Mayor Richard Daley lost another top aide this week, which has gotten to be a regular thing in recent months as his administration finds itself besieged by scandals. But the latest departure could in some ways be the most troubling yet.
Denise Casalino was a rising star at City Hall, the civil engineer who just a few years ago won raves as she oversaw the complex $200 million overhaul of the crumbling east-west portion of Wacker Drive. She brought it in on time and within budget. Casalino’s performance earned her a promotion in 2003 to a key policymaking post in the new Department of Construction and Permits and then last year to commissioner of the Planning Department, the agency that promotes and coordinates development in the city.
But Casalino is married to developer Perry Casalino, and she was at best careless about walling off her professional responsibilities from her family interests.
Citing a possible zoning violation, the city recently ordered a halt to construction of a West Side home on a lot jointly owned by the Casalinos, property the commissioner hadn’t reported on her annual economic disclosure statement.
Her resignation Tuesday followed new inquiries from the Tribune’s Gary Washburn about a condominium she owns with her husband at a Near North Side complex he helped to develop. It was built in apparent violation of zoning limits for the site. Casalino has acknowledged errors in judgment, including calling city departments to inquire about the slow pace of obtaining permits for some of her husband’s projects.
These matters are far removed from the hiring and promotion scandal that has federal prosecutors swarming over City Hall. But that scandal has lit a fire under Daley, who has pledged his commitment to wholesale reform. There is no room for error at City Hall–including the possibility that a high-profile aide used clout to help her husband or violated rules that the city demands others follow.
Casalino’s departure contains the stuff of great irony. She said she became frustrated by a bureaucracy that dragged out her husband’s efforts to get construction permits for projects. “I made the mistake of calling people to say, `Why is this taking so long?'” Casalino said.
That’s a complaint long aired by everyone from homeowners seeking to build an addition to developers asking permission for huge commercial or residential complexes. The permit process in the city is so bureaucratic and confusing that it has fostered a cottage industry of professional expediters who hire themselves out to help navigate the process.
Since taking office 16 years ago, Daley has offered up several new plans to cut the red tape and speed up the process, but things have improved only marginally at best. During her short tenure atthe Department of Construction and Permits, Casalino was an architect of one streamlining effort that many in the building industry say seemed only to slow things down.
“Fifteen years ago it took a day or two for a permit for a stock house plan,” observed one development industry executive. “But, until very recently, it was taking 12 to 14 weeks for an identical plan.”
Something is still out of whack if even Daley’s planning commissioner had trouble prodding the city bureaucracy into action.
