On Nov. 12, 2001, young Hillside attorney Emanuel “Chris” Welch was sworn in as a new member of the Proviso District 209 high school board.
The week before, the D209 board had signed an agreement to purchase a 9-acre parcel of open land in Melrose Park for $2.8 million, with plans to build a magnet high school on the site.
Following the new board’s organizational meeting, Welch and another newly elected board member joined two sitting board members in voting Mike Manzo out as D209 board president and installing Teresa Kelly as president and Welch as vice president.
The new board then voted to fire D209 lawyer Stanley Kusper and replace him with attorney Burt Odelson’s firm, Odelson and Sterk.
It then voted to void the prior board’s agreement to buy the 9-acre property, a golf driving range on 5th Avenue, immediately west of the Kiddieland Amusement Park.
Melrose Park Mayor Ron Serpico, a mentor and key Welch political supporter, had adamantly opposed a school on the property.
“Whatever we have to do on the village level, we’re not going to let this happen,” Serpico said in an October 2001 news article. “We’re not going to let them rob the village of Melrose Park of a valuable piece of property.”
In a 2011 interview, Manzo, a staunch political opponent of Serpico, said that Welch opposed the magnet school in Melrose Park because Serpico didn’t want it interfering with plans for a Costco store that was eventually built nearby.
The motion to rescind the purchase agreement was voted on despite being placed on the agenda as “new business,” which Manzo angrily pointed out could not, under Illinois law, be acted upon at the same meeting at which it was introduced.
Welch brushed aside that inconvenient fact, saying, “You cannot take away the power of the majority.”
Kiddieland would close for good on Sept. 27, 2009, and be demolished in 2010 to make way for the new Costco.
The Costco has been an unqualified success. Nearly 17 years later, the former golf driving range to the west remains a fallow field, fronted by a decaying building along 5th Avenue.
The issue of a magnet school open to district students who met high academic testing standards would roil Proviso Township politics over the next several years, with Welch in the middle of it all.
In June 2001, D209 had released poll results from McKeon & Associates showing a majority of the 600 respondents – 61% — deemed a magnet school “a necessary step” for the district, with another 28% agreeing a magnet school was “very necessary.”
Almost 9 out of 10 people thought a magnet school was necessary or very necessary, and 80% said they believed it would enrich the learning experience throughout the district.
That July Welch opined that while the magnet school concept was a good idea, building a separate school building “is not a wise decision at this time.”
“Do the majority of the voters in Proviso Township support building a magnet school?” Welch asked rhetorically in a letter to the editor. He noted that Melrose Park voters had rejected a third high school by a 2-1 margin in November 2000, and Maywood voters said the same in April 2001, by the same margin.
“We also know that only 28% of the respondents in Mike Manzo’s poll say that a magnet school is very necessary,” Welch said, conveniently ignoring the other 61% who stated they believed a magnet school was “necessary.”
Manzo said the price tag for both the land acquisition and a newly constructed school would have been “about $18 million.” He said those figures were far more certain than renovating an existing building.
“With a new building, the costs are pretty predictable. There’s few surprises,” Manzo said. “With renovation of an old building, there are all sorts of surprises.
$18 million to $50 million
Eighteen months after scuttling the purchase of the Melrose Park property, Welch, now board president, pivoted 180 degrees and led the charge for issuing $40 million in bonds to purchase and renovate a vacant medical office building in Forest Park as the new Proviso Math and Science Academy.
The D209 board passed a resolution approving a $40 million bond issue to purchase the building at Roosevelt Road and First Avenue.
Opponents mounted a referendum campaign and gathered more than 7,500 signatures to place the issue before Proviso township voters. Welch fought the referendum, arguing that it would cause a delay in the purchase of the building and effectively kill the purchase contract.
In December 2003, the D209 electoral board, chaired by Welch, threw out 3,000 of the 7,500 signatures. Some signers, Welch ruled, were not registered voters, other signatures were ruled forgeries, and several hundred were rejected due to “invalid notary signatures.”
That left bond issue opponents 2,000 signatures short of qualifying for the ballot. Welch accused the leaders of the referendum drive of sour grapes and contended Manzo and others “would like to be back in office and have their friends and cronies build this school.”
Instead, Welch and his allies purchased and renovated the former Loyola Medicine office building. Along the way there were, as Manzo had predicted, numerous additional costs, which added up to millions of additional public dollars spent.
In September 2005 the new Proviso Math and Science Academy, at least $10 million over its initial $40 million budget, opened its doors to 126 freshman students.
Welch had also done Serpico’s bidding when, in 2004, a federal civil jury found Serpico liable for $1 million in punitive damages and the D209 board liable for $140,000 in the firing of D209 janitor Gino Trombetta. He sued after being terminated, claiming it was the result of his political opposition to Serpico.
