Feb. 03--An influential Tinley Park commissioner who made thousands of dollars selling pizza to the village violated Tinley Park's ethics code by not formally disclosing his business to the village, an independent investigation concluded.
For years, Michael Clark's restaurant Ed Joe's regularly catered food for the village's monthly MainStreet Commission meetings, which Clark chaired. The MainStreet Commission was the only village commission that regularly catered its meals. Village officials said it was the only commission that met at dinnertime.
Clark came under scrutiny in 2014 when local attorney Steve Eberhardt filed an ethics complaint with the village stating Clark and other commissioners didn't disclose their ownership of businesses doing work for the village. Tinley Park hired former Cook County State's Attorney Richard Devine to investigate that complaint.
In his report, Devine concluded that commissioners were confused about disclosure obligations but they weren't hiding their business with the village. However, he also concluded that it was "troubling" that Clark never asked officials about "the propriety" of his restaurant "being paid money for meals provided to the commission he was chairing."
Eberhardt filed a new complaint in November stating Clark still hadn't disclosed his ownership of Ed Joe's on his annual village ethics statement. This time, the village hired Chicago attorney Stephen Viz, who concluded in a Jan. 27 report that Clark should have disclosed his ownership of the business.
In an interview, Mayor Dave Seaman said Clark thought he didn't have to disclose his ownership because the village was no longer buying pizza for his commission's meetings. Clark did not return messages seeking comment.
"Mike should have been more cautious about that and it's a shame that he wasn't," Seaman said. "It's a shame, quite frankly, that the village hasn't had an oversight mechanism to at least review those (disclosure forms)."
Most people who think of disclosure think of contracts, and not cases where a village employee might go into a restaurant and order a pizza, Seaman said. But Clark should have "erred on overly cautious not underly cautious," he said.
Tinley Park officials had spent about $119,000 on food from Ed Joe's from 1989 to fall 2014. The village did not immediately release records showing whether Tinley Park has spent more there in the time since.
Clark's relationship with the village represented a broader "culture problem" in Tinley Park, experts said at the time. In the past two years, the Tribune and the Daily Southtown reported extensively on politically connected figures in Tinley Park who received business from village hall.
