Cleaning up after Blagojevich

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PubDate: 04-05-2009 Zone: ALL
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EARLY EDITION
STATE OF CORRUPTION
Cleaning up after Blagojevich
A TRIBUNE AGENDA FOR REFORM
As federal prosecutors build on an indictment
accusing Rod Blagojevich and his cronies of selling
off state jobs, laws and contracts, the former governor finds himself increasingly isolated.
Blagojevich has lost another leading criminal
defense attorney. His friends are turning against
him. His wife’s business practices are under scrutiny. And the feds show no sign of being done just
yet.
“This indictment is by no means the end of this,”
said former prosecutor Ron Safer. “There’s a whole
infrastructure in state government that supported
what’s in these allegations.” CHICAGOLAND
When the Tribune launched its “State of Corruption” campaign in February, the path to
begin cleansing Illinois government and politics
wasn’t clear. Reform proposals now are coming
fast and furious. And furious is good: No matter
how embarrassing the scandals, lawmakers
likely will do as little as possible unless agitated
citizens exert relentless pressure.
Today the Tribune editorial board offers the
first of six essential remedies for the Illinois
culture of political sleaze. They range from regu-
lating campaign finance to giving citizens the
power to recall state officeholders.
The series opens with the need to unravel
government secrecy.
Lawmakers have vowed to put some teeth into
the Illinois Freedom of Information Act. But the
package of reforms being considered is a tepid
one, relying largely on the good faith of recalcitrant public officials. Fixing the law will require much, much more than what the legislature is now contemplating. It will require a
wholesale rewrite, not a handful of tweaks.
READ THE FULL EDITORIAL, PAGE 23
Joe and Alicia Malnati sit at a service desk at Babies R Us in Schaumburg. The Catholic couple went against church teaching and used in-vitro fertilization to conceive. STACEY WESCOTT/TRIBUNE PHOTO
FAITH
OR FAMILY?
By Manya A. Brachear |
TRIBUNE REPORTER
Devout Catholic couple
defies church, turns to
science to have a baby
Six months after they met, Alicia and Joe
Malnati discussed baby names. Faithful Roman Catholics, they waited to make a lifetime
commitment before they consummated their
relationship.
But after two years of marriage—one of
them spent trying to get pregnant—the young
Streamwood couple still had not conceived.
“ ‘Let nature take its course.’ We heard that
a lot,” said Joe Malnati, 29. “Wait. Just wait.”
The Malnatis soon discovered they were
waiting for a moment that would never arrive—not without a little help from science.
After ovulation accelerators, sperm-count enhancers, inseminations and acupuncture
failed to work, they pursued in-vitro fertilization.
Doing so put the couple at odds with their
church. In December, days after Alicia Malnati surprised her husband with balloons and a
positive pregnancy test, the Vatican reinforced decades of opposition to IVF, saying
the procedure of fertilizing an egg in a petri
dish should not replace the loving union between a husband and wife.
“The difference between assisting nature
and ... manufacturing something that takes
Please turn to Page 16
SUBURBAN HOUSING CRISIS
Foreclosure fallout
crosses county lines
By Azam Ahmed
and Darnell Little
TRIBUNE REPORTERS
From Lake County to Will
County, the same story has
played out across suburban
Chicagoland in the past year:
Upset neighbors call to complain about an uncut lawn
and broken windows. The village comes out to address the
problem and inadvertently
stumbles upon a foreclosure.
In a sense, the suburbs’
quest to address the foreclosure problem begins at the
end, crippling efforts to stem
the tide of abandonment and
SMART
Get off that couch
Most of us sit wrong, causing lower
back pain. Julie Deardorff offers
strategies for better posture.
falling property values.
Dealing with foreclosures
and the economic fallout had
not been a typical duty of suburban leaders, particularly in
middleand
upper-class
towns. And it shows. Many
towns in counties that have
seen filings surge 100 percent
since 2006 are without a strategy.
