is back, and the rebate has been trimmed significantly. Not only will you not get it rebated AS WAS PROMISED by McLaughlin, but if you miss the deadline, you will no longer have a chance to qualify. How much will be rebated? Far less than promised, and even less depending on how many people apply.

WHAT’s IN A NAME?

Don’t confuse Gerald F. Maher with McLaughlin’s cohort, Village Clerk David P. Maher, who has a problem with the fundamentals of the Illinois Open Meetings Act – he can’t seem to understand it. Gerald F. Maher is the brother of Robert J. Maher the Orland Township Supervisor. Remember, Gerald Maher supported his brother while the do-nothing Orland Township Republican Committeeman Elizabeth Doody Gorman backed Tom Mahoney, the Democrat, who lost re-election.

It’s David Maher’s son, Patrick Maher, who is the president of the Orland Park Fire Protection District.

Clearly, Gerald F. Maher is from the right political side of the popular family name.

McLAUGHLIN’s BROKEN PROMISES

McLaughlin also promised a new vision for the village of Orland Park, but over the years the reality has plagued that vision with cataracts, and the village has “seen” a series of backdoor property tax hikes, fee increases, lack of accountability and the Chicago Machine’s stranglehold on local politics. (His chief ally, trustee Brad O’Halloran is a relative of Chicago 19th Ward powerhouse and former alderman and legislator Jeremiah Joyce.)

The rebate plan, despite watered down news reporting, has been cut back to off-set the mayor’s failed leadership. In fact, the property tax rebate reduction isn’t even an honest dirty back-door property tax hike. When you promise voters to off-set a sales tax you impose by rebating their property taxes, and then renege on the rebate, that’s a TAX INCREASE.

Maher, though, plans to change all that. He promises open and accountable government that will speak to the voters and citizens of Orland Park, not to their political backers or to their slacker pals in the news media.

TIME TO BE ACCOUNTABLE

There are many issues that we face in the village:

• The tax rebate fiasco – you are only getting a portion of that tax rebate and you are still saddled with McLaughlin’s .75 % sales tax hike.

• The 143rd Street TIF District fiasco. I thought a TIF district was for blighted property, not property that a poor mayor blights with bad talk and bullying? How much money was wasted on that project that the mayor plans to salvage by shutting down so many family-owned businesses?

• Fees have continued to skyrocket with no accountability from anyone in McLaughlin’s Machine Organization – Orland Park is often referred to as Chicago’s 51st Ward it is so much under the control of the 19th Ward and relatives and friends of Brad O’Halloran.

• The village bought several homes allegedly severely damaged by flooding several years ago, and then lost a fortune by re-selling them far below the purchase price. AND, how much money was spent to refurbish them? (Why didn’t the village save money for the taxpayers by simply giving the beleaguered homeowners interest free loans to fortify and salvage their properties instead of dumping millions into the properties only to lose money?)

• What about open government? The village is using Comcast Cable TV to broadcast their Happy talk propaganda, instead of trying to inform the residents about important issues. They continue to rebroadcast over and over and over again these soppy interviews with the mayor and his allies discussing why they are so great, ignoring issues like back door property tax increases and fee increases. We need live broadcasting of the village board meetings so that the village activities are brought directly to the public, rather than forcing the public to attend the uninformative, political village board meetings.

I am elated that Gerald F. Maher is running. He is a military veteran. (I can’t remember, did Dan McLaughlin serve in the military or does he just surround himself with veterans and exploit their service in Iraq and Afghanistan to make himself look good in village press releases?)

Maher has already launched a web site and I urge you to visit it and read the information there. It is very informative. It is www.CCOP.us.

Here is Maher’s Bio:
(You can read McLaughlin's background in the taxpayer funded newsletters that saturate the village and have more pictures of McLaughlin and his named mentioned than real issues.)

• Orland Park Resident of 29 years

• Husband, father of 4, and grandfather of 4

• Attended Moraine Valley and Northwestern University

• Previous Business Owner:
- International Transportation
- Financial Consultant

• Politically active for more than 40 years incl.:
- Campaigned with President Ronald Reagan
- Campaigned with President Gerald Ford
- Campaigned with Senator Chuck Percy
- Ran successful campaign in 2005 to elect Robert J. Maher as Orland Township Supervisor, defeating the heavily endorsed incumbent

• Veteran - 82nd Airborne
• Member, American Legion

• Previous coach:
- OYA - Varsity Boys Basketball
- Beverly Little League Baseball

Wake up Orland Park. It’s your tax dollars. Why are you allowing some Chicago Machine hack to run this village to the ground, offering excuses, patronage, clout and insider deals to his pals while making you pay the bill? It is your hard earned tax dollars that are at stake in this election.

Maher's slate will also include:

Kenneth Houston for Trustee, Orland Park
Orland Park Resident of more than 20 years; Graduate of Robert Morris College.
Previous Business Manager and UPS Employee for 15 years.

Kenneth Wzorek for Trustee, Orland Park
Orland Park Resident of 18 years
Graduate of Governor's State University BA Public Administration; Business Owner
Husband and father of three, grandfather of three
Active member of St. Michael's Church
Veteran US Army; Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 15014; American Legion Member Orland Post111 ; Member Elk's Lodge No. 2254

-- Ray Hanania
http://www.radiochicagoland.com/