The school district had absolutely no legal obligation to pay Serpico’s settlement, since he was neither an elected D209 official nor an employee. But Welch forced through a $1 million taxpayer-funded payment for his political patron.
‘That’s my recollection’
In August 2005, a local blogger and newspaper columnist, Carl Nyberg, posted that Welch’s brother, Billy Welch, had been arrested with a drug dealer and then was indicted.
Welch filed a lawsuit against Nyberg, alleging defamation, accusing Nyberg of “insinuation and conjecture and guilt-by association type tactics.”
A 2006 deposition documented how Chris Welch handled his brother’s criminal arraignment. Welch’s testimony raises questions, depending on how one reads the deposition, about either his legal competence or his honesty.
“(Billy) Welch had never been indicted for the crime of drug dealing and had Nyberg checked the accuracy of his statements, this information would have been readily discoverable,” Welch’s lawsuit argued.
“… my brother is not a hoodlum; he does not hang around with drug dealers,” Welch insisted in his deposition.
But Nyberg had checked the record, which showed that Billy Welch was with a drug dealer on Sept. 3, was arrested, and was later indicted on drug charges.
On Sept. 3, agents of a joint DEA/Chicago police task force observed an alleged cocaine dealer in the River Forest Town Center, handing a duffel full of money — as much as $140,000 — to an alleged wholesale coke supplier.
Law enforcement followed dealer and another man in a Cadillac Escalade to an apartment building on the 5500 block of W. Gladys on the West Side of Chicago and watched as the dealer took 22 pounds of cocaine from the trunk of the wholesaler’s car.
Agents stopped the dealer’s car on the 3800 block of Harrison, and when the two men were removed from the car, they discovered his passenger was Billy Welch.
The DEA affidavit stated that Billy Welch was within arm’s reach of a loaded .40 caliber handgun, two baggies containing 240 grams of crack cocaine with a street value of $29,766, and $23,500 in cash.
Chris Welch was his brother’s attorney at his Sept. 4 arraignment. The record shows Judge Kevin M. Sheehan found probable cause to detain Billy, set a $30,000 bond and continued his case to Oct. 14.
On Sept. 26, Welch and the dealer were indicted by a Cook County Grand Jury, Welch for felony possession of a controlled substance with intent to deliver.
Chris Welch recalled those events quite differently when deposed, when he could recall anything at all.
“You were Billy Welch’s attorney beginning Sept. 3, 2003, right?” Chris Welch was asked under oath. “Beginning and ending Sept. 3, 2003,” Welch answered.
“You were his attorney for one day?” he was asked.
“Yes, I stepped up, the case was dismissed Sept. 3, 2003 against Billy Welch,” Welch answered.
Welch was shown Exhibit 6 from the lawsuit and asked if it was a Grand Jury indictment of Billy Welch and the dealer, dated Sept. 26, 2003.
“Exhibit 6 says what it says,” Welch answered.
“You said that the case was dismissed on that day?” Welch was asked. “That’s my recollection,” Welch answered.
“Why is there an indictment naming Billy Welch?” he was asked.
“I don’t know,” Welch answered.
“You have no idea why there would be an indictment against him if the case was dismissed?” Welch was asked.
“I don’t know,” Welch answered.
Asked if he’d talked to anyone in the State’s Attorney’s office other than at the hearing, Welch answered, “No.”
Asked if he’d ever inquired “with any government agency to determine whether or not Bill Welch had been indicted” Welch answered, “No.”
Did you ask Bill Welch whether he had ever been indicted?” Welch was asked. “Yes.” He answered.
“What did he tell you?” He was asked. “He said no,” Welch answered.
Welch quietly dropped his lawsuit against Nyberg.
‘… without factual basis’
Sometime around 2006, a new blog called the “Proviso Insider” went online. It called itself “A beacon of light in the Proviso darkness.”
The majority of posts either lambasted Chris Welch’s critics or praised his allies. The blog posts would put a positive spin on D209 news, however negative the actual situation might be. In March 2010, Welch posted “Proviso High Schools Removed From Financial Watch List!!!”
“This feat is especially remarkable considering the financial crisis many schools are facing in the state of Illinois,” Welch stated, ignoring the fact that less than 1% of all high schools in Illinois were under state supervision.
Welch went on touting his successes and taking shots at his political enemies. On July 19, 2007 the Proviso Insider accused two lawyers who previously worked for D209 of having suborned perjury.
Melrose Park police commander Ric Cervone had been named in a federal indictment. The Insider posted, “Sources tell the Insider that Burt Odelson and Mark Sterk …. will be indicted next by U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald. Sources tell the Insider that Mark Sterk was the attorney advising SD89 Board member Ric Cervone on how to lie to a grand jury.”
