A shaken Mayor Richard Daley took a step toward restoring trust in the city’s Hired Truck Program Friday, apologizing for what became a no-work feeding trough for politically connected and mob-tied companies.
He appointed an experienced auditor to ride herd over the program. He laid out needed reforms. And he reversed the city’s questionable decision to withhold from public view an Ernst & Young report from 1998.
That was the study the mayor called for the last time trouble boiled over with hired trucks that are supposed to serve the city’s construction site needs, with allegations of overbilling and cronyism. The report found no overbilling, but found weaknesses in the program’s management and oversight.
These are welcome and necessary moves.
A more difficult task has not been addressed. No one has explained how the Hired Truck Program spun out of control once again, despite warnings that there were ongoing problems.
Declaring “I am not a micro-manager,” Daley said he didn’t know who appointed an alleged former gang member, Angelo Torres, to run a $40 million program that had aroused controversy in the past. Federal authorities charged Torres with attempted extortion and said he took money in exchange for providing trucking work.
Daley said he didn’t know that city trucking business was going to a firm owned by long-time Bridgeport trucker Fred Barbara.
Daley said he didn’t know top city officials had failed to remedy deficiencies in the Hired Truck program spelled out in a city audit last year. The audit found a lack of centralized control, poor oversight and other mismanagement issues.
Daley said he didn’t know that some trucking firms have alleged ties to organized crime.
Then who did know?
The mayor needs to consider two very possible explanations. No one around him has the standing or the confidence to deliver bad news to him. They fear his reaction. No one told him because this was a nice patronage operation that helped some of his friends. It was the Chicago way.
The mayor has more to do than just find a fall guy.
