Peraica tactic includes HDO 'demonization'

Is this going to be the tactic of those people who want to take down a Latino politico – dredge up the letters “HDO” and try to scare white ethnic Chicago into believing that those crazy Hispanics are somehow more corrupt than their Irish and Polish and Croatian counterparts at City Hall ever were?

It is the means being used by Tony Peraica, the Republican nominee for state’s attorney of Cook County, to try to trash his opponent. He has to resort to this in large part because Democratic opponent Anita Alvarez is so far better qualified for the top prosecutor’s post that he can’t argue on the merits of his record.

Specifically, Peraica is waving around copies of El Dia, a Spanish-language newspaper based out of Cicero (and not exactly a heavy-hitter in the world of Chicago’s Spanish media), which ran on its front page a photograph taken at a political fundraiser.

It is the standard shot of an aspiring politico (Alvarez) standing next to someone else and trying to smile. It is meant to give the person in the picture with the politico some sort of personal souvenir, and perhaps a bit of physical evidence that an actual relationship exists between the two.

Peraica is trying to use the photograph for the same reason – it is a picture of Alvarez posing with the son of the newspaper’s owner. It turns out that Jorge Montes de Oca, Jr. actually had a warrant issued for his arrest at the time of the March 6 fundraiser at a neighborhood restaurant.

In theory, as a high-ranking deputy in the state’s attorney’s office who aspires the top job in the Nov. 4 election, Alvarez is a law enforcement official who should have arrested Oca.

She didn’t.

I’m not going to get all bent out of shape about this. I don’t view it as a moment of corruption (as Peraica would like us to think of it). It is more a sense of reality that makes me realize I don’t expect anybody to know at all times the names of every single person who happens to have an arrest warrant issued in their name.

I particularly am willing to overlook this lapse (I believe that had it been brought to her attention, Alvarez would have acted like the life-long employee of the state’s attorney’s office that she is), especially since the warrant was not even issued in Cook County.

It was issued by a judge in neighboring Lake County, Ill., after Oca allegedly wrote bad checks to a car dealership in the far northern suburbs of Chicago. Since his photographic appearance with Alvarez, he has been picked up by police, hit with the relevant criminal charges, and is only free now because he posted the mandatory 10 percent of bond set at $30,000.

Now if someone could come up with evidence that Alvarez in some way is trying to cover up for him, or get his charges reduced, or in some way is interfering with the ability of Lake County officials to prosecute the case, that would be a sign of inappropriate behavior by a potential state’s attorney.

That would be an example of potential corrupt behavior. Heck, it would be just a good story.

Peraica doesn’t have any of that.

He just has that Alvarez was in the same room with someone whom the police were interested in, and didn’t do anything because she didn’t know anything.

I would be willing to overlook this ridiculous charge, if that were the extent to which Peraica took it. But he went further, dragging the acronym “HDO” into the mix by noting that the fundraiser was largely attended by HDO members.

For those of you who are clueless about City Hall and Chicago politics, HDO is the Hispanic Democratic Organization. It is the political action committee used by some Latinos who want to be involved in Chicago politics, which theoretically makes it no different than the organizations used by women, labor unions or any other special interest group that wants to get ahead politically.

It also is a group whose founder faces criminal charges for his alleged involvement in the city’s now-defunct “Hired Truck Program,” where private companies were hired to provide trucks and drivers to do municipal work.

Federal prosecutors say some of the companies had ties to organized crime, while others paid bribes to city officials to get contracts. In many cases, the companies hired by the city were grossly overpaid for their work, or the companies did no work whatsoever.

Peraica wants to create the impression of the Hispanic politicos dragging a city program into corrupt behavior, and then trying to show that Alvarez is merely one of their followers. “The HDO has been at the epicenter of all the corruption that has done on at the city of Chicago,” Peraica told WBBM-TV, which played the story up big during their Tuesday evening newscast.

That is just a ridiculous statement. There’s too much improper behavior that takes place at Chicago City Hall for “epicenter of all the corruption” to be true.

HDO didn’t give Chicago corruption. It merely is trying to use the means of the past by which other ethnic groups used politics to get ahead – not realizing that the ways of Michael “Hinky Dink” Kenna are long dead and buried, although their zombie corpse occasionally tries to come crawling out of the grave.

The other thing to realize about HDO is that it does not speak for all Latino political people in Chicago. It is a group whose leaders are firmly behind the policies of Mayor Richard M. Daley. It’s members routinely focus their political work on bashing the candidacies of would-be Latino politicos who appeared as though they might oppose Daley if they won elective office.

HDO’s real “sin” is that it is willing to put politics ahead of the concept of increased Latino political empowerment – it has been known to back the candidacies of white politicos in Latino neighborhoods in order to help Daley maintain his political control in Chicago.

Of course, none of this nuance came through in Peraica’s charges. He just wanted to create the image of a batch of corrupt Hispanic people, one of whom was literally a “wanted man” by the police – with Alvarez smiling for pretty pictures.

This tactic does not shock me in the least. This is, after all, the man who engaged in the ultimate “sore loser” behavior after losing his 2006 bid to be Cook County Board president to Todd Stroger. Peraica is not somebody who’s going to take the political high road.

