ChicagoClout

More city money for mayor's nephew
Vanecko, partners net $480,000 from lease on building bought with pension funds
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June 4, 2009

BY TIM NOVAK AND CHRIS FUSCO Staff Reporters
City Hall has paid nearly $500,000 in the last 15 months to lease space at a South Side industrial site owned by Mayor Daley's nephew and his partners, who bought the property with city pension money.

Daley's nephew Robert Vanecko and his partners -- Allison S. Davis and his son Jared Davis -- used $4.2 million of the money they manage for five city pension funds to help buy the mostly vacant warehouse and surrounding land at 3348 S. Pulaski.

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Daley nephew Robert Vanecko's deals with the city are under investigation.
(Richard A. Chapman/Sun-Times)

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The city's Water Management Department was among the few tenants in the building when Vanecko and his partners bought it Nov. 27, 2007. The city has continued leasing space there, apparently on a month-to-month basis.

That lease has become more lucrative under Vanecko's ownership group, according to city records. But Vanecko's partners insist City Hall has the same deal with them as it did under the previous owner.

The city paid $480,408 to Vanecko and his partners between March 17, 2008, and May 26 of this year, according to records on the city's Web site. That's far more than the $50,026 the city paid the previous owner during all of 2006 and 2007, records show.

This is the second time in five years that a Vanecko-owned firm has taken over a city contract whose value then skyrocketed. The first time involved a sewer-cleaning company whose investors included Vanecko and the mayor's son, Patrick Daley.

Vanecko's deals with the city are under investigation by federal authorities and the city's inspector general. Vanecko and the mayor's son have hired a criminal defense attorney, Charles Sklarsky, to represent them.

Mayor Daley's press secretary and city leasing officials didn't return phone calls about the lease with Vanecko's group. The city's Web site contains no information about when the lease began, when it ends, the monthly rent and the amount of space the city is leasing. The lease, however, was "modified" twice this year, records show.

Water Department trucks frequently travel in and out of the industrial property, which also is home to a truck and bus repair company.

"Our 3348 South Pulaski Road location, which ultimately will be redeveloped or sold, still has two of the four original lessees, including the Department of Water Management of the City of Chicago, which has a month-to-month lease dating back to the previous owner," Jared Davis said in a statement.

His father, Allison Davis, is a longtime City Hall insider and business partner of convicted political fixer Tony Rezko. Davis also once headed a law firm where President Obama worked.

DV Urban Realty Partners -- the company Vanecko and the Davises created to manage $68 million in city pension funds -- owns 90 percent of the 15-acre site. The rest is owned by Sydney Partners, whose principals include Anthony Burns and Jeff Josephs.

Together, they paid $10.5 million for the property. It's one of eight Chicago real estate deals DV Urban has done with city pension funds, and it's the only one in which the city is a tenant.

"The terms of the month-to-month lease that were negotiated by the former owner continue to be the same today as they were prior to us owning the building," Josephs said in an e-mail. "No terms have been renegotiated or changed. The city continues to be a tenant on a month-to-month basis occupying less than 25 percent of the entire facility."

INFORMATION is critical to a healthy civil society.

If you are not angry, you are not paying attention.

In June of 2005, a major fire destroyed the Dominick's, a local grocery story, on 3030 N. Broadway.... Since then the lot has continued to be vacant as city planners and private builders have haggled over what to put there next. Enter a man named Robert Vanecko. He is a co founder of the Real Estate Investment start up, DV Urban Realty Partners with Allison Davis. Vanecko also happens to be the nephew of Richard M. Daley, the mayor of Chicago.

Daley's nephew and Davis... were able to land a deal to build a new Dominick's in that space along with Condominium high rise of more than a hundred units. Not only this but this company was also able to use city pension funds as collatoral for this project. The project is worth in excess of $60 million with DV getting a commission of $8 million. Now, a grand jury is asking exactly how these two were able to use pension money for such a risky proposition.

City pension officials have been hit with subpoenas from a federal grand jury trying to determine how a start-up company co-owned by Mayor Daley's nephew won $68 million in pension investments.

