From the Associated Press

Price tag for moving licensing center to Ryan pal's property put at $173,000

By MIKE ROBINSON
AP Legal Affairs Writer
Published November 1, 2005, 2:49 PM CST

CHICAGO -- Closing a truck drivers licensing center on Chicago's docks before the lease was up and moving the operation to property owned by George Ryan's host on Jamaican holidays cost Illinois taxpayers $173,000 in added costs, a witness testified Tuesday in the former governor's corruption trial.

In his second day on the witness stand, retired state property manager James Esslinger told jurors hearing the racketeering and fraud case that the move to a suburban South Holland property owned by Ryan friend Harry Klein cost the state an immediate $45,000 a year in rent.

The state also furnished Klein with $53,000 to remodel the property to make it ready for a licensing center, Esslinger said. He said he was not allowed to negotiate the lease with Klein, a currency exchange owner who hosted Ryan and his entourage on annual vacations in Jamaica.

Esslinger said that in arranging the move he took orders from Michael Chamness, who was then head of drivers services under Ryan and now is head of the state's anti-terrorism task force. Esslinger said he believed the Klein lease was a bad deal.

Questioned by Assistant U.S. Attorney Joel R. Levin, Esslinger said that after the deal was completed he took key documents and stored them at his home in Springfield for safekeeping.

"Why did you do that?" Levin asked.

"Just for protection," the veteran state employee testified.

Ryan, 71, is charged along with longtime lobbyist friend Larry Warner, 67, with racketeering and mail fraud. Prosecutors say Ryan, who was secretary of state at the time, furnished an elite group of insiders with big-money state leases and contracts in exchange for vacations and gifts.

Both have pleaded not guilty and deny wrongdoing.

Levin showed Esslinger a memo that Esslinger had written saying that Klein's property in suburban South Holland offered easy access to truck drivers coming for their licensing tests. The former property manager said under questioning that in reality there was no easy access.

"Given that it was not accurate, why did you include it in the memo?" Levin asked.

"Because I was asked to," Esslinger said.

The licensing center was moved to Klein's property from a location at Lake Calumet within the Illinois International Port Authority's complex on Chicago's South Side. On Monday, Esslinger testified that there was nothing wrong with the licensing center at Lake Calumet.

On cross examination, Ryan's chief defense counsel, Dan K. Webb, tried to get Esslinger to admit that he was wrong when he said there was nothing wrong with the Lake Calumet site.

Esslinger acknowledged that the port authority had a security checkpoint at its gate.

The licensing center was "hidden away in the middle of this industrial complex inside the security of the International Port Authority?" Webb asked.

"That's correct," Esslinger said.

Webb mentioned the possibility that the large amount of grain stored at the port would have caused a rodent problem and that snow removal in the dock area might not have been adequate.

Esslinger said he had never heard of those problems.

He said he got his orders from Chamness and did not know who else was involved.

Chamness is due to take the witness stand, perhaps this week, and Klein himself is on the government's witness list, although prosecutors declined to say if and when he might testify.