Taxpayer Funded Melville Study in 1993Archived Message
Posted by Transparency on January 16, 2019, 10:54 pm
Below is an excerpt from an article regarding the "Melville Study" mentioned in another post. This is a lengthy read, but THE NAMES mentioned and the inaction taken by Granite City City Hall make it worth your time. Here we are twenty three to twenty six years later, same names, same bull shit. We are looking at generational nepotism. As citizens we should want access to the entire tax-funded study done by Melville Public Advisors. This 26 year old study expressly spoke out specifically against the money drain known as the Granite City Township, it would be very interesting to know what else the study contained, because it clearly fell on deaf ears. "Don't touch my money, don't touch my family's money." There aren't enough committees nor neighborhood beautification to clean up this heap of political bullshit.
"Michael Richardson kept a running inventory of where anti-township turmoil might erupt. Madison County, across the Mississippi from St. Louis, often came up as a possible hot spot; and Mel Jones of Collinsville, a veteran taxpayer advocate, was the man Richardson expected to lead there the charge to the ballot box against township government. He had not expected David Partney of Granite City to pick up the activist clipboard.
Businessman and son of a former mayor, Partney was running himself in 1996 for the mayoralty. Partly to gain publicity for that campaign but perhaps because of genuine concern over WASTE AND NEPOTISM IN GRANITE CITY TOWNSHIP (coterminous with the municipality), Partney instigated a petition drive calling for the elimination of that one township. He cited for me figures purporting to show FOUR TIMES AS MUCH TAX MONEY THERE WENT TO PAY THE TOWNSHIP TO ADMINISTER WELFARE as went to the general assistance recipients in 1995. Marilyn Vise of the Belleville News-Democrat focused one of her articles on the fact that Granite City Township was paying the mother of Assessor Darlene Laub to clean the township hall and had hired her sister-in-law as a computer programmer. Township Supervisor Bernadine Hagnauer put her daughter-in-law on the township payroll as a bookkeeper.A "long-standing tradition" was the way Vise characterized nepotism at the township's headquarters.
He got a late start, but Partney estimated he needed only 1,850 signatures. By the second week of August 1996, facing the same petition deadline as the STOP initiatives (about which he had never heard), he felt he was doing "pretty good" at gathering the signatures himself The he fell ill and ended up in the hospital. To obtain the last few hundred names on his petition, he hired two temporary helpers; and on Monday, 19 August, he turned in approximately nineteen hundred signatures.
Township officials naturally prepared to challenge him. Laub said they would be inspecting the 79 pages carefully. Partney, much like his northern counterparts, at the close of the petitioning period, cautioned township officials not to stand between the people and the polls on this issue. He also planned to consult his attorney about whether township officials should be able, as the law provided and as occurred in McHentry Township, to sit in judgement of his hard-won signatures.
The day after he deposited his petitions with the town clerk he picked up an endorsement from the Belleville News Democrat. Discounting his potentially self-serving motive (making an issue of Granite City Township while running for mayor), the editors at Belleville (in St. Clair County) said....THIS PORTION WAS UNAVAILABLE, THE TEXT PICKS UP HERE ...-ing bias on the part of the three hearing officials and challenging the rule requiring at least 10 percent of the township's voters sign the petition.
A St. Clair County associate circuit judge, Richard Aguirre, heard the case on 3 October after, in his words, "The Madison County judges wanted no part of it."Scroggins pointed out that HAGNAUER, WHITAKER AND SKUBISH had financial stakes in the electoral board's verdict and should not have been part of the hearing. Township attorney William Schooley said "anyone serving on the electoral board would have reached the same conclusion as to the certifiability of the ballot request. The next day Judge Aguirre ruled against Partney. Facts demonstrated to the judge that the activist had too few valid signatures, and neither the parties to the suit nor the judge could find "any precedent upholding a challenge (of) an electoral board's composition on judicial review" Partney, said the judge, had not demonstrated that the statutory requirement of 10 percent was "an unreasonable limitation" of the electorate's access to the ballot via the petition route.
David Partney never sought assistance from Richardson or Anderson. Certainly they would have been able to save him the trouble of his second futile signature solicitation in the winter of 1996-1997. Earlier, however, when it really mattered and when he stood a good chance of performing the first hostile takedown of an individual Illinois township since the 1970 Constitution made it possible, his isolation from the rest of the abolition movement hindered him. Why do I (the author) feel he missed an excellent opportunity? First, Granite City (the municipality) had helped fund a 1993 study in which the investigators found Granite City Township "costly, redundant and unnecessary."Melville Public Advisors recommended at the time what Partney was doing in 1996: elimination of the coterminous township. Granite City Township was thoroughly urbandized and had little or no rural tradition upon which protownship forces could play. Second, Partney was a seasoned and fairly savvy politician and he apparently had the personal financial resources to devote himself to a civic cause like abolition of his township or running for mayor. He had a respected daily newspaper carefully covering his movement and editorializing on behalf of his plan to try and save taxpayers the cost of running a township that was coextensive with a municipality. Third, tax issues had received a lot of play in the 1990s and taxpayers were seeking way to control outlays. Finally, Fortress Astoria had its sights trained on the Chicago area, Rock Island County and Saline County. Partney's little operation attracted no obvious interference from TOI. (Townships of Illinois)."
on January 16, 2019, 10:54 pm