If the citizens of south suburban Chicago Heights are skeptical about the effectiveness of a tough new ethics ordinance aimed at city officials, one can understand their caution.
After all, this is a community with a long history of corruption.
It started with the indictment of the town`s mayor in 1908 on charges that he held a secret interest in gambling operations in the city`s biggest hotel. It continued well through the Al Capone era when the community became the home to top mobsters who lived in harmony with local politicians.
And no one really knows if it really will end with the recent wave of federal convictions and indictments of no less than nine city officials and police officers, including former mayor and political boss Charles Panici, who faces charges of extorting hundreds of thousands of dollars in kickbacks from city contractors.
Indeed, testimony by a government witness at the recently concluded trial of two former Chicago Heights police detectives on charges of massive drug-dealing over a 10-year period has cast a long shadow over the police department.
On Monday night-only hours after a jury returned guilty verdicts against the two former Chicago Heights policemen-city commissioners passed a long-promised ethics ordinance aimed at controlling the more unprincipled appetites of city employees, including themselves.
In a 13-page ordinance that appears tough on paper, the City Council unanimously decided, among other things, that criminal behavior by city officials, nepotism, conflicts of interest, gift- and favor-taking and putting pressure on city workers to cough up campaign donations are no longer acceptable patterns of behavior in Chicago Heights.
But many city residents are wary about the impact of an ethics ordinance in a city that historically has demonstrated a lack of them.
”Now when I go to sleep, I say my prayers-but I always end with: `Go feds, go,` ” said Gordon Briggs. ”It looks like the only thing that is going to make a difference here is a government investigation. I think that the moral deficiencies in city government are so deep and so ingrained that even changing spots on a leopard still leaves it a leopard.”
He added: ”One of the most depressing things about law enforcement is that when someone goes on vacation, the last people he would tell would be the police.”
”It`s about time they passed an ethics ordinance,” said Phyllis Merisko, a 51-year resident of the community. ”Well, at least it is a nice try, but I think that if Chuck Panici were to run for mayor again, he would get re-elected again. . . . I just hope that the (federal) government continues to investigate what`s going on and gets down to the bottom of everything.”
Similarly, Dorothy Booton, president of the North End Neighbors Association, was glad to learn that the ethics ordinance had been enacted nearly 1 1/2 years after it was promised by Mayor Douglas Troiani, who was handpicked by Panici as his successor.
But she said she was afraid that the legislation would not be retroactive. ”As my mom would say, that`s locking the barn after the horse was stolen.”
Indeed, the new ethics ordinance calls for dismissal of city employees or officials convicted of a misdemeanor or felony ”in which the person`s status as an official or employee was an element of such crime.” But it does not cover past cases of impropriety by current employees.
Included in that category are City Administrator Enrico Doggett and Director of Economic Development Joseph Cristofanelli. Both pleaded guilty in 1990 to tax evasion on income that federal prosecutors characterized as bribes.
And a city attorney said Tuesday that it was questionable whether Doggett`s most recent brush with the courts would affect his city job.
On Monday, a federal judge ruled that Doggett violated terms of his probation by lying on the witness stand during a recent federal civil rights trial that he had ever heard Panici use Italian slang or racial slurs to describe blacks. The denial didn`t jibe with what he told FBI agents two years ago during negotiations on his tax case.
U.S. District Judge Milton Shadur scheduled a sentencing hearing Aug. 17 to determine if Doggett will go to prison. He could be imprisoned for up to six years.
”Legally and technically, there`s no new conviction, no new offense,”
said David Kula, one of the city`s outside attorneys. ”There`s nothing we can think about till after his sentencing.”
The ordinance was presented to the council by former Illinois Supreme Court Justice Seymour Simon, who helped develop it at the request of Troiani. Simon called it ”as stringent and as fair as you will find in any municipality in Illinois.”
Nevertheless, there may be some weaknesses. For instance, while the measure says that violators of the ordinance can be removed from office or discharged ”in accordance with applicable procedure,” it doesn`t delineate that procedure. Violations will be determined by the city`s ethics
administrator, which the legislation designates as the mayor or someone designated by him.
Yet, at the same time it passed the ethics measure, city commissioners also directed city attorneys to look into legal action that can be taken against former and present city employees and vendors to recover money lost through corrupt transactions.
Presumably, that could affect Panici and former commissioners Louise Marshall and John Gliottoni, if they are convicted on federal racketeering and extortion charges related to accusations that they took more than $600,000 in bribes from city contractors and from jailed south suburban mob boss Albert Tocco. Similarly, former City Commissioner Nicholas LoBue is serving a 20-month prison term after pleading guilty to accepting payoffs from
contractors and Tocco.
”The city wouldn`t direct us to do this just so that we could sit on our hands,” Kula said. ”It`s going to end up with some suits filed, I`m confident.”
But that confidence is not reflected elsewhere.
”I think I speak for a lot of the silent citizenry,” said Murray Berg, a 26-year Chicago Heights resident, now retired. ”I think there`s deep feelings of disgust and disquietude. It appears the whole political arena is riddled with corruption.
”And, you know, people are still reluctant to talk about it publicly. There`s an element of fear and anxiety when one expresses a view on criminality and the power structure. There`s always the possibility of retribution. It`s the usual fear of power-ridden, dangerous and corrupt people.”
