BGA: His business has boomed since becoming Chicago Heights mayor

SHARE BGA: His business has boomed since becoming Chicago Heights mayor
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Chicago Heights Mayor David Gonzalez. | Sun-Times files

Since he was elected mayor of Chicago Heights in 2011, David Gonzalez has seen his accounting business boom.

Other suburban governments have flocked to hire Gonzalez, a part-time mayor with a network of friends who were involved with the old Hispanic Democratic Organization that once provided an army of political workers in Chicago for Mayor Richard M. Daley.

In just the past three years, GW and Associates has snagged 22 new government contracts that have paid it a total of about $2.1 million, records show.

That includes deals with school systems and other governments whose jurisdictions include Chicago Heights, as well as others in farther-flung communities where former HDO leaders hold sway.

It’s been a major boost for Gonzalez’s GW and Associates. For most of the more than two decades he’s been in the accounting business, Gonzalez’s practice has involved preparing personal and corporate tax returns, though he also had a small number of contracts to manage the finances of local governments, mostly in the south suburbs.

He says he’s living the “American dream.”

“You talk about [a] little CPA firm that is . . . getting into a market that they are not supposed to get into,” says Gonzalez, whose part-time mayor’s salary was doubled this year, to $40,000.

Among the former HDO political operatives Gonzalez has hired to work for Chicago Heights: Aaron Del Valle, a former Chicago cop and aldermanic candidate who was convicted of perjury in 2011 and sent to federal prison in the Chicago city hiring scandal that tore apart HDO.

Since last year, Del Valle has been the $72,000-a-year commissioner of streets and public property for Chicago Heights, population 30,000.

For the 2011 election that put Gonzalez in office, he hired Matt Sanchez, son of onetime HDO organizer Al Sanchez, for his campaign staff. Like Del Valle, Al Sanchez, a former city of Chicago streets and sanitation commissioner, was convicted in the city hiring scandal.

Once he was in office, Gonzalez hired Matt Sanchez as a part-time grant administrator, a job he held from 2012 to 2015.

Gonzalez acknowledges his relationship with Sanchez’s father. And he says he hired Del Valle because he “wanted someone with knowledge, expertise and ability to get the job done.”

After being elected mayor in 2011, Gonzalez also was appointed by then-Gov. Pat Quinn to a seat on the Illinois State Toll Highway Authority board, which oversees the state’s 292-mile tollway system. Under Gov. Bruce Rauner, Gonzalez — who’s paid $31,426 a year for being on the board — chairs its audit committee.

Within months after being reelected mayor last year, Gonzalez — whose firm doesn’t have any contracts with Chicago Heights — picked up new contracts with school districts that cover his suburb: Bloom Township High School District 206 and Chicago Heights Elementary School District 170, records show.

To hire GW, District 206 first needed to rescind a deal it had reached with another accounting firm to audit its books, records show. Two District 206 board members who voted to switch to Gonzalez’s firm had, between them, contributed $2,190 to Gonzalez-connected political committees, campaign records show.

Theresa Palombi, a third board member who approved the contract for GW, later was hired as an executive assistant in the Chicago Heights Fire Department. Asked about her vote, Palombi says, “It’s none of your business.”

Gonzalez also is getting business from south and west suburban communities where former HDO officials hold sway. He’s campaign treasurer for HDO co-founder state Sen. Antonio Munoz, D-Chicago, and previously held the same post for state Sen. Martin Sandoval, D-Cicero, an HDO ally.

GW and Associates first cracked the Cicero-area government market in 2008 — three years before Gonzalez became Chicago Heights’ mayor — when it was hired as a financial consultant for Morton College. Since then, the Cicero college has paid GW more than $720,000, according to Gonzalez.

Over the past two years, GW has landed auditing contracts with the Town of Cicero and the Clyde Park District, which operates in Cicero.

Among its government contracts, the firm has been paid five- and six-figure fees since 2013 by Berwyn, Bridgeview, Lyons, Melrose Park, Orland Hills, Proviso Township, the Proviso Mental Health Commission and Riverdale — which paid GW $417,750.

Former HDO players that had a role in Gonzalez’s election in Chicago Heights included law firms affiliated with Victor Reyes, the onetime Daley City Hall patronage chief who co-founded HDO.

A lobbying firm owned by Reyes and Bloom Township Trustee Mike Noonan, a onetime aide to Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, was a paid Gonzalez campaign consultant and a contributor to his campaign.

Matt Sanchez is now director of Reyes’ law firm, Reyes Kurson.

Reyes and Sanchez did not respond to messages seeking comment. A spokesman for Munoz declined to comment.

Casey Toner is a Better Government Association investigator.


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