(HARVEY) The mayor of south suburban Harvey is accusing an alderman — a twice-convicted felon — of leading three fellow city councilors in blocking a tax levy that would help the city avoid laying off nearly half of its sworn police officers, the Chicago Sun-Times is reporting.
Harvey Ald. Lamont Brown (4th) and his colleagues’ effort “will result in the Layoff off [sic] 36 Harvey Police Officers, 22 Harvey Fireman and 20 Public Works Personnel,” according to an emailed statement by Sean Howard, a spokesman for the city.
Brown and the three aldermen have a 4-2 majority in the Harvey City Council. They say they are blocking the tax levy because they want Harvey Mayor Eric Kellogg to create a financial oversight committee to ensure fiscal stability for the city. Howard said Kellogg had extended an olive branch to the four aldermen, but they turned down his offer.
“The mayor and Finance Chair Ald. Donald Nesbit (5th) were more than conciliatory during the last board meeting in making a generous offer to aldermen that basically conformed to their demands,” Howard said. “They walked away from the deal.”
Howard said Harvey stands to lose $15 million if the levy is not passed. He said police officers are especially critical about Brown’s opposition to the tax levy.
“Alderman Brown’s . . . convictions doesn’t sit well with the Police Department given that Brown now supports 36 policemen being laid off,” Howard said.
In an emailed statement Sunday afternoon, Brown said he expects the voting bloc to remain intact: “This mayor has promised to work with the people’s representatives in the past, and still has yet to do so. We live in a democracy, not a dictatorship.
“The only way to ensure that the taxpayers’ dollars aren’t being wasted is to let this play out.”
“It should not be hard to want to be accountable to the service people risking their lives for us all,” he added.
In response to Brown’s opposition, members of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees held a protest Sunday morning urging Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez “to pursue the removal of a twice convicted drug felon,” Howard’s statement said. Brown also has a 1994 conviction for handling a stolen car.
A representative from the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office did not respond to a request for comment Sunday evening.
The protest, which drew more than 160 people, was held outside Brown’s listed address in the 14700 block of South Wood, Howard said. Some residents have questioned the legitimacy of Brown’s residency and claimed he actually lives in Hammond, Indiana, he said.
Ald. Keith Price (6th) — who said he is in favor of the levy — told the Chicago Sun-Times that he was “shocked” at Alvarez’s “lack of action.”
Reached by phone Sunday afternoon, Ald. Shirley Drewenski (1st), who Howard said has joined Brown in blocking the levy’s passage, said: “Don’t believe everything you hear.”
In a lawsuit filed early this year by Harvey resident W.C. Wofford in the Cook County Circuit Court’s chancery division, Wofford alleged that Brown’s felony convictions disqualify him from municipal office under state law.
The three aldermen aligned with Brown have proposed that the Harvey comptroller pay for Brown’s legal bills as he defends himself, Howard said.
Howard previously said the city shouldn’t be saddled with the cost of defending the suit because the cash-strapped city has no power to decide who is or isn’t a legitimate candidate for office.
“We have to respond to the lawsuit,” Howard said previously. “We have to outsource lawyers for that, and that’s unfair.”
More protests against the other aldermen who are blocking the levy vote are being planned for the coming weeks, Howard said.
Last December, the City of Harvey agreed to let a federal court oversee how it borrows and spends money after a bond market scandal cost its hard-up taxpayers millions.
On Dec. 10, 2014, six months after the Securities and Exchange Commission accused Harvey and its former Comptroller Joseph Letke of rigging a $14 million bond issue to personally benefit Letke and to illegally paper over cracks in the city’s finances, U.S. District Judge Amy St. Eve approved a consent decree that effectively ended the case.
The deal lifted a temporary ban on cash-strapped Harvey borrowing money and contained no admission of wrongdoing by any Harvey officials. But it also did not protect them from potential criminal prosecution.
It required that the city hire an independent monitor approved by the SEC to go over and approve its procedures before it could issue any more bonds. Harvey also had to hire a consultant to track its spending of money raised in the bond market, hire an SEC-approved auditor, and cooperate with the SEC.
— Chicago Sun-Times