I fully expect Peraica to keep hitting us with subtle (like a sledgehammer) reminders that Alvarez is Mexican-American, hoping that he can stir up enough people who have a problem with the concept of the first Latina to win a county-wide office to get their votes.

That is why Alvarez herself was totally justified when she responded as she did to Peraica’s charge by refusing to discuss whether or not she had her picture taken with Oca (She did, so what!) and instead denounced the whole attack as “racist.”

“To insinuate that any public official of Hispanic heritage has connections to the HDO is racist,” she said, in a prepared statement. “These allegations are completely absurd and if they were not coming from (Cook County Board) Commissioner Tony Peraica, our campaign would consider this an April Fool’s Day joke.”

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Originally posted at www.ChicagoArgus.blogspot.com.

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HDO's Sanchez Indicted

The day after charges against Republican Nick Hurtgen were dismissed, U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald unleashed an indictment against HDO's Alfred Sanchez.

Note "uncharged co-schemers Individual A (who was the overall leader of HDO)"
and others are mentioned.

The following press release was received from the U.S. Attorney's Office and seems important enough to run in full:

RETIRED STREETS AND SANITATION COMMISSIONER SANCHEZ AND SECOND CITY EMPLOYEE INDICTED ON HIRING FRAUD CHARGES

CHICAGO – A retired commissioner of the City of Chicago’s Department of Streets and Sanitation and a Chicago police officer who has held various city jobs, both of whom were high-level leaders of the Hispanic Democratic Organization (HDO), a citywide political campaign organization, were indicted today on federal charges in connection with the ongoing investigation of city hiring and promotion fraud.

The retired commissioner, Alfred Sanchez, a principal organizer for HDO, was charged with engaging in a systematic fraud scheme to provide city jobs, promotions and other employment benefits to induce and reward political campaign work.

The second defendant, Aaron Delvalle, who assisted Sanchez in coordinating HDO activities and who received immunity from prosecution relating to this investigation, was charged with perjury for allegedly lying to the federal grand jury about his HDO activities.

Sanchez, 59, of Chicago, was charged with nine counts of mail fraud, and Delvalle, 34, of Chicago, was charged with one count of perjury in a 10-count indictment returned today by a federal grand jury. Both defendants will be arraigned at a later date in U.S. District Court.

The charges were announced by Patrick J. Fitzgerald, United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, together with Robert D. Grant, Special Agent-in-Charge of the Chicago Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation; James Vanderberg, Special Agent-in-Charge of the U.S. Department of Labor Office of Inspector General in Chicago; and Kenneth T. Laag, Inspector-in-Charge of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service in Chicago.

The investigation of fraudulent city hiring and promotion practices stems from the federal investigation of corruption in the city’s Hired Truck Program.

Four previous defendants, including Robert Sorich, who was a high-ranking official in the Mayor’s Office of Intergovernmental Affairs (IGA), were sentenced last year after being convicted of rigging city hiring and promotion practices to reward political campaign work.

Sanchez and Delvalle are the 47th and 48th defendants, including more than 20 current or former city employees, who have been charged since January 2004. Forty-four defendants have been convicted, one is deceased, and the remainder are pending.

Sanchez was commissioner of Streets and Sanitation from June 1999 until he retired in June 2005, and was deputy commissioner from 1995 to 1999.

The department has about 4,000 workers and is responsible for garbage collection, snow removal, street sweeping, rodent abatement, street lamp maintenance, graffiti removal, and tree trimming and planting.

Before joining Streets and Sanitation, Sanchez worked in the city’s Health Department and was the First Deputy Director of the Mayor’s Office of Information and Inquiry (I&I), where he performed certain personnel duties in both of those departments.

Delvalle has been a city employee since April 1997, working at various times in I&I, Streets and Sanitation and the Chicago Police Department.

According to the indictment, Sanchez served as a principal organizer for HDO, which was formed in the early 1990s and had many city employees among its hundreds of individual participants who were active in political campaigns and voter outreach activities, and HDO was divided into geographic divisions.

Sanchez was head of HDO Southeast, which had as many as 500 individual participants who performed political work on behalf of HDO-selected candidates during its peak years. Beginning in 1999, Delvalle assisted Sanchez in coordinating HDO Southeast activities.

Generally, specific political directives were disseminated through a hierarchical system in HDO Southeast, with Sanchez, typically through Delvalle, informing approximately six to eight “Political Coordinators,” each of whom directed certain individual participants, as to the particular political assignments.

Sanchez alone was charged with engaging in a fraud scheme beginning no later than 1994 through early 2005.

