A sheriff’s cruiser led five vehicles on a morning caravan past swaths of abandoned buildings and up to the suburb’s aging City Hall.
A handful of forensic accountants stepped out of a minivan and met a group of Cook County sheriff’s investigators waiting in front, and together they walked unannounced into Harvey’s municipal building and demanded to start scouring the financial books of a scandal-plagued south suburb long overdue for legally mandated audits.
Friday’s unusual tag team signaled a new level of scrutiny for a blue-collar suburb that the Tribune reported last month had become arguably the most lawless community in the region, coupled with shaky finances approaching insolvency. But the new attention also raised key questions about just who is looking at what, while also touching on debates about whether the increased oversight by the sheriff and state comptroller is too much or too little.
The surprise visit came the same morning the Tribune revealed questionable insider deals in Harvey, including an $88,000 social media deal tied to the mayor’s son that experts criticized as of little quality.
Harvey officials have said they’ve done nothing wrong, have been working to do the audits and welcome the help.
Still, one of Sheriff Tom Dart’s top aides, Cara Smith, said problems uncovered by the Tribune underscore the dangers of not aggressively enforcing the state’s audit law — because the lack of audits is a “prime indicator of other problems.”
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“In our experience, we also see (in noncompliant communities) significant lapses in the police protection capacity,” she said. “And if people aren’t protected, it’s a non-starter.”
‘Proactive’
Dart has pushed for the authority to access Harvey’s internal records since the Tribune reports highlighted the suburb’s high level of unsolved violent crime, its high-ranking officers with sketchy backgrounds, and fiscal woes deepened by years of overspending, heavy borrowing and delayed bill payments.
The series showed how all levels of government aided and abetted the status quo. The actions ranged from an undercover FBI operation helping re-elect the controversial mayor, to the state comptroller’s office doing little to enforce the law requiring towns to annually audit how they spend tax dollars.
Dart publicly cited Harvey’s lack of audits the last four years as a key reason that outsiders should look deeper at the suburb of 25,000 residents, and he pushed for a county ordinance to give him largely unfettered access to Harvey’s policing and financial records. But as that legislation has stalled, Smith said, Dart’s office proposed a unique partnership with the state comptroller, who already had legal authority to get financial records from noncompliant towns.
“In the wake of the opposition (to the proposed ordinance), and all the information that the Tribune has exposed, we felt it was very important, as did the comptroller, to be proactive,” Smith said.
That led to the Friday morning caravan and visit to Harvey. Smith said the state’s forensic accountants later met Harvey’s accountants to begin reviewing records. She said the partnership could be a model for forcing audits in other noncompliant suburbs.
But there were mixed signals about how much access Dart’s office would get to whatever records were gathered. The comptroller’s office said its accountants would review them and pass on records if they suggest illegal activities, while Smith said the agency and the sheriff were still discussing what records the sheriff’s office could review.
Also uncertain is which other enforcement agencies may be looking into Harvey.
The Tribune has reported that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating bonds the suburb sold to fund a botched hotel development deal that cost taxpayers $10 million. The city directed more than $500,000 in consulting fees on the bond issue to the city comptroller’s firm while he was also working with the developer. The comptroller has told the Tribune he did nothing wrong.
But the scope of such investigations is typically limited. A former SEC enforcement official, attorney Thomas Gorman, said the commission’s purview focuses on what a city’s officials told investors who bought the bonds, not other issues involving development deals.
Political debate
Even with its partnership with the state comptroller, the sheriff’s office will continue to push the controversial ordinance giving the sheriff more authority, Smith said, though its future appears bleak.
County Board President Toni Preckwinkle and five commissioners have spoken against it, including Jeff Tobolski, D-McCook, who also is the mayor of that small suburb.
“All of the mayors don’t want it,” Tobolski said. “At the end of the day, it’s a problem for the General Assembly.”
At the state level, Comptroller Judy Baar Topinka has been criticized by her November election opponent, Lt. Gov. Sheila Simon, for doing too little to enforce the audit law. Simon said Friday’s action should have come years ago.
“I think this is a case where sunshine on some of the spending practices may have eliminated some of the problems,” she said in a statement Friday.
Topinka’s spokesman, Brad Hahn, has told the Tribune that Topinka inherited a large number of noncompliant local agencies from her predecessor and that her office has been paring the list. He couldn’t provide more details or updated numbers Friday.
A review of the most recent list available, and online filings, indicated that at least 19 agencies across the state were behind by at least two audits.
“We will continue to work to bring communities into compliance with state reporting laws, and our results speak for themselves,” Hahn said.
Tribune reporters Joseph Ryan and Hal Dardick contributed.
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