Scandals put City Hall in a spin

Chicago Sun-Times
Aug. 28, 2005

If Mayor Daley's revolving door takes any more turns, it might go into permanent spin mode.

Thirteen Daley Cabinet members have either left or been shown the door in recent months in a corruption-induced housecleaning by chief of staff Ron Huberman.

At last count, no fewer than 10 city department heads had the word "acting" in front of their titles.

The mayor has an acting inspector general, acting directors of personnel and intergovernmental affairs and acting commissioners of three departments at the center of the Hired Truck scandal: Streets and Sanitation, Water Management and Transportation.

There are also acting commissioners of the Health, Buildings and Construction and Permits departments.

Interim chief procurement officer Mary Dempsey and her top deputy, Lori Lightfoot, who have spent the last six months ridding Chicago's scandal-ridden minority contracting program of white-owned "fronts," are wrapping up their temporary tours of duty with no replacements in sight.

"Remember when Jane Byrne was crucified for having a revolving door? What do they call this? They're all baby-sitting. It's the strangest thing I've ever seen," said a veteran City Hall observer, who asked to remain anonymous.

Experience gone

The unprecedented number of acting commissioners could be prime fodder during City Council budget hearings for aldermen feeling their oats now that the ongoing scandals have weakened Daley politically, the source said.

"Obviously, these commissioners aren't gonna be too in tune with their budgets. They'll prop them up, give them a script" and hope they survive aldermanic questioning, the source said.

Ald. Patrick O'Connor (40th), Daley's unofficial City Council floor leader, said the effect of the Cabinet turnover has been exacerbated by three major developments: hundreds of employee layoffs tied to years of economic belt-tightening; a city hiring freeze that has been extended indefinitely because of the city hiring scandal, and an early retirement program that last year claimed 2,400 city employees, including four department heads and a parade of their top deputies.

Every department lost mid-level managers who were the backbone and institutional memory of city government.

"The early retirement and now this [corruption] stuff has taken away years and years of experience where you could call and try and resolve problems without making them acts of Congress," O'Connor said.

"A lot of guys are heading up departments they know nothing about. They're just managers wondering if they're running it or keeping a seat warm. Before, they had people around them who knew how to get the job done. No more. A lot of those people who ran departments for decades regardless of who the commissioner was are now gone."

Pressed to describe the impact on city services, O'Connor said, "Before, we were dealing with guys who knew the service end of a department and knew how to get things done for communities. If you were out there fixing a street, and somebody said, 'Can we extend it around this corner because there's a need here,' they'd figure out a way to do it. New people are reluctant to work with anybody unless it's scripted. There's not a lot of innovative stuff going on."

'It's not getting done'

Ald. Tom Murphy (18th) agreed that the triple whammy of layoffs, early retirement and the scandal-triggered housecleaning has had an impact on city services.

"They've trimmed back some of these departments quite a bit: Water, Transportation, Sanitation. We've lost personnel at the street level because of the hiring freeze and cutbacks," Murphy said.

"Our office is experiencing more calls. People who make the initial service request are calling back because it's not getting done. Getting stop, turn, pedestrian and school crossing signs is like impossible. That's been a problem for the last year. If you need a cutout for a hole in the street where there's been a sewer collapse, there's a lag time that wasn't there a year or two ago."

In recent months, Daley has made only three appointments without the "acting" title: Huberman as chief of staff with a mandate to clean house; Budget Director Paul Volpe to replace John Harris with budget season right around the corner, and environmental whiz kid and former mayoral assistant Saddhu Johnston to replace Marcia Jimenez as environment commissioner.

Last week, the mayor categorically denied that the constant turnover has impacted his ability to deliver services to Chicago residents.

'Trial period'

"You have deputies in there, first deputies, people working. It's just like anything else. You have people resign in your company. You have people able to move in there. You recruit [replacements]. We've had that continually [with people] moving on. There's nothing wrong with that. Sometimes, it's good," Daley said.

Mayoral press secretary Jacquelyn Heard added, "I don't think anyone can point to a breakdown in services because of these people acting. . . . Some are just acting as a trial period -- to see if they can do it. It's fair to say that all of them are performing at a level that would make them prime candidates to be named permanently."

If any of the mayor's temps has a shot at the permanent job, acting Inspector General William Marback appears to be a prime candidate.

On Thursday, City Hall moved forward on Marback's recommendation to fire 47 more employees for an array of alleged offenses ranging from theft, bribery and falsifying time cards to possession of drugs and driving on revoked licenses.

Huberman took pains to credit Marback for the "rapid turnaround" of new corruption cases and for "chipping away at" the backlog of old cases allegedly allowed to languish under Marback's ousted predecessor, Alexander Vroustouris.

One case -- an alleged bribery case involving the ward superintendent brother of Ald. Emma Mitts (37th) -- was turned around on the same day, Huberman said.

"That kind of turnaround is a new precedent for them," Huberman said.