“It’s a mind-set shift and so
it takes a while to ... turn that
into action,” said Beth Dever
of the Metropolitan Mayors
Caucus in Chicago. “We’ve
been surprised at the number
Please turn to Page 4
BUSINESS
Dark chocolate romance
Sales are up on the dark side as the sweet stuff
enters the same realm as fine wines and cheeses.
But will rising prices send us back to Hershey’s?
WEEKEND WEATHER
Highland Park has its share of foreclosed homes, like this one at
1101 Green Bay Rd. DAVID TROTMAN-WILKINS /TRIBUNE PHOTO
SATURDAY
SUNDAY
52/38
41/30
See Tom Skilling’s forecast in Chicagoland. SECTION 2
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| SUNDAY, APRIL 5, 2009
NEWS FOCUS
Suburban housing crisis
New construction has stalled or even stopped in some suburban areas, leaving behind eyesores like this lot at 740 S. Phillippa St. in Hinsdale. ANTONIO PEREZ/TRIBUNE PHOTOS
Municipal budgets also affected
Foreclosure in the suburbs
Foreclosure rates have climbed significantly throughout the Chicago area,
stretching into affluent communities. The crisis has even begun to impact
migration patterns as many people have been unable to move.
2006-08
CHANGE
TOTAL FORECLOSURES 2005-08
Per number of mortgagable properties
0-3%
3.1-6.0%
6.1%-9%
More than 9%
%
’06: #
Foreclosures
’08: #
Highland Park
323.5%
’06: 34
’08: 144
M C H E N R Y
Chicago
L A K E
305.8%
’06: 7,353
’08: 29,842
C O O K
Chicago
D U P A G E
K A N E
Hinsdale, which straddles Cook and DuPage Counties, has seen more than 120 homes fall into foreclosure since 2006,
like this one at 829 S. Phillippa St.
Continued from Page 1
and types of municipalities affected—everyone can talk about it
and has some experience with it. It’s
really something that’s affecting the
entire region.”
Highland Park, home to Ravinia
and one of two Saks Fifth Avenue
stores in the state, saw 144 foreclosures last year, a 188 percent increase from 2007, according to data
from RealtyTrac, an online foreclosure listing service. To the southwest, bald stretches of cleared earth
signal a busted boom in Bolingbrook, where foreclosures totaled
more than 1,000 in 2008, about 4 percent of the housing stock.
Even Naperville had 636 foreclosures last year, a 165 percent increase from 2007.
“All we have are anecdotal information, comments and conversations with municipal officials,” said
Rick Curneal, legislative director
for the DuPage Mayors and Managers Conference. “Even those tend
to be on the line of, ‘We really don’t
know what’s going on.’ ”
To head off more surprises, policy
groups are lobbying for legislation
that would require lenders to notify
a municipality as soon as a home
falls into foreclosure. The bill,
which passed out of the Illinois
House in late March, also would
guarantee that municipalities recoup money spent maintaining vacant homes.
Recently, the collar counties were
awarded money from the federal
government to combat blight, but
with the largest grant at less than
$5.2 million, for all of DuPage
County, most municipalities will remain grossly underfunded, experts
say.
The new legislation would produce funds for communities that in
many cases are facing sizable budget shortfalls.
In Oak Lawn, real estate transfer
taxes dropped by one-half since 2006
because of the housing slump, as
foreclosures spiked 332 percent.
Among those, 111 vacant Oak Lawn
homes went back to the banks in
2008.
“When we come out of this, which
Foreclosed but
not forewarned
Suburbs learn about foreclosures
when the guy next door moves: chi
cagotribune.com/chiforeclosures
we will, there are going to be a number of homes for sale,” said Oak
Lawn Mayor David Heilmann.
“Each municipality will want to
make sure that it’s presenting its
best face.”
