Sunday, April 28, 1996
By Paige St. John
Detroit Journal Staff Writer
An effort to win a contract to build the largest landfill in Illinois has entangled one of Michigan's largest waste companies in a grand jury probe.
A Will County grand jury in Joliet, Ill., is investigating the conduct of Illinois politicians hired by Detroit-based City Management Corp. to help the company win Will County's Joliet Arsenal landfill contract.
The deal to build what will become Illinois' largest landfill, on an abandoned munitions dump, is worth an estimated $1 billion over the next 20 years to the company that lands the contract.
City Management failed to become a finalist in an initial round of bidding last August. But the company emerged as one of the two top candidates for the contract after the earlier bids were thrown out by Will County's Assistant State's Attorney David Shiffer.
Shiffer, who oversaw the bid process, has since been fired for holding an improper meeting with City Management representatives.
"It looked to me like they were opening it up to let someone in," Will County Executive Charles Adelman told the Detroit Sunday Journal of the bidding.
"It's a can of worms that was created," Adelman said. "If they didn't throw out the first bids, City Management wouldn't have been in the running and none of this would have happened."
City Management officials insist they have done nothing improper.
Shiffer acknowledged to the Chicago Tribune this month that he is among those called to testify before the Will County grand jury. He said his bank records had been subpoenaed and that he expected to be asked about his connections to City Management's Illinois representatives - two Will County Republican Party members and a Democratic state senator from Joliet.
State's Attorney James Glasgow, who fired Shiffer, said he could not discuss the grand jury investigation. But, in a phone interview with the Detroit Sunday Journal, Glasgow did discuss his reasons for firing his assistant.
Glasgow said Shiffer lied to him by denying that he lived in a house owned by one of City Management's local representatives. Glasgow said he also learned - after the firing - that Shiffer had escorted City Management Vice President Yale Levin to a county Republican fund-raiser. In addition, Glasgow said, Shiffer asked a City Management representative for assistance as he sought a job as county public defender while he was working on the landfill contract.
Shiffer has denied any wrongdoing, saying he kept politics separate from his work on the landfill contract. He has said the first contract bids were thrown out in order to entertain a last-minute change from Waste Management Inc., one of three companies vying with City Management for the contract. Glasgow said Shiffer did not make the decision to seek new bids by himself.
The Joliet landfill would help City Management continue a westward expansion that it began last winter with the purchase of the western Michigan assets of a Chicago-based environmental company, Sexton Co. City Management Vice President James Sharp said the Will County landfill represents an important opportunity for the company.
Sharp disputed Glasgow's characterization of City Management's Will County representatives as lobbyists. "They are attorneys hired to do legal work," he said.
Sharp said he was unfamiliar with the grand jury investigation and said neither City Management officials nor company records have been subpoenaed.
The ties between Shiffer and City Management's representatives just skim the surface of county connections being questioned in the landfill deal.
Two newspapers, the Daily Southtown and the Chicago Tribune, have reported several secret meetings between City Management representatives and county officials.
And Glasgow told the Detroit Sunday Journal that a county board member helped City Management become involved in the bidding in the first place at the behest of an official at a Joliet area beer distributorship. Glasgow said City Management President Tony Soave owns a 49-percent share in the distributorship.
Meanwhile, the Will County landfill selection committee has delayed endorsing any bid until Tuesday. The reason: Glasgow says he has "substantial" new information about one of the bidders from the attorney general of another state.
Glasgow declined to name the company or the state involved, but said Thursday the material was being sent to him this week with the requirement it be used only for law enforcement purposes. In order to share the report with county board members, he must seek a confidentiality waiver from the waste company.
Glasgow's description of the records he is seeking follows a report in the Daily Southtown disclosing the existence of a prolonged New Jersey state background check of City Management and Soave. That three-year investigation was aborted in 1994 when City Management withdrew an application to do business in New Jersey.
Sharp had no comment on the delay, except to say that the county committee "needs to do what it needs to do."
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