The grand jury issued the subpoenas Wednesday, nearly two months after city pension officials refused to comply with similar subpoenas issued by the City of Chicago's inspector general, David Hoffman.

In fact, as the article continues to point out, this isn't even the first subpoena to be issued into a business associated with Vanecko.

This is the second joint investigation that Hoffman and federal authorities are conducting into Vanecko's businesses.

The other investigation involves the hidden ownership stake Vanecko and the mayor's son, Patrick Daley, held in a sewer-cleaning company that won millions of dollars in no-bid contract extensions from City Hall. Vanecko and Patrick Daley have said they sold their investment in the company in late 2004 when Patrick Daley enlisted in the Army and Vanecko went into business with Davis.

Let's put this into perspective. Pension funds should be as safe as possible. After all, they secure the retirement benefits of thousands of city employees. These are not funds meant for anything more risky than the bluest of blue chip stocks. In this case, not only were they used to secure a major real estate development during a real estate downturn, but they were used to back a brand new real estate investment company. This is the opposite of the sorts of investment a pension fund should invest in. So, how did it happen?

To me, to ask just how the mayor's nephew was able to secure $68 million in pension funds for such a risky investment is in fact a rhetorical question. He's the mayor's nephew and so all questions end there. That's how the city of Chicago works. Those with connections get city resources. Those that don't...well they don't. It's really all very simple. This is the Chicago Way. What's really shocking about all of this is just how ordinary this is.

GREAT SHOT PAT. NOW THE NEXT TIME WE SEE A PITCURE OF HIS HINASS,WE CAN ONLY HOPE HIS OUTFIT HAS STRIPS ON IT.

We have to topple this mayor now. I am telling over 1000 people a year about Daley and the need to get rid of him. I am being well received. It seems I touch a nerve in everyone. A big investor told me that last year he was told that Daley and his family own a large stake in the meter contracts. That Alverez got in as states attorney because she is Democratic. She will never investigate any of this. Lisa Madigan launched an investigation of the meter company LAZ and she announces right away that the Daley administration is not being investigated. What the fuck? WE GOT TO GET THE WORD OUT AND HIT THIS BASTARD DALEY NOW

The climate and timing is right, we need to have a rally and a march on the U.S. attorneys office downtown. This Goddamn (sorry God) theft of our money by the Daley family needs to get Daley in prison and out of office. We can't wait anymore.

June 04, 2009 By Ben Bradley June 4, 2009 Everything from cigarette tax revenue to real estate transaction income for the City of Chicago is falling below previous estimates.
City revenues for May were $113 million below previous projections. That number is greater than the $96 million shortfall for the previous month.
Chicago's Chief Financial Officer Gene Saffold told reporters Thursday that layoff notices for an unspecified number of city workers may go in the mail as early as next week if a deal isn't reached on union concessions. The unions have speculated as many as 1,100 layoffs are possible.
The real estate transaction tax took the biggest dip, a sign of sluggish home and commercial building sales in the city. In May, the City of Chicago's income from the real estate tax missed budget projections by $11 million.

Serious question: Who gets the new meter money from meters that are placed in new city sub-divisions. As more areas are gentrified who gets the new meter revenue? I was also told that the Daley family have bought a hidden interest in the parking meter company! Where are the feds?
Ex- 11th Ward goons are on the payroll. We will get them

June 5, 2009
BY RICK TELANDER Sun-Times Columnist
There are times when you get sent to your room without dessert.
This is such a time.

The City of Chicago, led by Mayor Daley and a vast and tumorous army of aldermen and bagmen and yesmen and opportunists and spineless, parasitic political-machine halfwits of forms never seen outside the roiling cesspool of governmental slop-trough greed, has proven itself unworthy of something as potentially delicious and fulfilling as the 2016 Olympic Games.

There was an opportunity there.

But the pitiful stuff just keeps on comin', warnings be damned.

Best ever was the city parking meter deal that gave a private company the rights to all the quarters Chicago parkers can shove into sidewalk machines until 2084.

