Entries associated with the tag "32nd Ward":

I'm never really surprised when the board of elections bounces a rookie candidate off the ballot. In fact, I work on the assumption that the board will always favor the well connected over the neophyte in these matters. It's sort of like taking out a champion in boxing. If the rookie wants a win, it better be a knockout.

That being said, it was Christmas comes early for state rep John Fritchey last week, when hearing officer Lynne Ostfeld booted Roger Romanelli, his wannabe opponent in the 32nd Ward Democratic committeeman's race. Her ruling was a stretch even by election board standards.

On November 16 Fritchey challenged Romanelli's petitions in part on the grounds that they contained "the names of persons who did not sign the papers in their own proper persons." "Such signatures," his challenge urged, "are not genuine and are forgeries."

After Fritchey filed, the case moved to what they call a record review. That's the mind-numbing process where representatives from both sides sit around a computer screen while a clerk from the board of elections compares signatures on the nominating petitions to the signatures on voter registration cards. If the clerk thinks the signatures don't match, or if the address isn't in the ward, she recommends that they be stricken.

Romanelli submitted 710 signatures. At the records review, 483 signature were ruled invalid, leaving Romanelli with 227 valid signatures, 20 below the 247 he needed to make the ballot.

So Romanelli retraced his steps. Accompanied by notary publics, he and his aides went back to the homes of voters, asking them to sign sworn affidavits affirming they had indeed signed his original petitions or that they lived in the 32nd Ward. All told, he gathered 49.

"I could have got more, but I didn't think I needed more," says Romanelli. "I didn't think they were going to rule against 49 personally sworn affidavits."

Almost. On December 13 Ostfeld issued a ruling dismissing 45 of the statements. According to Ostfeld, it's not enough that voters signed notarized affidavits swearing that they signed the original petitions. They also have to explain why the signature on the petition looks different from their signatures on the voter registration card.

As more than one lawyer has explained to me, it doesn't matter why the signatures are different so long as the voter swears that he signed the original nominating petitions. "A sworn, notarized affidavit is what we call prima facie evidence," says one election-law attorney, who'd rather not be named because he has friends on both sides of the debate. "It's evidence that's established as a fact unless it's rebutted. But the hearing officer isn't rebutting the evidence. She's changing the issue."

Ostfeld also removed seven voters who'd signed affidavits attesting to the addresses at which they were registered. In this case her finding was that Romanelli "presents nothing to show" that the voters were "registered there on or before" the day in November when they signed his nominating petitions. Well, I suppose it's possible that all seven of these voters moved between signing the petition in November and signing the affidavit one month later. But is there any reason to doubt them on their word?

On Sunday Romanelli held a press conference to announce that he would appeal Ostfeld's ruling to the Cook County circuit court. On hand were four residents whose affidavits Ostfeld had dismissed. They showed me their driver's licenses to prove that they lived at their addresses and all but raised their right hands and swore to God that they were telling the truth. "They accused us of fraud, and the only way to debunk that is to sign an affidavit. So I signed," said Craig Gould, a 32nd Ward resident. "And now they say my affidavit's not good enough? I shouldn't have to prove I'm me. If they don't believe I'm me, they should have to prove it's not me."

For his part, Fritchey says he thinks the hearing officer made the right ruling. But he can understand why Romanelli and his supporters would be disappointed. "If people feel these rules should be changed, I'd be happy to sit down when them," he says.

By the way, Fritchey was represented by Michael Kasper, go-to guy for house speaker Michael Madigan and many others. Kasper's made a name for himself convincing the board to bounce independent Democrats and third-party candidates from the ballot. Fritchey says that his statehouse alliance with Madigan has nothing to do with him hiring Kasper or with Kasper taking his case -- they're old friends from law school. 

Fair enough. But if the board's going to keep on making rulings like this one, I suggest we do away with the time, money, and inconvenience of elections altogether. Let's just give the oath of office to any candidate Kasper represents.

In the throes of a tough reelection campaign, 32nd Ward alderman Ted Matlak apparently tried to make a few Bucktown parents happy by lobbying Chicago Public Schools officials to expand enrollment at the local Drummond Montessori Magnet School, where admission is determined by a lottery that limits the number of children admitted from the immediate neighborhood in order to promote diversity. He ended up fueling a bitter controversy there, as the Chicago Journal reported this week. 

After the story came out, the local school council scheduled a meeting for April 11. That evening at least 60 people—including Matlak's challenger in this coming Tuesday's runoff election, Scott Waguespack—jammed into the school library. Sabrina Craig, chair of the council, announced at the beginning of the meeting that neither she nor other council members would be able to answer any questions—they were just there to listen.

