Guilty in Gary

Corruption is a kind of custom in Gary, Ind.--to the point that about the only real mistake a politician can make is failing to report his bribes on his federal income tax return. Last week Democratic Mayor George Chacharis, 54, pleaded guilty to doing just that--on a take of $226,686. He should have learned a lesson from his predecessor, Peter Mandich, who was set free. Mandich "received large amounts of graft payments." said a U.S. attorney in court, ''but the evidence does not show that he failed to report the payments as income on tax returns."

Resigning his post an hour before he entered the guilty plea, Chacharis ended a political career that at one time seemed likely to take him from the sooty back rooms of Gary into greener pastures--almost any pastures being greener than Gary's. A politician who was active on the Kennedy campaign banquet circuit--and who brought in nearly 70% of Gary's vote for Jack Kennedy--Chacharis was once invited to the White House to meet Greek Prime Minister Constantine Karamanlis. For a while, the dream of chubby George Chacharis to return to his native Greece as U.S. ambassador did not seem so impossible.

But it was not to be--partly because of that Kennedy called Bobby. As chief counsel for a Senate committee investigating corruption in Lake County in 1959, Bobby Kennedy scraped up enough dirt to inspire the formation of the privately financed Northwest Indiana Crime Commission. The investigations of Commission Director Francis Lynch unearthed evidence that Chacharis and his cronies had regularly accepted payoffs from construction companies that wanted city contracts and licenses. When he could not interest the county prosecutor in his evidence, Lynch went to see Bobby Kennedy, who set up a federal grand jury.

The outcome did not mean that Gary was entering a new era. In fact, some of those who had accepted kickbacks were still on the city payroll--protected by the statute of limitations. Gary being what it is, if they did not go to jail they would probably not be fired.

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