''Duh Mare,'' who could still be in office in 2016, and his boys pushed that one through so fast it boggles the mind.

Forget the fact the city took an estimated $974 million less than what the 75 years worth of revenue was worth. Or the fact any fool can jack up meter rates and provide meters that don't work.

The City Council rubber-stamped Daley's idea for gaining some upfront whip-out cash.

When the machines didn't work, Daley said ... Hey, lay off. Does your own computer work all duh time?

The politics of pay-for-play and skimming and old-fashioned, suspender-snapping, cigar-chomping, big-bellied ''Where's mine?'' clout is so vibrant and alive and grotesquely arrogant here in Chicago that it is very nearly a breathing, slime-dripping creature worthy of a Star Wars-style nuclear assault.

There there must be ramifications for being blatantly corrupt and/or stupid.

There must be.

Put on a sporting display for the world in 2016?

No.

Big shots blew it
Sorry, all you business and political big shots who are trying to ram this Olympics-are-good-for-you thing down the citizens' throats.

You blew it.

You didn't change your appetites, your sloth, your animal dumbness.

Why, just a month ago, Michael Scott, the president of the Chicago Public Schools board, sent an e-mail to all the city's school principals telling them to raise the Chicago 2016 Olympic flag and start promoting Mayor Daley's pet project.

Think that's unbiased?

Think there might not be, uh, ''problems'' for reluctant or skeptical principals?

This is the town where boating clubs have already been warned by the Chicago Yachting Association that there might be ''retribution'' for opposing the Olympic bid and the water and harbor difficulties the Games will create.

I myself will be expecting some kind of tax auditing or car-booting or camera-surveillance for my rebellious views, or, who knows -- leg-breakers? -- to help me ''understand'' the benefits of the Games to our town.

Mayor Daley's Chicago regime is a joke that plays like an old whoopee cushion.

We won't even bring up the fact former governor ''Hot Rod'' Blagojevich was once an instrumental part of Chicago's 2016 Games bid. If there was more clown greasepaint that his family could put on, it would need a face the size of a billboard to do it.

Former Illinois first lady Patti Blagojevich is on a reality TV show -- because her gerbil-cheeked, heavily-indicted husband was forbidden by the law to be on it -- eating bugs and being humiliated and semi-tortured for cash.

We're down to slapstick
Dear God, we don't ask for decency in Chicago or Illinois politics. We don't even ask for intelligence. But is it wrong to ask for something less than slapstick?

Yet things just get worse and worse with our political leaders.

What, 26 aldermen have been to prison in modern times?

Alderman Isaac Carothers, a longtime West Side Daley hack and political operations insider, is allegedly so corrupt that even wearing a wire for the feds (which he did) didn't prevent him from being indicted the other day for fraud and bribery.

Michael Jordan and even Barack Obama himself are going to speak out for the Chicago Olympic bid.

Who cares?

Do you know how much money Chicago stands to lose in this deal? Are you a wheeler-dealer? A connected guy? A Daley relative hooked up to pension-fund investments?

You'll pay, if you're not.

I guarantee you.

I promise you.

The Chicago bid folks have a massive public-relations war chest.

All we citizens have is common sense, and the knowledge of what goes on here.

In Louisiana, they have governmental corruption that is so over-the-top it's funny.

Ours is just dumb as snot.

Bad kids should be punished.

To bed. No food. The end.

Take note: Luis Gutierrez and Jessie (senate seat buyer) Jackson were a close threat to unseat the mayor in the last mayoral election. Now,... Luis Gutierrez and Jessie jr. are both under federal investigation for serious offenses which have now rendered them quiet, worried and wounded. Sounds like de ja vue ala Miriam Santos style. Daley was the puppet master who pulled the strings to have his friend, Scott Lasser who headed the FBI, indict and destroy her. This is a mob boss. Why does he still roam free? There's so much we don't know. And Daley keeps going and going and going. I know psychology well and I can read people amazingly. This man does not care if his son or nephew go to prison. He only worries about himself. And it is clear he has something up his sleeve that keeps him un-touched and I think, unfazed by all the crooked stealing and bullshit he creates in others lives. He is a snake to the highest degree. Why has no one or nothing brought him down yet. And bet your bottom dollar that Daley and his crooked brothers over at J.P. Morgan have crunched these numbers on the parking meter sale and own a hidden interest that guarantees them tens of millions of dollars over the next 3 generations! I do not even doubt this. Daley pulled off the ultimate heist!!!!!!