For the next hour, as the LSC members and principal Isabel Mesa Collins remained silent at the front of the room, parents took turns speaking, often emotionally, about their love of the school and their commitment to diversity. But they also argued vehemently, often questioning each other’s motives and integrity.

Some argued that it was only fair for kids who live across the street to be able to attend the school, while others said if parents were interested in neighborhood schools, they should check out Burr School, a few blocks away. A couple of parents were concerned that the space crunch would force three- and four-year-old students to nap in the basement, prompting a father to respond that when his daughter was asleep, her eyes were closed and it didn’t matter where she was.

They couldn’t agree on who the new classroom would benefit or how fair the process of getting it funded had been. In fact, they couldn’t even agree on exactly what had been agreed to.

“I guess my concern is, how does a group of parents who are not even at the school get to make a decision for parents who are already in the school?” said one mother of a Drummond student. “I don’t have the money, I don’t have the clout, to walk into the alderman’s office and make radical changes that are going to affect people currently in this institution.”

“I am one of those parents whose child did not get in, and I do live five doors down,” said Bucktown resident Jennifer Kelly. She emphasized that she understood and respected the fact that a lottery decided who was admitted. “But I kind of resent these letters being passed around that say there’s a small group of people in the neighborhood who are well-connected. I don’t have any money. I didn’t give any money to any organization. I don’t know the alderman. I went into the alderman’s office and I asked for a meeting. Everybody’s entitled to that.”

Waguespack left without speaking to get to another event, and a few minutes later Matlak walked in and delivered something between a campaign pitch and a lecture.

“It was brought to my attention that this has become controversial,” he said. “It’s finally come to a point where people want to come to our neighborhood schools. Now we had a situation where parents came to me, not just that group that came in and saw me, but individual parents who called me and came in on their own, saying, ‘We can’t get in to this school—it’s a good school, and we want to be there.’ I saw that the only solution to that was to add capacity.”

Schools chief Arne Duncan had agreed to fund another teacher, Matlak said, and he would find city money for capital improvements if he needed to. “But people are asking me questions about which kids, how, what. I don’t know. This was supposed to be a good thing,” he said. “If bringing resources in is bad, I don’t know what I’m doing as alderman, because that’s what I do. People are asking me where the nap room is going and all those things. I don’t know.”

Sumi Cho, a Drummond parent who lives in the South Loop, raised her hand to ask a question. “Are you willing to consider rescinding the the [new] early childhood classroom in light of the fact that there are so many questions about the process, and the appearance, at least, of impropriety in light of the impending runoff election?”

Matlak looked like he'd been slapped. He said he’d never heard of a school returning resources. “And I don’t know what you mean by ‘impropriety,’” he said. He asked Cho if she wanted him to take back money he’d secured for a new playground-park at the school. “And my campaign paid for those [traffic] barricades out there. You want me to take those back too?”

Craig, the LSC chair, interrupted. “I’m going to cut the dialog. I’m sorry, but we’re here to listen—”

“That’s fine,” Matlak said. “Just so you guys don’t think I unilaterally decided this and I can unilaterally undecide it. This was a big lobbying effort and we were successful. If you want to tell Arne Duncan we don’t want the resources, I’m sure he’ll put them someplace else.”

“Thanks a lot,” said Craig.

“I think this is a good thing,” Matlak said. “Any time we can bring resources into the schools, into the parks, that’s good. How it gets done, I don’t know. I’m Kennedy, I was told, ‘Let’s go to the moon,’ I got the money.”

The room broke into equal parts of applause and grumbling. The alderman thanked everyone and left. 

Before the meeting ended, though, Mark Neidlinger, Drummond’s Montessori director, said he’d just received some school data from CPS: nearly half of Drummond’s students already live within a mile and a half of the school--more than many parents on either side of the issue expected. And apparently more than Matlak had assumed.

On Thursday, Matlak addressed the controversy with considerably less bluster than he'd shown the night before. In a vaguely worded statement, he said that he was working with CPS administrators and the school’s faculty and parents to “make the best decisions possible for the short- and long-term future of Drummond.” He added: “The [CPS] Office of Academic Enhancement revealed today that the percentage of neighborhood children who attend Drummond is much higher than previously thought.”

The thrust of challenger Scott Waguespack's recently filed $5 million defamation lawsuit against 32nd Ward alderman Ted Matlak has to do with accusations made against him in campaign flyers put out by the incumbent.

But the suit also charges Berwyn alderman Michael Phelan and defeated 32nd Ward challenger Catherine Zaryczny.

