Permanent disability a temporary condition
So it seems for three former city workers
Seventeen years ago, David Sheehan, a steamroller operator for the City of Chicago, was declared "permanently and totally disabled,'' entitling him to collect disability payments from taxpayers until he dies.
Sheehan -- who has gotten more than $825,000 in tax-free disability checks -- was never supposed to be able to work again.
Today, you can find Sheehan developing a 60-unit condo building in Bridgeport with his friend and business partner, Paul DiCaro, a convicted burglar and reputed mob associate.
(Sun-Times)
(Sun-Times)
The Chicago Sun-Times looked at a sampling of these cases, examining the files of six men now collecting lifetime disability payments for injuries they reported more than 20 years ago. Three of the six -- including Sheehan -- are now working in the private sector, even as they continue to collect disability pay, the newspaper found.
They show no signs today of the physical injuries they said they suffered while working for the city.
Before the three men were labeled unable ever to work again, doctors examined each of them and found they actually could have returned to work, though in a less physically demanding job, state records show.
But the city never found them other jobs. So a state arbitrator declared the men "permanently and totally disabled" and ordered the city to support them as long as they live.
In two of the cases, the arbitrator based his ruling in part on the city's failure to find the men new jobs. In the other, Sheehan was deemed "a poor candidate" to be trained for another job because he never even went to high school.
Today:
Sheehan co-owns a real estate company with DiCaro, building condos. They were once charged in a botched burglary of the Balmoral Race Track in Crete. Sheehan was acquitted. DiCaro went to prison. Another of the three men -- Robert Bogolin, 50, a former water department laborer -- owns a corner bar he has had since before his injury and has financially backed his wife's trucking company, which was thrown out of the city's Hired Truck Program. Bogolin's disability payments to date top $550,000. The third -- Daniel Capobianco, 44, a former garbage man -- is teaching art classes on the North Shore. He's also a licensed security guard. His disability payments have exceeded $480,000.
"If they are actually out there doing something, earning a wage, they are receiving a benefit that they are not entitled to under workman's compensation laws,'' said Dennis Ruth, chairman of the Illinois Workers Compensation Commission.
"A 'permanent and total disability' is exactly that. You are permanently and totally disabled from returning to employment. You don't have to be at home, laying in bed all day. But your disability is such that you are not capable of holding a job.
"The city could come in and sign a petition at any point in time saying, 'We don't believe this person is permanently, totally disabled anymore, that this person is either holding a job or capable of holding a job.'"
Ruth said he was unaware of city officials ever making such a challenge.
"When you think of 'permanent disability,' you think of someone not even really able to get around,'' he said. "That's in the private sector.
"You think someone's disabled, they are in the chair, they can't move. It's completely different.''
Sheehan was operating a steamroller when it tipped over, throwing him four feet into a viaduct wall July 22, 1985, according to the accident report he filed. Sheehan, who was 35 years old, never returned to work for the city.
It was the seventh time Sheehan reported getting hurt during his seven years on the city payroll, working for the Streets and Sanitation Department. He filed a workers compensation claim each time.
Over the next three years, Sheehan complained of pains in his neck and arms, and the pain was apparently aggravated by sitting, according to records filed with the state. He said he had trouble sleeping, lifting and bending, plus pain in his lower back from a previous mishap.
While he was on disability leave, the city wanted Sheehan to come back to a temporary "light-duty" assignment, stamping books at the Richard J. Daley branch library, but his doctor said Sheehan couldn't do it because it was too painful for him to sit.
Today, 21 years after his fall, Sheehan said he still has occasional pain in his neck, though he doesn't want to have an operation his doctors recommend.
"There's certain times I can't use this hand at all,'' he said, flexing the fingers of his right hand.
"You get the nerve up here, and it goes all the way down the arm, and then you can't use your hand.
"If you just hit your hand like this," he said, motioning toward a fence pole, "I'd have to have my hand in a bucket of ice water . . . worse than a toothache.''
"Apparently, Mr. Sheehan is nowhere near as incapacitated as he would like us to believe,'' according to the undated memo from the 1980s, from one of then-Mayor Eugene Sawyer's personnel supervisors, Stephen Carmody. The memo cites a neurological surgeon's evaluation that concluded that Sheehan could do some new, unspecified job.
Sheehan's doctor also thought he could work "in a position in which he does not have to do heavy lifting or be exposed to potential injury to his neck,'' according to a 1986 memo.
His doctor suggested surgery. Sheehan opted instead for a "conservative'' treatment program.
Sheehan told Sun-Times reporters that he wanted to go back to work for the city -- as a supervisor. His doctors were OK with that. And the city agreed he was capable of doing that, according to memos filed with the state.
"I wanted to be a foreman,'' Sheehan said. "They never could get me anything. To get one of those jobs, you've got to have connections. I tried very hard to get that position.''
Instead, Sheehan said the city wanted him to be a watchman. Sheehan would have been paid $17.50 an hour -- the same as he got operating a steamroller. But he turned down the post because it would have cut his pension, which would have been based on a watchman's salary of $10 an hour, Sheehan said: "You'd almost have to be stupid to do that.''
He also rejected the city's proposed $120,000 settlement, calling that offer "ridiculous.''
Sheehan kept collecting disability checks until December 1988, when he said the city stopped his benefits. That was a few weeks after Sheehan, DiCaro and five others were charged with the attempted burglary of the Balmoral Race Track five years earlier.
A few weeks after the arbitrator's ruling, Sheehan went on trial in the Balmoral case. He was the only one acquitted.
