August 10, 2022
STEELE'S DEFEAT PROVES MWRD IS STILL MIA

The MWRD is MIA. That’s a mouthful of pithy acronyms, but aptly reflects the reality that the nine elected Metropolitan Water Reclamation District commissioners and the $1.3 billion-budgeted agency is perpetually out-of-sight and out-of-mind.

But it’s more like “MIIA,” which is missing-in-inaction. Nobody knows who they are, what they do, or why they’re needed and why those people need to be elected.

I have a feeling that nobody would notice if the commissioners were not around, but loud yelps would erupt from Cook County’s 5.25 million MWRD users if the 1.3 billion gallons of effluent and industrial liquid waste, as well as the 16.8 million tons of human solid waste and grease dumped daily into toilets, receptacles and sewers, including rainwater runoff, DID NOT GO MISSING. It has to go somewhere. 

And where does it go? It is either (1) dumped into the Sanitary and Ship Canal after being “treated” and thence to the Mississippi River and then down to New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico, or (2) into giant vats at the Stickney waste treatment plant where it is stirred until all moisture evaporates and is then trucked Downstate to farm fields as fertilizer.  This is no simple task. It is called sanitary waste disposal, and does not require politicians to get it done.

But there are nine of them with 6-year terms at the MWRD, all Democrats, who get paid $60,000 a year to attend 22 3-hour morning meetings annually, get a free car, pension credits, medical coverage and an office staffed with employees. Staffers don’t get called about plumbing or sewer problems. This is patronage. Those commissioners then choose among them a president (currently Kari Steele), who gets $75,000 and a bigger office and more staffers, a vice-president (currently the retiring Barbara McGowan), who gets $70,000, and a finance committee chairman (currently Marcelino Garcia), who gets $70,000. The jobs are deemed “part-time,” so other employment is permissible.

The board meetings are perfunctory. The various departments submit operational reports to the president, who cc’s the commissioners, who then engage in abbreviated question-and-answer sessions. There is no policy made or voted upon. The MWRD does not engage, contrary to politicians’ claims, in water purification or environmental protection; it simply gets rid of waste and it runs all by itself. But Democratic politicians, dating back to the 1920s, never WASTE an opportunity (no pun intended) to create no-show, no-work, well-paid jobs for themselves. Meanwhile, the MWRD employs another 1,800, mostly degreed and well-paid engineers and chemists, along with a few laborers, all unionized or covered by civil service, who do show up. They are the ones who work.

FLUSHABILITY IS NOT ELECTABILITY: Wreathed in obscurity, the MWRD is not a political springboard. There is no job security. Slating, ballot position, endorsements  and gender are determinative. Steele sought the assessor’s post in the June 28 primary, spent 1,419,270 to beat incumbent Fritz Kaegi, got $1 million from the IUOE (the operating engineers union) Fight Back PAC, touted herself as “a Black woman who runs a $1,3 billion agency,” and lost with 46.3 percent. Her term ends in 2024. She could get dumped in 2024, especially if she is ousted as MWRD president later this year.

An MWRD post has not been a past pathway to higher office, especially president. Steele lost, as did Terry O’Brien (D) to Toni Preckwinkle (D) for county board president in 2010. Commissioner Mariyana Spyropoulos (D) was briefly president 2015-2018, got dumped by Steele and other commissioners in 2018, put a $500,000 inheritance into her campaign for Circuit Court Clerk in 2020, but then aborted it. Commissioner Debra Shore (D), who lost her 2018 bid to Steele for president, quit in 2021 to become federal EPA regional administrator, and commissioner Josina Morita (D) retired this year to run for county commissioner in her Skokie-based 13th District. The only notable spring boarders were commissioner Jerome “Jerry” Cosentino (D), elected state treasurer in 1978, and Aurelia Pucinski (D), elected Circuit Court Clerk in 1988 after losing for Secretary of State in 1986. One president, Nick Melas, lost in 1992’s “Year of the Woman,” and another, Tom Fuller, lost in 1996 under a cloud of scandal; he was later convicted of taking bribes.

The 2022 6-year winners (see chart) were incumbent Spyropoulos, Yumeka Brown, and Theresa Flynn, the candidate backed by IUOE Local 399 (stationary engineers). The IUOE has been sulking since 2018, when their incumbent/employee Martin Durkan, lost to Garcia.

That’s three women who were slated and had ballot slots 1-2-3. A second slate was fielded by Frank Avila, an 18-year commissioner who was dumped at 2019’s slate making, including Rick Garcia and Cristina Nonato. They finished 6-7-8 in an 8-candidate race.

GET THOSE WIPES OUT OF THE PIPES: For the 2-year Shore vacancy, history was made – or maybe it was predictable – when a man, the slated Dan “Pogo” Pogorzelski, defeated two women – the Pritzker-appointed incumbent Chakena Perry whose husband is a top aide to the governor, and Elizabeth Joyce, part of the Avila slate.

 

According to final tabulations, Pogorzelski, a staffer in the state treasurer’s office, won 156,746/154,754/123,933, a margin of just 1,992 votes over runner-up Joyce, who waged no visible campaign. According to recent D-2s, Pogorzelski spent $66,268, Joyce $18,107 and Perry $88,429.

The clinchers for Pogorzelski, a self-proclaimed “professional volunteer” and Northwest Sider out of state Senator Rob Martwick’s (D-10) 38th Ward organization, were ballot position (first), slating and early voting. Pogorzelski (see chart) lost Chicago 81,847/87,475/87,335 to Joyce/Perry putting him down 5,628 votes to Joyce, but he won the suburbs 74,899/67,279/31,404, putting him up by 7,620 votes over Joyce. Obviously, Perry’s suburban vote just collapsed, and the township Democratic organizations’ early voting push brought in votes for the slate.

There are 5.25 million MWRD users, who probably flush something into some pipe/receptacle 6 times a day. Never have so many used the facilities of an agency known by so few.

In something of an oddity, Pogorzelski is joining the MWRD with an agenda and a mission. He muses about climate change – maybe all those tons of manure contribute to global warming – but he is really passionate about micro-plastics and flushable  wipes, a best-selling non-biodegradable product used to wipe hands, faces (removing make-up), private parts and dirty surfaces. According to Pogorzelski these “wipes” are falsely advertised as “disposable,” get flushed along with biodegradable toilet paper, then absorb grease and other coagulants, and thereby clog sewage pipes and equipment. They end up in the Stickney vats, then in the fields, lasting forever, he said.

A second matter, Pogorzelski said, is micro plastics which get tossed into county rivers and lakes and end up in the MWRD’s Deep Tunnel along with rainwater runoff, and thence into those fertilizer vats. It is estimated that 70 percent of plastic products are not recycled.  The solution, he added, is “greater public awareness.”

Slatemaking for the 2024 Democratic primary is only a year away, in August 2023, and Pogorzelski won’t take office until December. Incumbents Steele/Garcia/Pogorzelski will surely be re-slated and try not to be missing in action.

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