Political machine
EAST CHICAGO: City's patronage system crumbling amid rising taxes, bloated payroll
NWI Times
Times Statehouse Bureau Chief
Sep 19, 2004
nwitimes.com/news/local/political-machine/article_c675e247-d333-5888-8d0c-cf7f219f506c.html
EAST CHICAGO -- Even for a mayor skilled at weathering attacks for three decades, the forecast looks grim.
What some consider the last city political machine in America -- Robert Pastrick's stranglehold on East Chicago -- finally may grind itself to a halt.
U.S. Attorney Joseph Van Bokkelen has made a Friday ritual of doling out indictments that have Lake County politicos wondering who's wearing a wire.
Indiana Attorney General Steve Carter has charged city officials under laws normally reserved for the mafia, alleging Pastrick runs the city like the godfather of a corrupt enterprise.
Former Councilman George Pabey has used the city's rising Hispanic population to demand leadership change, and the Indiana Supreme Court granted him an unprecedented special election Oct. 26.
All that's everyday politics for the "King of Steeltown."
No problem.
This is a place where job titles include alley inspectors and bridge attendants, where serving time for public corruption does not disqualify one for heading a department, and where it's normal to have entire families on the payroll. There are 135 employees listed as labor or laborer and 51 as secretary.
What's different now is the shift in property taxes to homeowners from industry has made the past habit of employment-as-welfare unsustainable.
Back in the day, when the steel mills and BP refinery paid the tab, no one cared how much the city spent or who it hired to build a patronage army.
"This time it's different," said Dan Lowery, a University of Indiana Northwest professor involved in improving local government. "It pits him against his own citizens. You can't maintain that cost structure and dump the bill on the taxpayers. You can't have Cadillac services and not pay for them."
Lowery said Pastrick can't make the changes now, because he's facing another election, even though taxpayers are paying attention for the first time.
Whoever wins the election may inherit bankruptcy and certainly will face the same dilemma.
Imagine dumping hundreds of jobs, then asking for votes -- that's not the East Chicago way.
Instead, Pastrick approved a few new hires and a 4 percent pay bump across-the-board Tuesday before announcing his own bid for re-election the next day. Only Thursday did the city recognize that property-tax collection came in so far below expectations, it owes Lake County $3 million it already has spent.
Leaders defend system
Pastrick and his assistant, Tim Raykovich, acknowledged the city spends far more money than it should. The shift in the tax burden has made past employment practices unsustainable, they said.
Pastrick spoke passionately about improvement projects in the city that have been delayed in recognition of the tax crisis.
He said homeowners understand property-tax levels will never return to the artificially low levels of the past, where thousands paid little or nothing at all.
"We certainly need to make changes in East Chicago, and we will," Pastrick said. "I admit possibly we have had an excessive amount of people on the payroll, and we will do everything we can to rectify it.
"That being said, we have to understand the makeup of East Chicago as opposed to communities like Schererville. We have poverty and indigents and a lot of senior citizens, and they require a lot of services. And I'd like to sustain the kinds of service the people in the bedroom communities can afford."
Some departments, such as parks and sanitation, are in desperate need of cutting, Raykovich said. Garbage is collected twice a week with three workers per truck, while neighboring Hammond collects once a week at one-third of East Chicago's payroll cost.
The parks department maintains 16 parks, including a greenhouse. Measured out in total land space, each acre of park would nearly have its own worker and $30,171 to beautify it.
Pastrick defended the garbage pickups as necessary to stop rodents and disease.
He said many residents don't have cars and need free transportation to get to the doctor or stores that only exist outside the city. The parks transform the city's negative image, he said.
"We have to do everything we can to sustain the quality of life for people who can least afford it," Pastrick said. "I have to try in every possible way I can to maintain the viability of this city by keeping the people here."
Asked if that spending could drive out the same citizens with property taxes, Pastrick blamed the problem on the state for not phasing in a change to market-value assessments and said he has supported consolidation as a solution.
After 33 years of winning support with services, change is complex, Raykovich said. Though the city pays him to make those changes, the political reality and lack of other employment options make it difficult, he said.
"These people rely on the city for their livelihood," Raykovich said.
Plans to cut about 150 workers were shelved until after the special election.
In July, Raykovich said the city would reduce the number of take-home vehicles to 15 from 121. Instead, the city targeted 40 vehicles and returned only 20.
Political machine combusting
Attorney General Steve Carter, a Republican, said East Chicago's history of corruption warranted the first state use of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations, or RICO, Act.
The suit, filed Aug. 3, charges Pastrick and 26 other defendants with misspending public money by pouring concrete and trimming trees on private property in return for votes in the 1999 Democratic primary.
Carter identified $3.1 million in questionable spending but suggests the total could be more like $20 million.
Carter said the State Board of Accounts turned over East Chicago audits to his office for investigation. The financial mismanagement cited ranges from inappropriate use of casino tax money to a lack of internal controls over spending and payroll.
"When one individual has been in charge for 30 years, it's appropriate to go after the chief executive," Carter said. "Our intent is to address a systematic problem."