Are we, the electorate and citizens of this city going to forever remain the fools? Does Daley truly know something we do not know, and are we really for some unknown reason stuck with this criminal?

Parking-meter mess might give City Council the guts to stand up to Daley

June 6, 2009

BY FRAN SPIELMAN City Hall Reporter/fspielman@suntimes.com
Chicago's parking meter mess could be the tipping point that awakens the sleeping giant otherwise known as the City Council.

No issue in recent memory -- not even the Hired Truck scandal or Mayor Daley's infamous midnight destruction of Meigs Field -- seems to have resonated as much with voters as the aftermath of the city's 75-year, $1.15 billion lease of its parking meters and the steep schedule of rate hikes that came with turning them over to private hands.

It was bad enough that drivers had to stuff their pockets with quarters to pay the higher meter rates.

But then, when the transition to the private company got bogged down by broken pay-and-display boxes and overstuffed and improperly calibrated meters that overcharged, Daley and aldermen who gave the deal quick approval had a crisis on their hands.

Inspector General David Hoffman piled on by concluding that the city could have gotten nearly $1 billion more if it had held on to the meters and just raised the rates itself.

And instead of approving the meter deal, after just two days of debate, to plug a $150 million budget gap, Hoffman said aldermen should have conducted an independent analysis and considered other alternatives.

Last week, the City Council ran for cover by decreeing that any future sales or leases of major city assets be required to get longer consideration.

That could be just the start of an aldermanic revolt, some on the Council say.

"The entire City Council has been far too compliant during this mayor's tenure," said Ald. Joe Moore (49th). "We have to start acting like the legislative body we were meant to be."

Ald. Ricardo Munoz (22nd) said he senses "an awakening happening" in a City Council that briefly flexed its muscle during the scandals over the Hired Truck Program, improper city hiring and questionable minority contracting, only to go back into its shell.

Why would the meter fiasco trigger a declaration of independence from the Council when the corruption scandals didn't?

Ald. Leslie Hairston (5th) sees it this way: "All of those other things weren't up for a vote by the City Council."

Hairston, one of only five members of the Council who voted against the parking-meter deal, added, "There's a certain amount of respect or trust that you've gotta have. Once that trust has been broken ..."

There was a time when Daley ruled the City Council through political enforcers Tim Degnan, Degnan successor Victor Reyes and Ald. Patrick Huels (11th), the onetime Daley floor leader who was forced out as the result of a 1997 ethics scandal.

Then, the mayor wouldn't tolerate dissent. He was determined to pitch a shutout on every vote. Those who dared to oppose him were targeted for defeat by the Reyes-led Hispanic Democratic Organization or other pro-Daley political armies.

But that was before the Degnan- and Reyes-led city Office of Intergovernmental Affairs found itself at the center of a hiring scandal that culminated with the 2006 conviction of Daley's former patronage chief, Robert Sorich.

Now that the HDO has been disbanded, it's easier for aldermen to oppose the mayor without paying a political price. And with 1,100 city workers having been laid off and a federal hiring monitor still in place, there's a lot less IGA can offer aldermen in exchange for their loyalty.

Earlier this year, an outcry from aldermen and city residents forced Daley to cancel a plan, borne of the need for cost-cutting, to have City Hall limit the plowing of side streets to regular work hours to reduce overtime and skip side streets altogether after minor snowstorms.

Now, the political storm caused by the parking meter mess threatens to embolden aldermen even further.

"We're getting our brains beat in," said one Daley ally, who spoke on the condition of not being identified.