Sheehan has collected more than $825,000 in disability payments from the city, a city pension fund and the state Rate Adjustment Fund, which provides cost-of-living raises to workers deemed "permanently and totally disabled.''
On top of his disability payments, Sheehan, now 56, started collecting a pension two years ago, taking early retirement. He had spent seven years on the city payroll, but he got credit for working 31.5 years, most of that spent on disability leave.
Between his disability checks and his pension, Sheehan got $67,532 last year -- nearly twice as much as he made driving a steamroller.
Shortly before he retired, Sheehan and DiCaro created D&P Realty. They hired the DeGrazia Development Co. to build a seven-story structure with 60 condos at 974 W. 35th Pl. The condos are selling for as much as $400,000. Sheehan said he has a 27 percent stake in the project.
Arthroscopic surgery detected a loss of motion in his hip but no evidence of a fracture, records show. It was an injury that might lead to arthritis, doctors concluded.
Bogolin was 30 then and "a good candidate for work training and rehabilitation into another less physically demanding occupation,'' a city doctor wrote.
But Bogolin never worked for the city again. He has collected more than $550,000 in disability payments over the last 20 years.
Three years after Bogolin filed his workers comp claim, a state arbitrator ordered the city to pay him $373.52 every week for the rest of his life.
"Since the treating doctors have not released [Bogolin] to return to work, since he has not done so and since his employer has not retrained him nor found him suitable work within his restrictions and limitations, he is found, permanently, totally and completely disabled,'' a state arbitrator wrote Dec. 29, 1989.
The city appealed, but lost.
Bogolin declined to talk with the Sun-Times.
The chairman of the state Workers Compensation Commission said permanently, totally disabled workers cannot work -- in any field. But Bogolin's attorney, Terence Gillespie, said he believed disabled workers like Bogolin could do "non-substantial employment . . . from owning a business, from owning stocks.
"He's not been able to work in the construction field in which he was injured,'' Gillespie said. "It's a total prohibition from doing that line of work.''
Bogolin got $35,930 in disability pay last year -- about $6,000 more than he made as a city laborer. He also gets health insurance for his wife and kids, but not himself, Gillespie said.
About a year ago, Bogolin asked city officials to end his lifetime disability payments and give him a lump-sum settlement, Gillespie said, but the city refused.
Bogolin's offer came amid the federal Hired Truck investigation, which included Fresno Transport, owned by Bogolin's wife and sister-in-law. Bogolin's wife also co-owns Bacchanalia Ristorante on the Southwest Side.
Fresno was the second-biggest company in the Hired Truck Program. It allegedly paid $1,800 in bribes every two weeks to Donald Tomczak, a top city water official who decided which trucks were hired, according to court records and sources. Tomczak has pleaded guilty to Hired Truck crimes. No one from Fresno has been charged.
Tomczak's son, former Will County State's Attorney Jeff Tomczak, handled the real estate closings when Bogolin and his wife sold their downtown condo and bought a home in Burr Ridge.
Bogolin's bar and Fresno have donated more than $22,000 to political organizations over the years, including the Hispanic Democratic Organization and its leaders.
Bogolin, his brother and their wives personally guaranteed a loan Fresno has with Metropolitan Bank and Trust, according to state records filed last year. But Gillespie said Bogolin is not an owner of Fresno.
Fresno got work in the Hired Truck Program because the city certified that the company was owned and operated by women. After the Hired Truck scandal, city officials determined that Fresno actually was run by Bogolin's brother, and it stripped the company of its status as a woman-owned business and threw it out of the program. Still in business, Fresno has since been hired as a subcontractor on city projects.
Two years later, they both filed reports claiming they were hurt on the job. Neither ever worked for the city again.
Antonio Capobianco said he slipped on ice in early 1983, causing a garbage can to fall on him, according to state records, and spent eight days in the hospital with a hematoma to his brain, fractured ribs and other injuries.
Five months later, his son reported straining his lower back while lifting a garbage can. He did it again a few weeks later.
Capobianco lived with his parents in Edison Park, collecting disability checks from the city. He became a full-time student at the American Academy of Art in the Loop, planning a career in art, state records show.
While Capobianco was out on disability, a city doctor examined him and concluded he "should be able to resume his normal occupational duties and activities of living without restrictions,'' according to a March 1984 report.
But Capobianco was still off work in July 1986, when the city personnel department wanted to find light-duty jobs for him and his father, according to a memo sent to their attorney, Frederic Krol. The memo asked for resumes from the Capobiancos. It's unclear if they ever gave them to the city.
Then, in 1987, state arbitrators separately declared both Capobiancos "permanently and totally disabled,'' awarding each a lifetime of disability pay. In Daniel Capobianco's case, the arbitrator's ruling was based in part on the city's failure to find him a job.
Antonio Capobianco was 62 then. His son was 25.
Antonio Capobianco died several years ago.
Daniel Capobianco has collected more than $480,000 in disability payments, including $27,548 last year.
Capobianco is also paid to teach two classes on watercolor painting at the Art Center in Highland Park.
"It's what I want to do,'' he said. "What do you want me to do, rot away?''
Capobianco has also been a licensed security guard for the last six years, state records show, and he has a firearms license but said he doesn't work as a security guard. "I'm a stay-at-home father,'' said Capobianco, who lives in Geneva.
Twenty years ago, a city doctor reported that Capobianco would never be able to lift more than 25 pounds or carry more than 10 pounds because of his back injuries. A reporter watched recently as he lugged art supplies from his car to his classroom.
"I have problems with my back all the time, every day," Capobianco said. "I'm carrying stuff I can, that's it."