The Building Department and the Bar * Conversations With The "Dark Side" * Required reading before reading this article: Click Here
As I became increasingly critical of the conduct of Mayor O'Connor and other members of the party with whom I ran in 2005 (The IVB), I began to appear as an asset to those who opposed O'Connor. This resulted in being invited to various "events" where O'Connor's opposition gathered. I was like someone from another planet. They wanted to "get to know me".
Their interest in me was not personal. They were just trying to size me up to determine to what extent I might be useful to them. Bare knuckle politicians "honestly" beleive that honest people are simply stupid. They perceived my willingness to publicly criticize members of my own party as an act of enormous political stupidity and political suicide.
They failed to understand one important fact: I was not interested in politics.
These invitations regularly took the form of inviting me to join them at a certain local bar after the city council meetings. Occasionally I took them up on the offer and mingled with them as they slurped down their favorite cocktails.
I considered it a unique opportunity to take an inside view of exactly what this political clique was all about. I enjoyed a rare opportunity to "hear them think", a planetary landscape very few have had the opportunity to explore. The experience provided a gold mine of political anecdotes. Here is one of them.
Making Conversation An entirely interesting bit of unsolicted information came to me from a rather unlikely source who has a very high political profile in Berwyn. His name is not relevant to this article. However, the U.S. Attorney's office has long been advised that I am willing to provide additional details.
The core of this gentleman's grievance with the new Mayor (O'Connor) was that O'Connor had locked down the building department and city hall in general.
He told stories of how city hall was "wide open" before O'Connor got into office. He told me how they could and did go into the building department late at night and early in the morning with unbridled access to building department files. He said you could do whatever you wanted with the files.
Why he offered me this information? Well, a cocktail here and a cocktail there, who knows what treasures might emerge from the trove. Maybe he was just overwhelmed with nostagia for the "good old days" or frustrated that he could not get his hands on some building department files to help out a friend. I don't know. All I did was listen. It was all very interesting.
However, you do find yourself wondering about the many political implications of having unbridled access to various city records and how access to that information can be used, in one way or another, for political purposes and political advantage.
And so, there you have it. A peek inside city hall before 2005. Smart money says that those policies were reinstated in 2009 when the clique regained control of city hall. Knowing this gentleman as I do, today it is easy to imagine that he (and the others) have resumed their former "privileges".