Billing herself as a reformer with deep ties to Ukrainian Village, Zaryczny initially ran hard at Matlak, criticizing him for, among other things, using campaign workers in the 2003 election sent to the ward by Donald Tomczak, who was convicted oftaking bribes in the hired truck scandal.

She was so persuasive that she won the endorsement of the Independent Voters of Illinois-Independent Precinct Workers organization.

The weekend before the February 27 election, Zaryczny turned her attack on Waguespack, sending out a glossy flyer calling him "a patronage hack who is not who he says he is," language similar to that in the Matlak brochures that sparked the suit.

In his lawsuit Waguespack makes the curious allegation that Zaryczny "employed" Paul Foxgrover to "gather, fund and disseminate defamatory information" about him.

And who is Paul Foxgrover? He's a former Cook County Circuit Court judge who pleaded guilty to stealing more than $25,000 in court fines and victim restitution funds in the early 90s."Paul Foxgrover did not sell justice, he only stole it," a prosecutor said at Foxgrover's sentencing, according to a 1992 Sun-Times account of his sentencing. Moreover, he "continued to steal money until a week before his arrest although he knew of the investigation." The judge was disbarred and sentenced to six years in prison.

Foxgrover is also the father of Laura Foxgrover, a name you may remember from one of the more sensational political stories of recent years. The Park District official in charge of concessions, Laura Foxgrover had a baby with Matthew O'Malley, the restaurateur who got a Park District contract to run the Park Grill restaurant in Millennium Park. As Tim Novak of the Sun-Times reported in 2005, "The Chicago Park District awarded a 20-year lease to run the swanky restaurant at Millennium Park to a businessman who got a top Park District official pregnant during negotiations." Laura Foxgrover gave birth to O'Malley's child on September 24, 2002, the paper reported. The O'Malley Park Grill deal was signed February 11, 2003.

Waguespack alleges that Paul Foxgrover's connection to Zaryczny indicates that she was acting as Matlak's stalking horse, siphoning off votes from Waugespack. It was, Waugespack continues, no coincidence that a few days after the February 27 election, Zaryczny endorsed Matlak.

Hmm. It's pretty well-known in political circles that Paul Foxgrover has ties to local Democratic Party big shots, particularly in the 19th Ward. And restaurateur O'Malley has ties to former congressman Dan Rostenkowski, Matlak's political mentor. But what's the evidence that links Zaryczny to Paul Foxgrover? Waguespack's lawsuit doesn't say, nor has his campaign produced anything to support this claim. Is the Foxgrover allegation simply an attempt to smear Zaryczny?

Matlak's spokeswoman, Rebekah Brooks, says she knows nothing about Foxgrover. In fact, she says she never even heard of him until I called asking her for a comment.

Zaryczny did not return calls for comment. 

It was only a few weeks ago that Catherine Zaryczny was blasting 32nd Ward alderman Ted Matlak, calling him an unresponsive and unaccountable individual whose allegiance is to the ward organization that put him in power and to the special interests that keep him in power."

That was when she was one of two candidates running against Matlak in the February 27 election for alderman. Today she pulled a surprising 180 degree turn, endorsing Matlak in the April 27 runoff against Scott Waguespack.

"Are you kidding me?" Waguespack said, when I called him for a comment. "That's the first I've heard of it."

He then jokingly asked for a few minutes to compose himself. "I have to hold on to something to keep myself from falling down from laughter," he said.

During the first round of campaigning Zaryczny routinely criticized Matlak for approving upzoning that allowed developers to overdevelop the ward. "The 32nd Ward is infamous for the present alderman's failure to meaningfully address local citizens', community groups', and businesses' concerns about development," she wrote in her response to the IVI-IPO's aldermanic questionnaire. "Development currently takes place on an ad hoc basis with no consideration for underlying transportation, congestion, and other basic concerns."

She also called reporters--myself included--to point out that Donald Tomczak, the former deputy water commissioner, had assigned patronage workers to help Matlak's 2003 campaign. Tomczak received a four-year prison sentence for taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes in connection with the hired truck scandal.

So why the change of heart? Zaryczny did not return calls for comment. But in a press release distributed by Matlak's campaign she said: "We cannot deny Alderman Matlak's overall record of accomplishment. The simple truth is that our ward is one of the most desirable places to live, work and raise a family."

Zaryczny pulled roughly roughly 14 percent of the vote. If every single one of her 1,122 voters follows her endorsement and votes for Matlak, he'll win. But Wauguespack says that's not going to happen.

"I think that many of the people who voted for her because of her reform rhetoric will be even more shocked that I am to hear this news," he said.

A reader who calls himself Jeremy sends this report: