At the start of every village council meeting, commissioners and Mayor Rory Hoskins approve Forest Park’s payment of bills. But before paying bills at the meeting June 24, the council returned to a discussion they started last August, requesting information about what Forest Park’s lobbyist has done for the village.
After the village paused payments to public affairs and government relations firm GPG Strategies last August and requested a report detailing the firm’s accomplishments in Forest Park, 10 $2,000 payments were approved at the most-recent village council meeting to compensate the lobbyist retroactively – but not without pushback.
Jessica Voogd“We have a fiduciary duty to the taxpayers when we’re spending taxpayer money to be able to tell them how we’re spending it,” said Jessica Voogd, commissioner of public property, at the June 24 meeting. “So, to sit here and approve $20,000 tonight without any of that is irresponsible at the least.”
During a council meeting last August, Voogd moved to stop payments to GPG Strategies after she had requested a detailed report on the firm’s lobbying at least once a year since it started with the village in 2019, but didn’t receive anything. The payment of bills was approved during the August meeting, contingent on GPG Strategies providing a report.
When the village didn’t receive the report, it paused payments to GPG Strategies from August onward.
But as the village closes out the 2024 fiscal year, all those payments appeared on the bills at the June 24 meeting — one at the beginning of June, then monthly starting in August for a total of 10 payments of $2,000.
During the June 24 council meeting, Voogd said she thought there weren’t going to be more payments to GPG Strategies until the lobbyist sent a report detailing its services and the village signed a new contract with them.
Commissioners received a report from GPG Strategies in their staff mailboxes in October, but Voogd said it wasn’t what she was expecting.
“It felt more like something you would attach to a proposal to hire someone for their services,” Voogd told the Review. The report is “called a strategic plan, and it doesn’t necessarily have any concrete information or reporting about essentially four years of lobbying or consulting work.”
While Voogd said the report included some of GPG Strategies’ successes lobbying for Forest Park, she added that it was vague and there was no documentation of dates when the lobbyist met with local officials.
“The thing that concerns me about all of this is not whether or not they perform the work, but we don’t have the information to know that,” Voogd said. “By withholding information, that erodes trust, and we have a duty to the taxpayers to say, ‘We know how your money is being spent.’”
After commissioners received the report, nothing was put on the village council meeting agenda to discuss how to move forward with GPG Strategies.
Rachell Entler | Alex Rogals“Nobody ever brought it back up again,” Village Administrator Rachell Entler told the Review, outside of Voogd saying the report wasn’t what she was looking for. “I don’t remember or recall any substantial questions being asked of me [about] the report.”
“If anyone kind of let the ball drop, I think it’s us as a council for saying we want this report, but then never doing anything with it, never telling staff, ‘Here’s what we want you to do next,’” said Commissioner Maria Maxham at the June 24 meeting.
Voogd then said at the meeting that she’d like to respond to Maxham’s comment, but instead Hoskins asked Commissioner Melin-Rogovin if she had anything to add. When Voogd said she’d like to respond again, Hoskins answered, “We’re done with this topic, Commissioner.”
So, Voogd moved to amend the bills and remove $20,000 of payments to GPG Strategies. No other commissioners seconded the motion, though, so it died.
The majority of the council voted to pass the bills, with Voogd as the only dissenting vote. Commissioner Ryan Nero was absent.
GPG Strategies’ lobbying successes
Michael Axelrod, head of GPG Strategies, became Forest Park’s lobbyist in 2019. He’s the son of David Axelrod, who was chief strategist and senior advisor to President Barack Obama.
GPG Strategies did not respond to a request for comment.
In November, the Review reported that Hoskins strategized with Axelrod before an August meeting.
In an email obtained by a Freedom of Information Act request by the Review, Hoskins sent two pages of bulleted talking points to Axelrod to help him prepare for a presentation, outlining GPG Strategies’ services and deliverables.
The email shows that Axelrod lobbied several state and federal agencies on behalf of the village.
GPG Strategies helped Forest Park lobby the CTA to remove the water tower at the end of the Green Line | Alex Rogals
For example, Axelrod lobbied the Chicago Transit Authority to secure $3 million to remove the decaying water tower at the end of the Green Line. Axelrod also arranged a meeting in 2020 with the Deputy Governor that resulted in a $750,000 grant to demolish buildings on the Altenheim property.
Though the village council never heard the presentation from the email, during the June 24 meeting, Hoskins added another success.
A review of next year’s state budget, which Gov. JB Pritzker approved in early June, showed that Forest Park was appropriated hundreds of thousands of dollars to help to install traffic cameras on Jackson Boulevard, Hoskins said. The village has been wanting cameras at intersections on the street so they can ticket those who drive dangerously during funeral processions.
Hoskins said securing this money involved communicating with state agencies and the governor’s office.
“Not everybody can open those doors, but we have at our fingertips a consultant who can do that and who has been effective,” Hoskins said at the June 24 meeting.
According to previous reporting by the Review, Axelrod contributed $500 to Hoskins’ campaign in 2022, shortly after the mayor announced that he was running for election.
Moving forward, Voogd wants regular, in-detail updates about work from the village’s lobbyist. Whether the lobbyist is GPG Strategies is up to the rest of the village council.
The mayor said in the June 24 meeting that there will be the chance to vote on a new contract with GPG Strategies in the coming months.
“I’ve talked to some of my colleagues, and they prefer to just renew the contract and to formally update it,” Hoskins told the Review.
GPG Strategies had a one-year contract with the village in 2020 and has worked on a monthly basis since, according to Entler.
Hoskins told the Review that GPG Strategies has been providing services during the time their payments were withheld.
“It’s not uncommon for villages to engage a lobbyist, either registered lobbyist or other consultant, and have the entity on retainer,” Hoskins said.
Another reason the village switched to a monthly agreement with GPG Strategies, Hoskins said, was because he felt like the firm was good value for their services and didn’t want the price to increase if the village formally renewed its annual contract.
Matt O’Shea, who was the village’s lobbyist for eight years before GPG Strategies and village administrator before that, was paid $3,500 a month, according to Hoskins.
The village council will vote on the new contract when it’s presented. The village can choose to stay on a month-to-month basis with GPG Strategies, approve a yearly contract, or choose another lobbyist.
“The council’s going to have to decide if they want to go ahead and move forward with GPG as their strategist or if they want to look elsewhere,” Entler said.
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