Pekau’s excessive spending for legal work reaps political and campaign benefits

Keith Pekau attacks everyone for "excessive spending" & "debt," to deflect from his own excessive spending and debt. He blames Dodge for today's problems though Pekau has been in control since 2019

By Ray Hanania

FREE/Orland Park Politics Lawsuits/Sunday Feb 9, 2025

On his bio, Pekau boasts about himself: “As Mayor, Keith has worked with the Orland Park Village Board to reduce the village’s operational budget by 13.9% and debt by approximately $37 million. This has allowed the village to lower property taxes while making additional investments in our roads, infrastructure, and parks.”

The truth is fees are up, taxes that we pay are up, and his wasteful spending continues, including saddling us with one of the highest sales tax hikes in the state, 10.25 percent, and his utility tax hike.

Since taking control of the Village Board in 2019, Mayor Keith Pekau has more than doubled spending on lawsuits, legal work, and outside attorneys than what was spent by the past administration, which he constantly blames for village problems.

From 2019 through 2024, Pekau and his board have spent an astonishing $6,748,203 on inhouse and outside law firms. That averages $1.1 million a year in legal fees, not including huge bills this year. Click here to view the annual spending by law firms.

2024 fees paid to law firms by the Village of Orland Park

What do residents get back for the $1.1 million annual average the village spends in outside and in-house averaged legal fees?

Pekau gets campaign donations from many of the law firms he pays – well that you, the taxpayers, are forced to pay. One of the big law firms, whose annual billing has almost doubled today from 2019, has paid more than $20,000 in recent years -- just those easily identified with the firm. Donations from other lawyers and firms average $1,000 to $2,500.

The benefit for Pekau is he gets to use outside lawyers AND the village attorneys to pursue his legal vengeance against critics, at no cost to him personally. The village, as you can see, pays outrageous amounts – far more than the amount he complains the Orland Fire Protect District pays for “media consulting.”

Pekau has his own stable of outside attorneys he can use to suit critics, all attorney fees paid for by the village (taxpayers).

For example, Pekau and the village filed a lawsuit against retired (1998-2019) Orland Park Police Sergeant Ken Kovac who the village and Pekau charged with “Disorderly Conduct (Class C Misdemeanor) and False Personation (Class A Misdemeanor) related to allegations of creating fraudulent social media accounts.”

How much did they pay the law firm to prosecute those petty misdemeanor charges? Orland Park paid outside attorneys $351,171 to prosecute this (and one other) former, distinguished Orland Park police officer for the two “misdemeanor” charges. The charges are so ridiculous and insignificant that the judge threw the case out in January after almost two years of legal wrangling.

Last year, Pekau fired Orland Park Police Sergeant William Sanchez accusing him of “conduct detrimental to the operations and leadership of the Police Department.”

That charge was also thrown out at great legal expense to the Orland Park taxpayers, another politically motivated accusation. Pekau used the same law firm he used against Kovac.

After the Sanchez charges were thrown out and the village wasted tens of thousands of dollars to prosecute, Pekau announced the Village will have the attorneys “appeal” the ruling, at God knows what cost in additional outside legal fees Village taxpayers will have to pay.

The village claims in a press release related to these lawsuits that it is “committed to transparency.” But they are not. They are constantly denying FOIA requests, withholding public information, and making it extremely difficult to get.

Meanwhile, Pekau continues to falsely attack everyone who has criticized him — criticism is accountability but Pekau doesn’t believe he can be accountable. He makes false claims and he openly lies in his eNewsletter that he litters the village residents with to justify his false assertions that he is a great mayor.

MORE NEWS: Not surprisingly, both the Orland Police Patrolman’s Union and the Orland Fire Union have endorsed Jim Dodge for mayor in the April 1 election. Pekau continues to fabricate accusations against Dodge, inaccurately blaming him for the village’s financial problems. Pekau has been the “spender-in-chief” overseeing the budget for the past eight years. But it makes him feel good to blame it on someone whose influence in Orland ended more than 8 years ago.

Rumors spreading around the administration of President Donald Trump is that three prominent Illinois attorneys and staunch Republicans are being considered to be appointed 7^th District Illinois U.S. Attorney. They included Richard Porter, a former member of the RNC, Scott Kaspar, a prominent attorney and former Trump delegate, and David Shestokas, a constitutional law expert who I worked for years ago. Kaspar seems to have the edge, practicing law since 2003.