Journal Editor

James Dvorak, the ex-convict who worked for a company hired by the city to sell property earmarked for redevelopment and who co-owned a billboard company that landed a lucrative deal from the city in 2003, was somewhat of a familiar figure in Des Plaines City Hall during a period of time between 2001 and 2004.

According to one city official, Dvorak attended a number of staff meetings where the redevelopment of property at Mannheim and Higgins roads, across from O'Hare Airport, was discussed.

Another city employee told the Journal this week that Dvorak actually sat in on a meeting where the subject discussed was a controversial proposal to develop townhouses on East River Road north of Golf Road. And a third city employee said he remembers seeing Dvorak leave the office of then Acting City Manager Bill Schneider about a year and a half ago.

"I didn't know why he was there," said one city employee about Dvorak's presence at a meeting in City Hall about two years ago where plans for a new townhouse development at 170 E. River Rd. were discussed. As far as the employee was aware, Dvorak just happened to sit in on the meeting because he was in City Hall. That same employee also said that Dvorak's presence at the meeting "gave me the creeps."

Dvorak's connection to Des Plaines first publicly surfaced around April of this year when it was learned that he and Schneider were close friends. Schneider at the time was head of the city's Economic Development Commission (EDC), a voluntary board of local business people that advises the city on development-related issues. Schneider was also head of the city's Community Development Dept., which administers land use and zoning issues, as well as acting city manager for two stints. A member of the Economic Development Commission, Tom Green, said recently that, he, too, has been a close friend of Dvorak's for years.

It's believed that Dvorak's relation to Des Plaines has been ongoing since the year 2000, at about the time Schneider was hired as EDC executive director. In 2001, Des Plaines hired Rolling Meadows-based Prime Site Group, LLC to help market and acquire property on behalf of the city in the Mannheim-Higgins road area. Dvorak was employed with that company until August of this year when his friendship with Schneider became public. Prime Site was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars by Des Plaines taxpayers for work it performed, commissions it earned selling property, and as part of a settlement to end providing services to the city.

In the late 1980s and first half of the 1990s, Dvorak's name was frequently plastered across the front pages of Chicago newspapers and on radio and TV. He spent time in prison during the early 1990s for bribery and income tax evasion. Dvorak gained fame in the Chicago area in the 1980s as undersheriff of Cook County and being the right hand man of then Sheriff James O'Grady. He was also chairman of the Cook County Republican Party, a post well-known to candidates and volunteers in Chicago and suburban GOP circles.

In the late 1980s, the trouble for Dvorak began when Bill Jahoda, the mob's numbers man secretly tape recorded Chicago Outfit boss "Rocky" Infelice who allegedly said that organized crime paid Dvorak thousands of dollars in bribes to lay off suburban gambling operations. It was an accusation that Dvorak has repeatedly denied. Nevertheless, he spent time in the federal penitentiary in Oxford, Wisc. for his involvement in bribery and ghost payrolling schemes He was released in May of 2000.

According to Des Plaines Ald. Tom Becker (6th), chairman of the city's Community Development Committee, Dvorak and Prime Site principal Michael Blonstein attended numerous staff meetings in City Hall where progress in the Mannheim-Higgins Tax Increment Financing District was discussed. At those meetings, said Becker, were numerous other high ranking city officials including representatives of the city's Legal and Finance departments. City Attorney Dave Wiltse and Finance Director Jim Egeberg Monday both flatly denied that they attended any Mannheim-Higgins meetings that included Dvorak.

"I was at a couple of meetings with Blonstein," said Wiltse. "I was never at a meeting with Dvorak. I would have known him immediately." Wiltse and a family member of his have been involved in Northwest suburban Republican Party politics for years. Dvorak served as Cook County GOP chairman until 1990 when, under pressure, he was forced to give up that post.

Apparently no one from the city who attended those sessions was aware of Dvorak's highly visible criminal background, or have admitted that they were aware. In an Aug. 14, 2000 letter from Prime Site's Blonstein to Dvorak, who apparently was not employed with the company at that time, Blonstein thanks Dvorak for introducing the company to Schneider and then Des Plaines City Manager Wally Douthwaite.

Becker in an interview with the Journal Sunday said the staff meetings that included Dvorak and Blonstein went on for a period between 2001 and early 2004 until just a few months before Schneider resigned in April 2004. Blonstein and/or Dvorak attended between six and eight of those meetings, said Becker. Schneider quit his $89,000 a year city job after he informed Mayor Tony Arredia that he had been convicted of mail fraud in the mid-1990s. Only days earlier it was publicly revealed that Schneider and Dvorak had been close friends.

Becker Tuesday reiterated his contention that either Dvorak or Blonstein attended staff meetings where the redevelopment of Mannheim-Higgins property was discussed.

"If they didn't," said Becker, "they wouldn't be doing their job." He added that he knows this to be the case because he attended many of those same meetings. Becker reaffirmed his contention that many city staff members from various departments also attended those sessions.

Wiltse said he first learned of Dvorak's involvement with the city this past May when he began investigating the city's mysterious one-year contract extension with Prime Site that had not been authorized by City Council.

Egeberg said he never was involved in a meeting with Dvorak. He does recall, however, seeing Dvorak leave Schneider's 6th floor City Hall office about a year and a half ago.

"I didn't know who he was," said Egeberg. He said he learned the identity of Dvorak after asking Schneider's secretary.