Pastrick dismissed Carter's suit as a political ploy timed to help Carter in an election year, and said he has served honestly.
Pastrick's paternalism rubs his critics the wrong way, as if he's bestowing gifts to the grateful rabble rather than serving the public with their own money.
He said he does not micromanage and does not run a political machine anymore.
"At one time, we truly had a political machine," Pastrick said.
"I myself helped to set that image in place because of the political influence. I've always felt a city as small as this one with the problems we had, had to have some clout. I performed in that capacity."
He often compares himself to Richard J. Daley, the father of the current Chicago mayor who ran the most famous recent city machine. Like Daley, nonstop investigations have never tied Pastrick personally to any illegal activity or bribery.
Leonor Silva, a Hammond resident who said she worked in the city controller's office in the 1990s, believes Pastrick always has been the ringleader. Silva said she quit in 1998 and filed an unsuccessful harassment suit.
Before the 1995 primary, she said she overheard Pastrick talking to department heads and insiders in the hall outside her office.
"He said, 'I don't care how you get the votes, just get them,' " Silva said.
This October, even Pastrick supporters expect the special election to be crawling with agents and investigators to ensure historic patterns of buying and stealing votes don't occur. Still, some residents don't expect a change.
City history forged "godfather"
Maurice Eisenstein, a Pastrick critic and political science professor at Purdue University Calumet, called East Chicago politics a cultural phenomenon drummed into residents throughout the years.
"You have a godfather figure that uses public money to help people the way the mafia would," he said. "The whole city works as a criminal enterprise, complete with a ring to kiss."
He said there's no other way to explain the loyalty people show Pastrick, because the city has suffered horribly outside of a few election-year bones.
The machine spent millions on capital projects that included political kickbacks, but little was left over for essential quality services that would attract economic development, he said.
For instance, the school system erected expensive buildings and then hired unqualified cronies to run it into the ground, he said. Test scores consistently at the bottom of the state show nothing happens inside the fine shells, he said.
"The streets aren't fixed, the marina is deteriorating, there are no new businesses, crime is up," Eisenstein said. "That's what's amazing -- all these people are being paid, and nobody seems to be working."
Colleen Aguirre, a Pastrick critic who recently moved out of East Chicago, said the East Europeans who came to work in the region's steel mills had no experience questioning authority. The Hispanics that now make up more than half the population also were afraid to rock the boat until recently, she said.
"East Chicago is like no other city -- it's truly not America," Aguirre said. "When people came to the region, their lives were run by their priest, their labor union rep and their precinct committeeman. They've been controlled for so long, they've grown up believing in this man."
Pastrick has perfected the political art of neutralizing opponents. Critics said he had Stephen Stiglich appointed Lake County sheriff after Stiglich nearly won the 1985 election, then gave him the Lake County Democratic Party chairman job after his near victory in the 1999 primary.
Pastrick also iced scant Republican opposition for years by placing their chairman, Robert Cantrell, in a job as one of several school athletic directors. After finally switching parties officially to become a Democrat, Cantrell now works as "inter-agency liaison" for North Township and has been accused of using the position to recruit votes from poor-relief clients.
System change faces challenges
A top city official acknowledged that abuses still run rampant in East Chicago.
He said high-salary jobs were awarded for purely political reasons, nepotism infects every department and program, and some workers don't show up for work while others have no supervisor.
The city has never passed civil service laws establishing competence levels or qualifications for positions. Officials could only provide draft copies of job duties, because they only now are being developed. A purchased punch-clock system also languishes.
Even for lesser jobs, patronage drives decisions, the official said. For instance, the city maintained control of the Dickey Street Bridge rather than ceding it to the county or building a higher one. Five vote-indebted operators, each making about $20,000 per year, take shifts raising the bridge for occasional ships on the Indiana Harbor Canal, he said.
Cutting the bridge, several unnecessary salaries and outsourcing garbage pickup instantly would save $1 million, by his estimates. It hasn't happened.
Dewey Pearman, who directed East Chicago's Chamber of Commerce in the late 1980s, said there was little incentive for reform, because industry until recently paid about 90 percent of the city's tax burden.
"The individual taxpayer did not voice much opinion, because he didn't have much skin in the game," Pearman said. "Now, cities must perform basic services, not employment services."
Pearman and others said they did not think challengers Lonnie Randolph, a former city judge, or Pabey, had indicated much interest in change, other than replacing the system's beneficiaries. Everyone wants to "sit near the dragon table and get some of the droppings," Aguirre said.
That could spell bad news for the region. A Connecticut Center for Economic Analysis study in March found government corruption depresses job growth even more than rising taxes.
Like Pastrick, Pabey said the payroll must be "cut from the top." If he wins, he vowed he would take a substantial cut in salary "down to the level of the governor or lower."
Regardless of the election outcome, many predict the city will find itself bankrupt and struggling to trim the patronage army.
"Pabey just wants his turn at the trough," Raykovich said.
By then, there may be nothing left but to sink in the barnyard muck.
No comments:
Post a Comment