A desire for privacy and a sense of
shame over losing one’s home also
detract from efforts to assess the
true scale of the crisis in many suburbs, experts say.
“It’s kept very quiet and very few
reach out and say they need help,”
said Heilmann. “All of that is going
on within the four walls of their
home.”
Recovery from the foreclosure crisis is complicated by the patchwork
of cities and villages across the sixcounty region. No single course of
action would address the disparate
problems, experts say.
“Different communities have different capacity and resources,” said
Lee Deuben of the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning. “So
while you may be able to create a vacant-building registry, if you [don’t]
have the staff to run it is the cost benefit really there?”
Already, the crisis has impacted
migration patterns—and by extension growth in tax bases—in the
Chicago area, experts say.
For years, the collar counties have
been the beneficiaries of out-migration from Cook County. But new census data show the rate of increase in
population growth for Kane, DuPage, Kendall and Will Counties has
slowed as more residents remain in
Cook County.
“The difficult economic and housing market ... is essentially freezing
people in place,” said Kenneth Johnson, a demographer at the University of New Hampshire.
For example, 9,200 fewer people
migrated to Will County in 2007 than
in 2006, according to Johnson’s anal-
ysis of IRS data. That slowdown in
growth cost Will County $182 million in income those people would
have brought into the county.
Cook County has seen more of its
residents stay, but there’s little
cause to celebrate. Considered one
of the more exclusive communities,
Hinsdale, which straddles Cook and
DuPage counties, has seen more
than 120 homes fall into foreclosure
since 2006.
Megan Casey’s street has six
empty homes nestled among million-dollar mansions, most lost to
foreclosure. “For Sale” signs dot
nearly as many lawns as do those
championing political candidates.
In some ways, Hinsdale symbolized the headiest moments of the
suburban boom. Modest homes
were bid up to astronomical levels
by builders eager to tear them down
and construct larger homes. Casey
and her husband bought their fivebedroom, five-bath home in a short
sale in August for 20 percent less
than the previous owner paid in
2006, county documents show.
“I think it’s a fantastic opportunity for people to get into this community,” she said, staring down the
length of the sunny, well-kept street.
“Still, I would be pretty upset if
someone came in and bought for significantly less than I did in 2006.”
Like the unfortunate neighbors in
one Naperville subdivision, who
saw a bank-owned home sell a few
months back for about $450,000, less
than half of what a similar house
down the street sold for in 2006.
“Thirty to 40 percent of the singlefamily homes available are at least
short sale if not bank-owned,” said
Julie Ferenzi, a real estate agent in
Naperville. “The rapidly declining
property values are making homeowners not in foreclosure have a difficult time selling their property.”
To buyers, the market looks different. Casey, of Hinsdale, did well during the boom and the bust. And she
doesn’t worry about the empty
homes on her block.
“The market will take care of itself,” she said.
[email protected]
[email protected]
Naperville
364.2%
Bolingbrook
’06: 137
319.5%
’08: 636
’06: 257
’08: 1,078
W I L L
Hinsdale
388.2%
Oak Lawn
’06: 17
333%
’08: 83
’06: 91
’08: 394
MIGRANT INCOME STREAMS
(Income generated by people who have moved to the county)
Change from 2005-06 to 2006-07, by county, in millions
McHenry
Lake
Kane
Dupage
Cook
Will
-$182.2
data
$61.1
MOST FORECLOSURES
Top 10 Cities in the Chicago region
CITY
POPULATION
Aurora
176,413
Joliet
138,057
Elgin
100,014
Chicago Heights
FORECLOSURES (2006-08)
3,652
2,407
2,195
31,681
2,004
Plainfield
31,680
Bolingbrook
69,661
1,719
Waukegan
85,072
1,702
Round Lake
39,115
1,661
Harvey
31,082
1,656
Calumet City
41,614
SOURCES: IRS, RealtyTrac, U.S. Census
1,921
1,571
KEITH CLAXTON / TRIBUNE