South Cook News

The specter of former Orland Park Mayor Dan McLaughlin’s failed 2016 pension grab is hanging over the village government elections. A candidate for village trustee, Kelly O’Brien, is running on a ticket with two other trustee candidates close to the former mayor, and she is almost certainly in violation of the residency requirement of the state’s election code.

Candidates for local government office are required to be qualified electors and are required to have lived in the municipality for at least a year before an election. But O’Brien voted in Chicago as recently as the March 2018 primary, attorneys with the law firm Gardiner, Koch Weisberg & Wrona stated in a March 15 letter that Orland Park resident Bernard Gorak sent to the Illinois Attorney General and Cook County State’s Attorney. The lawyers also noted that O’Brien was apparently still receiving mail at her Chicago address less than a year ago.

O’Brien, from Palos Hills, is part of the Orland Integrity Party slate with incumbent Trustee Carole Griffin Ruzich and Devin Hodge, a District 135 School Board member. On March 21, the Friends of Devin Hodge received $2,000 from Citizens for Daniel J. McLaughlin, according to Illinois Sunshine. Friends of Kelly O’Brien is listed as a related committee. And Illinois Sunshine shows that McLaughlin donated $250 to Citizens for Carole Griffin Ruzich when she first ran for office back in 2011; she has been on the Orland Park Board since.

Mayor Keith Pekau

Back in October 2016, the board voted unanimously to make the mayor a full-time position and raise the salary from $40,000 to $150,000 a year, effective in the mayor’s next term. The salary change would have also boosted McLaughlin’s pension from $25,000 a year to more than $100,000. But he never saw the money. McLaughlin lost his re-election bid in April 2017 to current mayor Keith Pekau.

On March 4 of this year, the board approved an ordinance proposed by Pekau to revert the mayor’s salary back to $40,000 and again make the mayor’s job part-time. The job and salary change become effective in 2021; a salary change is unlawful midterm. Pekau said he proposed the change to follow through on a campaign promise.

Pekau, who supports another slate of three candidates for the Orland Park Board, running under a People Over Politics banner, accepted no pension with the job.

Pekau told South Cook News that under his tenure the village has cut “three to four million in annual spending” and has eliminated $40 million in debt.

But Pekau says perhaps the greatest achievements for the village over the past two years has been in economic development. In October 2017, AMC theaters announced it would open a theater in the Orland Square Mall. In October 2018, upscale department store Von Maur announced it would open a store in the mall as well. And the former Toys R Us store has been purchased and is now being redeveloped.

Pekau says the People Over Politics candidates, William R. Healy, Michael R. Milani and Cindy Nelson Katsenes, will bring the same dedication to fiscal responsibility and growth to the village.

“They are people you can work with to protect the taxpayer’s money, and get things done,” Pekau said.

Back in January, Orland Park old-time political forces tried to get the People Over Politics candidates thrown off the ballot. A local electoral board ruled that the petitions of Healy, Milani and Katsenes failed to clearly specify the positions they were seeking. But in February a judge overturned the ruling, saying “there is no confusion whatsoever.”