Jail's phone contractor has links to Stroger;
Secretary notarized paperwork for firm, which gave pal a job
Chicago Sun-Times
May 2, 2005
By Abdon M. Pallasch
For a company that is supposed to be completely independent
of Cook County Board President John Stroger's office, Crucial Communications
Inc. -- the firm that is supposed to maintain the pay phones at Cook
County Jail -- has a surprising amount of ties to the administration.
The woman who notarized Crucial Communications' latest recertification
for minority-owned status, Gwendolyn A. Duncan, is Stroger's secretary.
She is paid $72,000 by the county to be his administrative assistant.
Stroger concedes that doesn't look good.
"When I found out about it, I blew a blood vessel," Stroger
said. "I told Gwendolyn, 'You don't notarize anything for any outside
people coming in here.'"
The company's payroll shows lots of familiar names, such as William
Granberry, Stroger's friend and a top precinct captain in Stroger's 8th
Ward organization.
Crucial Communications took care of Granberry with a job after Granberry
abruptly resigned his $90,000-a-year post as director of maintenance
after the "Emperor's Thrones" scandal.
The Chicago Sun-Times had reported in 2003 that Forest Preserve District
officials diverted five top-class port-a-potties for once-a-year use
at Stroger's annual picnic at the Green Lakes Forest Preserve. Stroger
said he was embarrassed at the pictures of forest preserve workers replacing
the old wooden port-a-potties with the newly cleaned plastic-laminated
ones just before his picnic, then swapping them back weeks later and
putting the nice ones in mothballs until the next summer.
'I didn't have to'
But Stroger denies getting Granberry a job at Crucial Communications
Inc. after Granberry left the county payroll a year shy of full pension
eligibility.
"I don't know how he hooked up with Crucial," Stroger said. "Do
you think a guy like Bill Granberry, after working for me for 20-some
years, after he retires you think I wouldn't try to help him find a job?
I didn't have to. Other people did. He used to work for Tony Rezko; that's
no secret."
Rezko, a top fund-raiser for both Stroger and Gov. Blagojevich, has
come under fire in recent weeks as Chicago officials suggest he is the
real power behind Crucial Inc., an allegedly minority-owned company that
controls Panda Express restaurants at O'Hare Airport.
An affidavit filed by the company in 1997 listed Rezko as chief executive
officer of Crucial Inc. More recent documents showed him as a 45 percent
owner.
Rezko's spokesman and attorney both said Rezko has no role in Crucial
Communications Inc., even though both businesses share an office at 409
W. Huron and Rezko's brother Aboud Rezko is one of only six employees
listed at Crucial Communications Inc., along with Granberry.
Jabir Herbert Muhammad, 76, son of former Nation of Islam leader Elijah
Muhammad, is supposed to be the 100 percent owner of both companies,
despite his ill health. A former office manager at Crucial Communications,
Delores Wade, an African American who helped convince a county inspector
in 2003 that the company really was at least minority-operated, died
last year, and Muhammad failed to mention that when he filed his recertification
papers notarized by Stroger's secretary, saying there had been no change
in the control/management of the company.
No one from Crucial Communications returned repeated phone calls last
week to explain what Crucial Communications' six employees -- Aboud Rezko,
Bill Granberry, Muhammad, Mrs. Antonia Muhammad, 74, who lives at the
same address as Muhammad, Herbert J. Bias Jr. and Bernice B. Polk-Hatchett
-- do to earn their salaries or where they acquired any expertise in
maintaining pay phones.
Attempts to ring the front buzzer of the businesses were met with constant
busy signals. A peek through the blinds of the door into the fifth-floor
office of Crucial and Crucial Communications Inc. found the office empty
of people, with mail on the floor just inside the door and photos of
Jabir Herbert Muhammad with boxer Muhammad Ali, whom Muhammad used to
manage.
Critics voiced concerns
Cook County commissioners asked what Crucial -- whose only customer
is Cook County -- does for $3 million a year, or 30 percent of the contract.
Rezko used to have his main offices one floor above.
Stroger's godson and former chief of staff Orlando Jones, a longtime
friend and former business partner of Rezko, had a company called the
Crucial Group in this same fleet of offices. But he has said that company
is defunct and he never had anything to do with Crucial Communications
Inc.'s contract with the county.
When that contract was last renewed two years ago, Stroger's critics
on the board said they were concerned because of Jones' and Rezko's involvement
with Crucial Communications' sister companies.
"Who actually fixes the phones?" Commissioner Mike Quigley
asked.
"SBC," senior account manager Ron Lindsey said.
"So what does the minority contractor do?" Quigley asked.
"They maintain the platform, the call processing," Lindsey
said.
Stroger emphasized that it was SBC that chose Crucial Communications
to be the minority subcontractor.
SBC spokesman Jerry Lawrence said SBC chose Crucial Communications from
a list of certified minority-owned companies provided by Cook County.
Quigley and other opposition board members say the news about Granberry,
Duncan and Tony Rezko proves what they have argued all along: The $10
million-a-year no-bid contract to SBC and the 30 percent subcontract
to Crucial was an insider deal to enrich the connected.
"It creates a fraud on all the other minority businesses who should
be sharing in these contracts," said Commissioner Lawrence Suffredin.
Copyright 2005, Chicago Sun-Times, Inc.
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