Ever wonder why some elected official votes a certain way for no apparent reason? Let’s consider the current debate over the variances being sought by the developer at Executive Office Plaza (“EOP”), between Touhy and Northwest Hwy. east of Washington.
The developer, Park Ridge 2004 LLC, a limited liability company whose shareholders include Norwood Builders’ Bruce Adreani, former Park Ridge resident and alderman John Chipman, and prominent Schaumburg developers Lance Chody and James Sharpe, wants to put 168 residential units on that site – 8 more than the new Park Ridge zoning ordinance allows.
To win that variance, the developer is including 50 units of what it has labeled “senior housing” – intended to be owned and occupied by people age 55 or older. But by a 5-2 vote on October 15, 2007, the City Council again deferred a decision on that variance, this time because the “senior housing” language in the variance ordinance did not ensure that those units would actually become – and remain – owned and occupied by people 55 and older.
The two votes against deferral came from 4th Ward Ald. James Allegretti and 5th Ward Ald. Robert Ryan. Their votes had residents of both those wards, and especially the 5th Ward residents in the EOP neighborhood who actively opposed the variance, wondering: “What are those two guys thinking?”
We don’t claim to know the minds of either of those aldermen, but certain facts and circumstances might – and we emphasize might – suggest a motive or two.
Take Ald. Allegretti, an attorney who could be expected to demand a locked-down guaranty for the “senior housing” if it actually mattered to him. He explained his “No” vote by saying that he wanted the deal done because it was taking too long, even though the Council didn’t receive the developer’s 168-unit version of EOP until August, after its 176-unit version crashed and burned. Attorney/Ald. Allegretti seemed unfazed by fellow attorney and 1st Ward Ald. Dave Schmidt’s identification of loopholes in the variance ordinance big enough to “drive a condo through.”
For those without a scorecard, Allegretti was the handpicked appointee of Howard Frimark (who reportedly favors the EOP variance) to fill Frimark’s aldermanic seat after he was sworn in as mayor. Allegretti sailed through his City Council confirmation hearing on June 6, 2005, in part because neither he nor Frimark had disclosed that, just three months earlier (March 7, 2005), Allegretti had contributed $300 to Frimark’s campaign fund [PDF] – a fact that was not yet a matter of public record (and, therefore, not discoverable by the aldermen voting on his appointment) because Frimark had not yet filed his report identifying Allegretti’s campaign contribution.
Just a coincidence? Maybe. But on July 13, 2005, little more than a month after his confirmation, Allegretti dropped an additional $200 into Frimark’s coffers. In Chicago, in Cook County, and in many parts of this state, that’s what sometimes passes for “pay to play” – although we suspect that in Chicago it would cost a lot more than $500 for an aldermanic appointment because the job pays around $100,000 instead of the $1,200 Park Ridge aldermen receive.
Allegretti also coincidentally shares office space with Frank DiFranco, the prominent local attorney who is representing Adreani in connection with criminal charges arising from Adreani’s brief encounter with a temporary waitress at the Park Ridge Country Club during the summer. And as a further coincidence, DiFranco (through his law firm DiFranco & Associates) [PDF] and Adreani (personally and through Norwood) [PDF] contributed $2,100 and $500, respectively, to Frimark’s mayoral campaign.
Ryan’s story is somewhat different. He explained his unabashed support for the variance by citing the “dire need” for senior housing in Park Ridge – without providing any documentation of such need, and without explaining why he would support a senior housing plan that could end up providing no senior housing at all. In response to Ald. Schmidt’s loophole complaints, Ryan (who is rumored to have met privately with the developer on the senior-housing alternative) applauded the developer for having made a decent effort to reduce the number of units for which it wants the variance.
Again for those without a scorecard, Ryan is a vice-president of HDR Engineering, a division of an employee-owned architectural, engineering and consulting conglomerate that markets itself to governmental bodies and developers of projects such as EOP – and such as what is currently contemplated for the other Target Areas of Uptown Redevelopment. HDR has already done business with the City on the Summit Mall parking lot project, so Ryan’s voting to help out a developer like Norwood (and EOP investor developers like Adreani, Chody and Sharpe) get this project built would appear to be good marketing for both Ryan and HDR.
Ryan reportedly was encouraged by Frimark to run for alderman against local preservationist and residential density foe Judy Barclay. We can’t tell whether any of Ryan’s campaign contributors might be playing a significant role in his decision-making on EOP, however, because Ryan’s campaign disclosure report [PDF] is curiously heavy on non-itemized contributions: Of the $7,670 in campaign funding he reported, $5,295 of it – almost 70% – is non-itemized, meaning it was donated either in ways that were not identifiable to a particular donor, or by individual donors who did not reach the cumulative legally reportable per-donor minimum of $150.
We haven’t heard any reports that Ryan or his campaign treasurer, local realtor Owen Hayes II, collected all that non-itemized cash by manning “Ryan for Alderman” kettles while dressed in Santa suits. But Ryan did have a fundraiser at “Hay Caramba!” restaurant that could have generated a lot of spare change. And although Hayes apparently did not contribute the $150 minimum needed to become a Ryan itemized contributor, Hayes did contribute $1,250 to the Frimark mayoral campaign [PDF] in 2005. So it seems like Ryan and Frimark share the favor – if not the money – of Mr. Hayes. None of these relationships should be viewed as inescapably untoward or nefarious. But they are the kinds of facts and circumstances that might – and again we emphasize might – contribute to the average citizen’s understanding of why a particular elected or appointed official is taking a particular position on a particular issue.
After all, that’s the principal reason we have these campaign disclosure laws in the first place.[PDF] indicates the link is to a PDF file.