Forced to admit they’d hired an unqualified 19-year-old building inspector whose father just happened to be a top union boss, city officials quickly got rid of the teenager. But the former Buildings Department deputy who rigged a job interview score to make sure the kid got hired is still taking home a six-digit city paycheck, more than two years later.
Why? Because firing him would send the wrong message to other city employees.
That’s the Daley administration’s excuse for shrugging off an internal watchdog’s recommendation to fire Christopher Kozicki. Testifying in last year’s federal trial on corrupt hiring practices at City Hall, Kozicki admitted he’d falsified the teen’s score under pressure from higher-ups. Firing Kozicki based on that testimony would discourage other employees from being candid with prosecutors, a Law Department spokesman said.
The message we’d like to see broadcast at City Hall is this: If you defraud the city and endanger the public, you’ll lose your job. But that’s a little too straightforward, apparently.
Inspector General David Hoffman, the former federal prosecutor hired by Daley to clean up City Hall, said Kozicki should be fired because his actions created a public safety risk. Hoffman is absolutely right.
Building inspectors don’t empty wastebaskets or dig ditches; they make sure new construction projects are built to code and existing buildings are kept that way. It’s a job for a professional, not a political crony and especially not the inexperienced teenage son of a crony. Two disasters–the E2 nightclub stampede and the collapse of a porch in Lincoln Park–should have driven that point home in 2003. Those 34 deaths apparently didn’t make much of an impression on Kozicki and his bosses when they hired the kid inspector in 2004.
If Kozicki was worried that his testimony could cost him his job, he got over it when federal prosecutors started making noises about prison. The feds granted him immunity in exchange for his cooperation. But the city didn’t fire him.
Kozicki, who has long ties to the Daley political operation, was moved to a newly created job, at the same salary, in the Planning Department.
As it turned out, Kozicki’s testimony wasn’t what prosecutors had hoped for. He pointed the finger at former Buildings Commissioner Stan Kaderbek–and away from the Mayor’s Office of Intergovernmental Affairs. The Daley administration certainly doesn’t want to discourage that kind of candor. So the city has decided it won’t take action against any employee accused of wrongdoing until after the feds have finished their investigation.
By keeping Kozicki on the payroll, the city says it’s sending a message to its employees: It’s OK to come clean. The real message: If you’re politically connected and you defraud the city, you’ll still get paid.