“Are Burt Odelson and Mark Sterk crooks?” The Proviso Insider asked. “Will they be indicted next?”
On Aug. 21, 2007 Odelson and Sterk filed a libel/slander suit in Cook County Circuit Court.
The Insider hadn’t always been so hard on Odelson and Sterk. In December 2006 an Insider headline trumpeted, “D209 Lawyer Burton Odelson Respected By All.”
“The Insider has learned that Proviso School District 209’s lawyer, Burton S. Odelson, is also the lawyer for the stars,” the website fawned. “Many think, without Odelson, Proviso would not have been able to secure and negotiate a deal for the Proviso Math and Science Academy.”
Welch denied any involvement or responsibility for the posts. That is, until a forensic examination determined the posts had been made from a computer at his law firm.
Odelson’s attorney, Michael Wall, said Welch had attempted to avoid liability for the Proviso Insider posts by alleging they were done by his law clerk Emily Robinson.
“She was told by Mr. Welch that he would take care of everything,” Wall was quoted in a March 18, 2012 news article. Robinson denied posting the defamatory comments, saying, “I didn’t do it at all.” She was not found liable for any actions.
Welch filed for summary judgment, but Judge Eileen Mary Brewer denied his motion, and ruled he had committed “defamation per se.”
Welch faced with paying a $400,000 settlement demand, did for himself what he’d done for Serpico; used his role as D209 board president to successfully pry around $50,000 from taxpayers to cover his ongoing legal bills.
But when he later attempted to have D209 foot another $40,000, as well as the $400,000 settlement, the state appointed Financial Oversight Panel blocked him, and he was forced to negotiate a new settlement using his own money.
Welch also had to admit publicly that he had lied. Or in his lawyerly wording, that he had made “statements … which were made without factual basis.”
“The Subject Statements made on the Proviso Insider … are hereby unconditionally and unequivocally retracted and the Proviso Insider regrets the publication of those statements on the blog which were made without factual basis.”
‘The Prince of Proviso’
By law, members of school boards do not have any direct authority over district employees or the daily operations of the schools outside of their authority to cast votes at board meetings.
But by August 2010, Welch saw himself, according to numerous people associated with D209 or Proviso Township politics, as a major authority figure in and of himself, to be respected and obeyed.
“He wants to be the Prince of Proviso,” one source told this reporter at the time.
Welch reportedly became angry after two sisters who worked in senior positions at Proviso West high school rebuffed his attempts to hug them at a football game. He responded with an angry text.
Alexis Wallace, the former principal at Proviso West before Welch had her transferred, sat down with the Forest Leaves in March 2012 to discuss her experience with Welch as D209 board president and a threatening text she’d received from him.
Wallace said she saved the text, making certain her phone was charged even after she got a new phone. The saved text confirms allegations made by Wallace’s sister, Dylester Palm, a dean at Proviso West, in her federal lawsuit against Welch for complaints similar to Wallace’s. (Palm later dropped the lawsuit, citing her inability to pay for the cost of legal representation.)
Wallace held out her old Blackberry for the reporter to photograph. The phone number on the text was the same cell number that Welch had listed on his campaign filing documents.
“I allowed them to be employed!” Welch’s text read. “And I’m the board president! Period! End of conversation. Things better change now. I won’t tolerate disresepect.”
Welch then left no doubt that he saw himself as the primary authority at D209.
“I had a direct hand in helping them b here including u. No one else,” he said. “At the minimum, I deserve respect.”
FOIA denial helps Welch avoid accountability
In 2012 a FOIA was filed with the Hillside Police Department seeking any reports related to Welch’s alleged arrest in 2002 for an oft-rumored domestic battery.
That FOIA was denied by Hillside officials, who claimed that Welch, who’d been handcuffed and placed in the back seat of a squad car, had nonetheless not been placed under arrest.
A subsequent appeal was successful, and Hillside was ordered to release the documents. But the release arrived 90 minutes too late, after the primary election issue of a local newspaper had gone to print.
In that moment, Welch was working to move up oliticallys and was in a contested race for the Democratic nomination in the 7th Illinois House District. On election day Welch led Forest Park Commissioner Rory Hoskins by just 36 votes out of more than 40,000 cast in the 7th Illinois House Democratic primary. That narrow margin held.
As has happened in numerous cases related to allegations concerning questionable behavior by Welch, the story made a splash — nearly 10 years later as Welch was seeking to replace Mike Madigan as the Speaker of the House. A handful of people expressed concern and vowed to get answers and hold people accountable.
The splash was followed by silence.