Betty Loren-Maltese, the town president of Cicero, Illinois, was arrested today on corruption charges. According to one news report, she was “arrested without incident at her home in Crown Point, Indiana.”
What I want to know is, how is it that a resident of Crown Point, Indiana can be town president (mayor) of Cicero, Illinois? Don’t you have to live in the town to be mayor of it? Or at least in the same state?
What’s going on here?
The place in Crown Point is her vacation home.
It’s fairly traditional for Chicago gangsters to have a vacation home in northern Indiana near the lake. Al Capone once owned a house in my little town - it’s rumored to have a gun-shaped pool!
It is not always codified that the mayor or other city officials must reside in the city. However, political realities usually force officeholders to keep up appearances in this way. The popularity of Betty Loren-Maltese might permit an exception. A more reasonable but completely unsubstatiated guess is that she lives in Cicero, but maintains a second home as an escape from the pressures and scrutiny of being a high-profile politician in a small city. It’s also consistent with the fact that her number and address are listed in Crown Point, where probably few people know her, but unlisted in Cicero. Of course, that evidence could also support KellyM’s presumption.
Public radio’s This American Life did a great show about Cicero, including a profile of the mayor. The description for the March 16 show states:
Assuming she’s carried on in the family business, it’s could be handy to have a hideaway to conduct business away from prying eyes.
I see that aseymayo has now answered, and basically agreed. I’m not sure about the lake, though. Her neighborhood appears to be a good half-hour from Lake Michigan. There are, however, plenty of smaller ponds and such in that neck of the woods.