Excerpts from theChicagoTribune.com:
Harvey is threatening to lay off half the town’s police and other workers as part of a widening political dispute in a place long known for high crime, insider deals, and precarious finances. Harvey Mayor Eric Kellogg’s administration has notified union leaders that layoffs are expected soon for police, fire, public works and water department employees.
For months Kellogg has battled a majority bloc of City Council members who say they’re demanding more transparency in a town the Tribune has shown has collectively lost millions of taxpayer dollars on insider deals, including at least one that has sparked a lingering FBI investigation.
Under state law, the town must pass an ordinance that by Dec. 29 tells the county clerk how much money to levy in property taxes — the lifeblood of the suburb’s budget. If the ordinance isn’t passed, the mayor warned, the town will lose out on most of its budget.
Four of the six council members have banded together to not pass any financial measures — from approving bills or, now, the tax levy ordinance — until they say the mayor recognizes the committee structures the four voted to approve earlier this year. Without those committees in place to oversee how the money is spent, they have argued, they can’t do their jobs to ensure money isn’t wasted. And if it requires they refuse to approve the levy, so be it.
“It’s not the city’s money. It’s the taxpayers’ money. And we represent the taxpayers,” said Ald. Christopher Clark, one of the four members. “So passing the levy, giving the money (to Kellogg’s administration), only to not know the use of the money when there has been a questionable use of other money over the past 12 years, … it would be irresponsible as elected officials to continue in that vein.”
Kellogg has countered that the four are merely obstructionists playing politics in a way that now has put the town on the brink of financial ruin. He has taken that message to the public and city workers, said Kellogg’s spokesman, Sean Howard who said the cuts could reduce the number of sworn police officers from 72 to 36, and the number of firefighters from around 40 to around 20.
“The mayor is for the levy. He doesn’t want to lay anyone off,” Howard said. “It’s at the feet of these four aldermen.”
The two sides met Thursday behind closed doors, but left without reaching a compromise on the committee structure. The council then voted down an ordinance to approve the levy.
On Friday, Ald. Donald Nesbit told the Tribune that its side offered to split the roles on the coveted Finance and Economic Development committees: A Kellogg supporter would chair one, with the other two members being critics, and the other committee would be chaired by a critic of Kellogg, but have its other two members be Kellogg supporters.
Clark told the Tribune he and the other three Kellogg critics on the council believe they have a legal ordinance giving them control of the committees, but that Kellogg refuses to allow them to operate.
Now, Clark and his allies say, Kellogg wants them to vote on a $15 million tax levy without having reviewed it in committee.
It’s the latest in a political battle in which mayor’s council opponents sent letters asking federal and state agencies to intervene to investigate alleged misdeeds of the mayor’s administration, and have a pending lawsuit alleging the mayor and clerk unlawfully kept the council powerless as it has tried to fight questionable spending in a town with little financial transparency.
thanks Dan
