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To: shades who wrote (63861)	6/15/2006 5:29:01 PM
From: shades	Respond to of 110194

US House Speaker,Partners Made Over $3M In Land Deal-Paper NEW YORK (Dow Jones)--U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., and two partners made more than $3 million on land they acquired and sold over three years near the route of a planned freeway on the western edge of Chicago, according to reports released Wednesday and cited in Thursday's online edition of The Chicago Tribune. According to the Chicago newspaper's Web site, Hastert and his two partners sold the property near Plano, Ill. three months after a proposed Prairie Parkway route was approved in a transportation bill signed into law in 2005. A real estate developer planning to build more than 1,500 homes on the land purchased the property, which is located 5 1/2 miles from the proposed highway project. The property sold through a land trust - Little Rock Trust No. 225 - that identified only one member of the partnership in public records, Dallas Ingemunson, a long-time supporter and political mentor to Hastert. Hastert, a proponent of the highway, helped get more than $200 million in federal funding for the project through an "earmark" in the federal transportation bill. The Chicago newspaper cited as its source land records and financial disclosure reports released as required Wednesday. "Hastert's profit was among the more notable in size," the newspaper said. Ingemunson said the House Speaker received five-eighths of the proceeds, or about a $1.5 million profit on the sale, the newspaper said, quoting Ingemunson. A spokesman for Hastert, Ron Bonjean, noted: "For 26 years, the speaker has been a proponent of the Prairie Parkway to address the transportation challenges in northeast Illinois. None of the properties purchased by the speaker are near enough to the Prairie Parkway to be affected by the proposed highway." The developer who purchased the land said the highway project was not a deciding factor in the transaction. "We would have done the transaction whether it was proposed or not," said Arthur Zwemke, a partner in Robert Aruthur Land Co., who has been a donor over the years to Hastert's campaigns. More important than the planned highway project are the land's location, a favorable political climate for growth, and the availability of good infrastructure like water and sewer, Zwemke said. (END) Dow Jones Newswires June 15, 2006 15:45 ET (19:45 GMT)