Last year, municipal leaders in Oak Brook hired a law firm to get to the bottom of three things: how the now-former police chief, Tom Sheahan, was hired in 2005 by the village government under a previous regime; how Sheahan quietly ended up with a 2007 pension sweetener that put Oak Brook taxpayers on the hook for an extra $750,000 in liabilities; and how the now-former legislator responsible for getting the pension sweetener passed, Bob Molaro, was hired in 2009 by the village as a lobbyist.
In essence, the questions were:
- Why did Molaro go to bat for Sheahan?
- Did Sheahan pull a fast one on the village?
- Did Sheahan have a hand in the village’s hiring of Molaro, and if so, did this represent some sort of payback for help on the pension front?
The Better Government Association has a keen interest in these questions, too, because of the possibility that politics – not public interest – drove decision-making. Over the last several years the BGA has conducted a number of related investigations into Oak Brook’s municipal government.
Anyway, the aforementioned law firm recently completed its inquiry and released a report that, unfortunately, doesn’t provide definitive answers.
Partly that’s because several key people did not cooperate or otherwise weren’t interviewed. And the law firm didn’t have the ability to compel answers.
Regardless, the report (which cost taxpayers $25,000) raises some issues that merit a deeper look. Two things in particular were interesting:
- One of Sheahan’s politically connected brothers (one served as an aide to Mayor Richard M. Daley, the other was Cook County’s long-time sheriff) knew then-Oak Brook Mayor Kevin Quinlan and suggested to him that Sheahan be considered for the police chief job. What’s more, Sheahan’s job interview “did not follow the protocol and general back-and-forth questioning that occurred for other candidates,” indicating special treatment.
- While Oak Brook police chief, Sheahan allegedly recommended to “at least one” trustee that the village hire Molaro as a lobbyist, and it’s possible that Sheahan also recommended the same to Quinlan’s successor, John Craig. This all came after Molaro fronted legislation that allowed Sheahan to boost his pension payouts by more than $30,000 a year.
A third item also raised our eyebrows, but it bears a little more explanation.
The report suggests that Sheahan enlisted politically connected businessman Niranjan Shah as a “middle man” to get Molaro to sponsor the pension sweetener benefitting Sheahan. This is potentially significant, in part, because Sheahan allegedly tried later to get Shah’s engineering firm, Globetrotters, hired for a development project.
Shah was adamant in an interview with the BGA that he had nothing to do with Molaro, or Sheahan’s pension.
“This is highly inaccurate and the problem with this is it’s a no-win situation, they [the Village of Oak Brook] put it down online and it’s my reputation,” said Shah, who was a fundraiser for Rod Blagojevich, and whose company is a major, and sometimes controversial, public-sector contractor. “The whole thing is just so ridiculous.”
Shah wasn’t interviewed for the report, but after it was released he shot off a letter to the village denying any sort of connection to Sheahan’s pension boost. The letter, like the report itself, is posted on the village’s web site.
We reached out to the attorney who put together the report, William Seith, and he relayed that he may water down a section of the document in response to Shah’s letter.
“There will be a slight amendment to the language that doesn’t directly accuse him of being the ‘middle man,’ but suggests that he may have been, but it also could have been somebody else,” Seith said.
(Full disclosure: Shah has donated to the BGA, a nonpartisan nonprofit that is funded by contributions from the public, but that money was returned. Also, Shah has hired an attorney who sits on the BGA’s board of directors, former federal prosecutor Patrick Collins. However, neither donors nor the BGA board dictate what or how news stories are pursued by the BGA investigative unit.)
Molaro responded to several emailed questions via a spokesman, writing that “neither Tom Sheahan nor anyone else on his behalf ever contacted me about this matter.”
Related Stories:
Legislators Move to Kill Pension Perk for Ex-Chief
BGA to House Speaker Madigan: Allow a Vote on Sheahan Pension Amendment
Oak Brook Village Pres., Wife Collect $142K from 4 Pensions
Molaro also insisted he has “never met and never spoken with” Shah, and Molaro’s spokesman said there were errors in the report, including a reference to Molaro being a lobbyist in 2007. Molaro was in the Legislature at the time.
Molaro’s spokesman said Molaro was never contacted by the law firm doing the report (although Seith said: “I left several messages with his assistant and she basically blew me off.”)
Either way, a big gaping question remains for Molaro: How did he come to sponsor Sheahan’s pension sweetener? It’s a question Molaro is unable or unwilling to answer.
Meanwhile, Quinlan confirmed that Sheahan’s brother, nicknamed “Skinny,” did suggest Tom Sheahan for the police chief’s job some years back. But Quinlan said his connection to Skinny – whom he knew through business; Quinlan worked for Coca-Cola and Skinny worked at the government-run McCormick Place convention center, a Coke client – was not why Sheahan was ultimately hired.
“He was hired because it was approved by the board and he met the requirements of police chief,” Quinlan said.
He added: “Tom was not my first choice . . . it was said to me at a breakfast meeting by John Craig [then a village trustee who later became mayor], ‘Either appoint Tom Sheahan or we’re not going to have a chief.’ . . . It was made clear to me. . . . It was John Craig who was doing the moving and shaking on this.”
Craig didn’t want to speak to the BGA. Reached on the phone, he hung up on a reporter, saying: “I have no reason to ever talk to you again.”
The BGA exposed a number of problems in Oak Brook’s municipal operation during Craig’s reign, and Craig has previously blamed those BGA reports for him losing the 2011 election to the current mayor, Gopal Lalmalani.
Sheahan didn’t want to talk, but previously has denied any connection to Molaro or that there was any quid pro quo in his dealings in Oak Brook, a well-to-do western suburb.
A Sheahan attorney did chat with us and called the Oak Brook report “a smear job on Tom Sheahan” and said the document is riddled with “omissions” and “speculation.”
Aside from the “amendment” related to Shah, Seith said he stands by the report.
It’s worth noting that Oak Brook’s municipal government has pushed legislation in the General Assembly that would reverse Sheahan’s pension perk, but their efforts haven’t so far been successful. The BGA backs the village’s efforts.
OK, a lot of stuff here, and a lot of back and forth.
So where to go now?
The village is forwarding the report to the U.S. attorney’s office and the DuPage County state’s attorney, said Oak Brook Village Manager David Niemeyer. Those agencies then would determine whether a criminal probe is needed.
We hope prosecutors give the report a good read-through. While the document is certainly lacking – some describe it as sloppy – it still raises troubling questions about pay-to-play and clout under previous regimes in Oak Brook.
In other words, the waters remain too murky to let this just drop.
This blog post was written and reported by the Better Government Association’s Robert Herguth, who can be reached at (312) 821-9030 or rherguth@bettergov.org.
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