The Democratic Ticket—The Unethical Slate of Candidates: EDITORIAL

The Democratic Party has earned the title of the unethical party. They have among their endorsed slate of candidates, Paul Catanzaro whom they have seen fit to nominate for re-election in November. This is an Alderman who cost the city badly needed funding through his multiple conflicts of interest that were so egregious that even the federal government refused to provide badly needed funding to city programs because of his conflicts involving having been president of H.R.A. and an alderman at the same time.

Then there is the issue of his being an employee of the Parks Department, while voting on issues that effect his department and even voting against contracting out of Parks Department work-- thereby creating the possible availability of overtime for himself, but the pièce de résistance is when he recently spoke on, and then voted against his own ethics commission report finding him in violation of city ethics policies. According to the city charter, any member of the council who is heard to speak on, or who votes on an issue in which he has a personal interest shall be expelled from the council.

When he did this, it was in the presence of his 13 fellow Democrats, on the public record and televised to the public on community access television, so there is no disputing what happened. Catanzaro was even quoted by a local newspaper as saying that if he didn’t vote on his own issue, then he couldn’t speak on it, so he decided to vote so he could address the council—in direct violation of the charter.

What earns the Democratic candidates the title of the unethical slate of candidates is that not only did they vote to reject the bi-partisan, unanimous findings of their own ethics commission against their cohort, but they also failed to perform their sworn duty of office to remove Catanzaro from the council as the charter mandated under the circumstances that they were all witness to and sworn to uphold.

Of course he is not the only one of the Democratic Aldermen who failed to pay his/her property taxes until he was exposed on this blog, but it at least deserves him a mention on that issue here too. The alderman who also works full time for the city Parks Department was quoted as saying that he couldn’t pay his $248.48 car tax bill until he received his tax refund—but of course the rest of us who aren’t elected to the council and who don’t receive a salary from the city are expected to pay on time.

For the party to nominate this individual with such a history of conflicts of interest and unethical behavior is as outrageous as the Democratic Party nominating Chris Dodd for re-election and deserves to be just as popular.