Peraica aims to reform 'corrupt' government

Peraica aims to reform 'corrupt' goverMillionaire lawyer came here from Croatia at 13

October 22, 2006
BY ABDON M. PALLASCH Staff Reporter
Get the hell out of Tony Peraica's way -- he wants to make changes.
"Driven," "gutsy," "caustic" are all words that describe Peraica's performance over the last four years on the Cook County Board. "Gentle," "diplomatic," "quiet" are not.

But effective?

Critics say he's all venom, no results. He can't even get fellow Republicans to sign on to some of his bills. As part of the board's five-person Republican minority, there was only so much he could do. But, he argues, he became part of the thin nine-member majority that blocked tax increases and forced some cuts.


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Tony Peraica
(Sun-Times)
Grilled department heads at county meetings
Why does the millionaire divert his attention away from a successful law practice and pour hundreds of thousands of dollars of his own money into running for Cook County Board president? He wants to clean up a "corrupt" county government, he says.
To that end, Peraica at County Board meetings did not so much question department heads as cross-examine them with progressively more discomforting questions until former President John Stroger yelled at him to stop.


Campaigned for elder Daley, but turned to GOP in '94
Peraica, 49, never had it easy. Growing up in Croatia under former communist dictator Marshal Tito near the seaside town of Split -- "Tony Kukoc territory" -- Peraica at 7 watched his father die of lung cancer, then four years later lost his mother to uterine cancer. Shuffled among relatives, he landed in the Bridgeport neighborhood at 13 to work at his aunt's restaurant.
He learned English, got himself elected class president at Holy Name Cathedral High School, passed out fliers for Mayor Richard J. Daley in '75, married his Sunni Muslim Pakistani girlfriend Nilo, attended law school at night while he worked in a bank, and started a successful law practice. Peraica, who is Catholic, and his wife live in Riverside, and have two grown children.

Still hooked on Democratic politics, he worked for Bill Clinton and ran unsuccessfully for the Cook County Board as a Democrat.

But he switched to the Republican Party in 1994, saying he was disillusioned with the Democrats' local and national leaders. He won several close races: Lyons Township Republican committeeman and county commissioner from the west suburbs.

Just about every elected Republican in Cook County, even the ones who have tangled with Peraica, are enthusiastically or with gritted teeth putting up his signs, hoping or fearing he might actually beat Todd Stroger.

Nilo says the image of Peraica as a "hothead" is wrong. He never argues at home, she says. The DJ she met at the old Stop 24 nightclub at the McCormick Inn, where she used to waitress, is "a very soft and gentle person."

apallasch@suntimes.com


Questions on job clout, plus abortion, gays, guns
For a guy who's running as a reformer for Cook County Board president, Tony Peraica made a couple of curious moves early in his career.
He got his son, Marko, 25, a job with Clerk of the Circuit Court Dorothy Brown's office, then nominated his employee, Tom Garrette, for a seat on the Metra board.

"In hindsight, that was a mistake," Peraica said.

Critics say he sought jobs for political supporters from John Stroger's former patronage chief, Gerald Nichols.

Peraica once was allied with now-imprisoned former Cicero Town President Betty Loren-Maltese and her counsel Ed Vrdolyak.

Peraica said his son is his only relative he has on the county payroll, in contrast to the Strogers and families of other board members. And his son took an entry level, second-shift, $22,000-a-year job. "It was something I would rather he didn't do," he said. "I don't think it's a big deal."

Peraica also was caught in an embarrassing situation when his chief of staff, Terry Austin, was arrested on drug charges. Peraica fired him.

The subjects Peraica's opponent Todd Stroger likes to bring up are abortion, gay rights and gun control, all of which Peraica opposes. Peraica says those are red-herring issues that a County Board president has little control over. He said he won't end abortions at county-run Stroger Hospital or benefits to gay employees' partners.

Abdon M. Pallasch



Promises to cut taxes, get rid of political hires
Change. Reform. Clean up.
Tony Peraica's main argument for electing him the first Republican president of the Cook County Board in 36 years is that the entire $3 billion operation is run as a jobs farm for patronage hacks and he's going to end that.

Because of employment rules, he can't fire the rank-and-file hacks who were improperly given jobs that were supposed to be free from political influence. But there are more than 2,000 political hires who serve at the pleasure of the president and Peraica promises there will be fewer in his administration.

He also pledges that taxes will be lower under a Peraica administration than under Todd Stroger. Stroger's father, John Stroger, likewise held the line against property tax increases for the last eight years, but the elder Stroger proposed increasing the sales and hotel/restaurant taxes, as well as boosting the taxes on cigarettes and downtown parking.

As a county commissioner, Peraica voted against them all and proposed budget cuts instead. The cigarette and downtown parking tax increases passed anyway, but he was able to help defeat other proposed increases.

Abdon M. Pallasch