As part of the alleged scheme, Sanchez and uncharged co-schemers Individual A ( who was the overall leader of HDO), Robert Sorich, Jack Drumgould, Delvalle, Patrick Slattery, Roberto Medina and various other city employees and officials, engaged in the following conduct:

• while he was employed at I&I and Streets and Sanitation, Sanchez and certain co-schemers engaged in a systematic effort to provide public financial benefits, in the form of city jobs, promotions, and other employment benefits, in order to induce and reward campaign work to benefit HDO and other private political organizations;
• Sanchez and other co-schemers corrupted the city’s personnel process by awarding city job-related benefits in non-policymaking positions to applicants selected by Sanchez and IGA officials by: falsifying and causing the falsification of ratings forms; signing and causing the signing of fraudulent Shakman certifications; and otherwise granting preferential treatment;
• in the case of “mass” hiring sequences, Sanchez negotiated a certain portion of the total available positions with IGA officials in order to award the positions to individuals selected by Sanchez on the basis of their work on behalf of HDO. Applying political and other considerations, IGA selected the remainder of the candidates for the particular hiring sequence; and
• the individual HDO Southeast participants who received job-related benefits included individuals who provided Sanchez with various personal services and things of value, including home repair work, snow removal, lawn care and yard work.

The indictment alleges that Delvalle, acting on Sanchez’s behalf, informed individual HDO Southeast participants, including Political Coordinators, that requests for city job benefits be made through the individual’s Political Coordinator. Such requests included requests for a) entry-level city jobs; b) promotions to other city positions; c) increased overtime opportunities; d) transfers to more desirable work locations; e) pay increases and f) other job benefits for themselves, family members and other favored individuals. In submitting requests to Sanchez and Delvalle, Political Coordinators often provided specific information regarding the HDO participant’s level of political involvement.

The co-schemers allegedly tracked and maintained records relating to city job-related requests on behalf of HDO participants, and officials of HDO North and HDO South also submitted requests for city employment benefits at Streets and Sanitation to IGA officials and Sanchez on behalf of other HDO volunteers.

When he was an I&I official, Sanchez allegedly caused false and fraudulent ratings forms to be signed in order to favor his selections in the award of city job-related benefits. Sanchez and Medina, while at I&I, signed false and fraudulent Shakman certifications, attesting that political considerations played no role in I&I’s hiring sequences, when in fact, they knew that certain hiring decisions were based, in substantial part, on the applicant’s political participation.

At Streets and Sanitation, Sanchez and Drumgould allegedly caused certain individual HDO Southeast participants to become eligible to be interviewed for certain hiring sequences, even on occasions when the positions were closed to applications from the general public, and receipt of applications was not permitted under City hiring guidelines.

Sanchez allegedly directed Drumgould to take action on behalf of his selections in order to award city job-related benefits to those individuals, including awards relating to the following “mass” hiring and individual hiring sequences: 2004 General Foreman of Lineman, 2004 Career Service Laborer, 2004 Career Service Motor Truck Driver (MTD), 2003 Seasonal Laborer, 2002 Career Service MTD, 2002 Seasonal MTD and 2002 Lamp Maintenance Man.

As part of the alleged scheme, Sanchez also opposed the implementation of a lottery process for certain entry-level mass hiring sequences in order to retain his ability to influence the award of city job-related benefits to his selections.

According to the perjury count against Delvalle, on February 6, 2007 he was issued a letter of immunity, requiring his “complete, accurate and truthful” testimony before the grand jury.

The letter explicitly informed Delvalle that if the United States Attorney’s Office determined that he had violated any provision, or failed to give accurate and truthful information and testimony, then his statements could be used against him in a prosecution for perjury or false statements or other criminal proceedings. Delvalle, who was represented by an attorney, signed the immunity letter and acknowledged its terms, testified before the grand jury on February 8, 2007.

The indictment alleges that on February 8, 2007, Delvalle testified, among other things, as follows:

Q: And so whether it was termination issues or vacation issues or overtime or raises or promotions, I mean, you had no role in that part of [Streets and Sanitation], correct?

A: Correct.

Q: And you had no unofficial role either, correct?

A: Correct.

Q: And the entirety of your involvement as it related to coordinators or for that matter any individual people was getting names of people to check whether or not they made a lottery list?

A: Correct.

* * * *

Q: Other than the lottery list matters that we’ve discussed, okay, you have never made any attempt through official channels or unofficial channels to assist individuals with job-related benefits at Streets & Sanitation?

A: No, sir.

The indictment alleges that Delvalle’s testimony was false in that, he knew that:

• he participated in a process whereby HDO Southeast Political Coordinators, including HDO Southeast Political Coordinator A, submitted names of HDO participants to Delvalle and others in order to request and obtain job-related benefits on behalf of HDO participants;
• the process of job-related requests was not limited to Delvalle making inquiries concerning “lottery lists,” but in fact included efforts to coordinate and facilitate requests made by individual HDO Southeast participants, for jobs, promotions and transfers in city employment; and
• Grand Jury Exhibit Delvalle 2 was not a document limited to inquiries concerning lottery lists.

The government is represented by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Manish Shah, Patrick Collins, Julie Ruder, Barry Miller and Philip Guentert.

If convicted, eight of the nine mail fraud counts against Sanchez carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine, while a single count carries a maximum term of five years in prison. If convicted of perjury, Delvalle faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. The Court, however, would determine the appropriate sentence to be imposed.

The public is reminded that an indictment contains only charges and is not evidence of guilt. The defendants are presumed innocent and are entitled to a fair trial at which the government has the burden of proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

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