Former leader who had city workers remodel his home gets 5 years in prison
Only 40 minutes from the Loop, the small town of East Chicago sits just east of the Illinois state line, south of the ArcelorMittal steel mills along Lake Michigan and north of the BP oil refinery.But geography isn't the only way East Chicago is near Chicago. For decades, the hardscrabble city of 29,000 has been known, if only among the mostly disdainful residents in Indiana, for political corruption.
On Thursday, a federal judge sentenced former Mayor George Pabey to five years in prison, the third consecutive East Chicago mayor to come to grief in a federal courtroom.
In the fall of 2007, just three years after Pabey unseated scandal-plagued incumbent Robert Pastrick on a reform platform, city workers, while on the clock, began remodeling a home Pabey owned in Gary.
"Mr. Pabey focused his greed on a city that was a perennial target for corruption," U.S. District Judge James Moody said. "(Pabey) took the trust of the city's vulnerable citizens and turned them into victims again."
Before handing down the sentence — which was more than a year longer than called for by federal sentencing guidelines — Moody read off a list of 10 East Chicago city officials who had been convicted of public corruption charges since the year Pabey began his campaign.
Moody noted Pabey's predecessor, Pastrick, never faced criminal charges during his eight terms as mayor — but was ordered to pay $108 million in damages to the city after the Indiana attorney general won a first-of-its-kind civil racketeering lawsuit that alleged Pastrick and his allies ran the city as a criminal enterprise.
Pastrick, now 83, filed for bankruptcy last year.
Pastrick took office in 1972, touting reform after his predecessor, John Nicosia, was convicted in a kickback scheme. Nicosia was a reform candidate as well, pledging to end the open gambling and prostitution that still flourished under his predecessor, Walter Jeorse.
The state lawsuit against Pastrick was more than 60 pages long and included details about the Pastrick machine that could have described the operation of the Daley machine of the 1960s.
The 2003 election results, in which Pastrick defeated Pabey, were thrown out by the Indiana Supreme Court after Pabey discovered evidence of widespread vote fraud. Pabey then won the revote in a landslide.
Pabey had city workers painting his house and redoing his kitchen at a time when tax bills were skyrocketing in the city and the budget was so strained that 75 workers lost their jobs, noted Assistant U.S. Attorney David Nozick.
"While people are scraping together money to pay their taxes … he's finishing his basement," Nozick said.
If Moody's sentence was meant to send a message to East Chicago's political class, longtime residents aren't sure anyone will listen, said Alicia Rodriguez, who worked on Pabey's 2003 campaign and ran against him in 2007.
"We were so disappointed by George," Rodriguez said outside the courtroom Thursday. "Nobody really believes anyone anymore."
A new mayor is now in the proverbial hot seat in East Chicago. On Tuesday, Anthony Copeland, who took office after Pabey's conviction last year, won the Democratic primary and is all but assured of winning a full four-year term in the general election against a Republican candidate.
Jesse Gomez, a former city councilman who during his years in city politics found himself on the outs with both the Pastrick and Pabey administrations, said he thinks Copeland could end the ignominious streak in the mayor's office.
"I really think he means it," said Gomez. "(Copeland) seems to be the real thing."