Cicero Payouts

[marysol_21]

Looks like the Cicero taxpayers are still getting the short end of the stick having to dish out for all these settlement suits.

Cicero settles suits by 2 town president candidates
Defeated hopefuls alleged retaliation by municipal leaders

By Matt Baron
Special to the Tribune
Published May 5, 2005


The Town of Cicero has settled lawsuits filed by two men who alleged retaliation in the wake of their failed bids for town president.

The Town Board last week authorized paying the settlements to Charles Hernandez and Bob Alejandro. Hernandez received $500,000, while Alejandro received $140,000 and his attorneys, $33,000. Still unresolved is how much Hernandez's attorneys will receive.

Another former candidate for town president, Joseph Mario Moreno, won a settlement of $450,000 from the town in January 2004. He lost to Betty Loren-Maltese in 2001 and her successor, Ramiro Gonzalez, in 2003.

Moreno alleged that on Dec. 14, 2000, in the midst of his first campaign against Loren-Maltese, she orchestrated a trumped-up drunken-driving charge that involved then-town Police Supt. Thomas Rowan and other police officers. State prosecutors dropped the case two months later.

Larry Dominick, who defeated Gonzalez for village president in the Feb. 22 primary election, takes office Tuesday.

Hernandez and Dennis Both, the town's corporation counsel, agreed that Dominick's arrival was a major factor in the settlement's timing.

"We don't wish to continue being dragged back," Both said. "We want to look forward."

Hernandez, 52, said he was "at peace" with the settlement.

"I didn't want this to go into the new president's administration. I think he's going to have a hard enough time getting things straight, and getting things going," Hernandez said. "I didn't want to gouge anybody. I wanted what's best for my family and taxpayers."

Hernandez was a 20-year police veteran in 1997 when he lost to Loren-Maltese. Shortly thereafter, Hernandez, a lieutenant, was one of eight police officers suspended or fired from the force.

In a federal suit filed in May 1998, they alleged political retaliation.

Hernandez is the sixth to reach a settlement in the matter.

So far, the settlement sums have amounted to about $2 million, said Terence Moran, an attorney for the officers.

For Hernandez, the agreement includes giving him credit for 28 years of police service, despite his being off the job for the last eight of those years, and a pension based on current lieutenants' salary.

Hernandez said times were especially tough immediately after he was fired from the department.

He said Loren-Maltese waged a "vendetta" and sabotaged his and other fired officers' efforts to work in various security positions.

In August 2002, Loren-Maltese was sentenced to 8 years in a federal prison after being convicted with six others of using an insurance scam to funnel more than $10 million over five years toward personal use.

Hernandez has worked the last six years for the Cook County Bureau of Administration, for which he investigates complaints against civilian employees.

The town said five of the eight officers were fired for violating a requirement, recently lifted, that officers live in town. Officers said the allegation was false.

Still pending are the cases involving Officer Thomas Kuratko, who has since returned to the Cicero force, and Judith Velasquez, now a Berwyn police officer.


A separate case, involving former Officer Joseph DeMauro, also is pending.

Alejandro, 65, lost to Gonzalez in the February 2003 primary. Four months later, he contended he had been fired the previous November as the town's sidewalk repair administrator because he declined to support Gonzalez.

Alejandro, who filed the suit in U.S. District Court, declined to comment.

He sought more than $350,000 from Cicero and Gonzalez. Alejandro served as a town trustee in the 1990s and made a bid to run for collector earlier this year. That candidacy was scuttled when he was knocked off the ballot through a challenge lodged by Gonzalez's campaign adviser.

This spring, Alejandro replaced Gonzalez as Republican committeeman for Cicero Township. In January, Gary Skoien, chairman of the Republican Central Committee of Cook County, ousted Gonzalez from the post amid allegations that Gonzalez had bungled the November election, costing Frank Aguilar his state representative post.

Dennis Both maintained that Alejandro's firing was not political.

"The question is do you want to spend a lot more money to prove you're right, or do you cut your losses and quit being dragged backward into old disputes?" Both said.

[Bru67]

Corruption sure is pricey in this day and age!