Study casts light on corruption
Post-Tribune (IN)
February 20, 2012
February 20, 2012
Lake County doesn’t have a reputation of corrupt political officials for nothing.
From former Gary Clerk Katie Hall forcing her employees to contribute to her political campaign to former East Chicago Mayor George Pabey using city money and workers to renovate his Gary home, the past decade has seen more than 40 people convicted in federal court in connection to public corruption cases. That doesn’t even count the people who preceded them.
But a study by the University of Illinois at Chicago shows that as corrupt as some people think politics in the U.S. District of Northern Indiana are, they actually aren’t that bad.
Not so corrupt
Northern Indiana actually registered hardly a blip in the study, titled “Chicago and Illinois, Leading the Pack in Corruption.”
It focused mostly on how Illinois ranks high in the pure number and per capita rate of convicted corrupt public officials since 1976 and also discusses in detail the many political criminals from states such as California, Louisiana, New Jersey and Texas. In fact, the study includes 35 years worth of information for only the top 15 federal court districts with the most convictions of corrupt public officials. Northern Indiana did not crack the list.
However, it did provide information on the number of convictions from 2001 to 2010 for the 91 federal court districts representing the 50 states and Washington, D.C. Northern Indiana saw 83 convictions during that time, not a small number. However, several districts saw more than 300 public corruption convictions during that same time period. In fact, Northern Indiana ranked just 38th out of all the districts, not even in the top third.
The study did argue that it was also important to do a comparison at a per capita basis, because populous states such as Texas and California were bound to have more corruption cases than states such as Illinois. Going from that angle, however, actually shows that Indiana has had even less of a problem with corrupt public officials compared with the country. The state was tied for 16th for the fewest number of convicted public officials in the past decade.
Lake County Commissioner Gerry Scheub took the data for good news. Scheub said that Lake County has certainly had a history of notoriety with public corruption but that it doesn’t always have to be that way.
“If you see it enough, you should be smart enough to make sure it’s not going to happen,” he said. “We’ll never change our image in Indianapolis, but we can change our image up here.”
The county’s image has made it hard for him, Scheub said, with some people automatically suspecting him just because he’s a politician. He also pointed out that it’s not as though the rest of the state doesn’t have its problems, mentioning Secretary of State Charlie White is who battling accusations that he voted in the wrong district.
What’s the case?
However, U.S. Attorney for Northern Indiana David Capp said that the study was perhaps not the best picture of public corruption convictions. For instance, he said, all U.S. attorneys must submit a yearly report to the U.S. Department of Justice on public integrity and includes a broad span of crimes, including U.S. Postal Service employees who steal even $1 from their employer. Most of Northern Indiana’s public corruption crimes, however, have focused mostly on actual elected officials, he said. The study does not say what it counts as a public corruption cases.
“I just know we have focused a great deal of attention on elected officials,” Capp said. “And sadly most of them come from Lake County.”
Because it’s unclear just which cases were considered for the report, it’s hard to narrow down how many of the 83 convictions in the Northern District came from Lake County. However, a perusal of news archives shows about 40 cases from Lake County, or about half of the district’s cases, that involved blatant public corruption by elected officials, government employees or people appointed by public officials to boards and committees who had control over tax dollars. Capp added that the only public officials he can think of who recently were convicted who were not from Lake County were Michael and Teresa Orsburn from Jasper County.
The rough estimate would put Lake County at a rate of 0.81 convictions per capita of 10,000 people. Compared with the averages of all the states, Lake County would rank behind just three states and Washington D.C. Most states averaged a rate from 0.2 to 0.5.
FBI Supervisory Special Agent for Northern Indiana Bob Ramsey said the fact that Lake County’s per capita rate is more than double the state’s shows the county has a public corruption problem.
“Not to say there isn’t public corruption in other places,” Ramsey said. “But there seems to be an inordinate amount in Lake County.”
Ramsey said part of the problem for the county is that it’s ingrained in the county’s past and has become a practice that people learn from those who came before them.
“It’s difficult to break,” he said. “You constantly get into the same crimes being repeated.”
The past few years certainly have seen a decrease in public corruption convictions compared with the beginning of the century. Those years saw the convictions of people such as Katie and Junifer Hall, the Sidewalk Six from East Chicago and the people involved with the Gary Urban Enterprise Association. The only notable public corruption conviction in 2009 was former Calumet Township Trustee Dozier Allen Jr., and the only one in 2010 was former East Chicago Mayor George Pabey .
Of course, those numbers don’t include two new public corruption cases announced last fall, including a case against Lake County Coroner Thomas Philpot claiming he paid himself money he shouldn’t have when he was Lake County clerk. Philpot has pleaded not guilty in that case and is scheduled to go to trial in July.
The other case, however, is just waiting sentencing. Three former Lake County Sheriff’s officers have already pled guilty to using the county’s information to illegally buy guns and sell them online for a profit.
“We still have an extensive ongoing public corruption effort, and we’re going to continue it,” Capp said.
A rough count of people from Lake County convicted in public corruption crimes during the past decade includes:
George Pabey
Dozier Allen
Jewell Harris
Robert Cantrell
Will Smith
Roosevelt Powell
Willie Harris
Katie Hall
Junifer Hall
Joe De La Cruz
Adrian Santos
Jose Valdez
Frank Kollintzas
Pedro Porras
Edwardo Maldonado
Randall Artis
Jojuana Meeks
Johnnie Wright
Joel Markovich
Kim Lyles
Deborah Riga
Peter Benjamin
Troy Montgomery
Greg Cvitkovich
James Fife
Morris Carter
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