His voice at times shaking, a visibly upset Mayor Richard Daley took responsibility Friday for the scandal in the city’s Hired Truck Program and promised reforms, but then said he was unaware of problems that senior aides have been trying to remedy for months.
Daley also said that he did not know how Angelo Torres, an alleged former gang member who was arrested on corruption charges this week, was appointed to run the program. The mayor acknowledged that he knew longtime Bridgeport businessman Fred Barbara but was unaware that Barbara’s wife’s firm, Karen’s Kartage, has received Hired Truck business.
Daley, who made ominous references to possible staff changes, announced the appointment of city Auditor Robert Benson, a certified public accountant, to lead the effort to restructure the chronically troubled Hired Truck and then to oversee its operation.
“As I stand before you today, I am embarrassed, I’m angry and I’m disappointed because I feel I have let the people down,” Daley said, making his first public comments on the scandal, which broke while he was vacationing out of the country.
“But as much as I feel I have let people down, I also feel that I have been let down,” he said. “As any good manager will tell you, part of the challenge is to pick good people and trust them to do their jobs. So did I know there were abuses in the program still not being addressed? No. Should I have been told? Yes.”
One City Hall insider said the mayor’s anger was even more intense behind the scenes. “I think he is so mad at so many people that if he fired them all, city government would come to a screeching halt,” the source said.
The problem-plagued Hired Truck program pays about 165 private firms to haul waste and materials to and from city construction sites.
Torres, who headed Hired Truck until December, was charged with attempted extortion in an alleged plot to take payoffs from a trucking company in exchange for city business. He is affiliated with the Hispanic Democratic Organization, a pro-Daley group headed by Victor Reyes, a former senior mayoral aide.
Top Daley administration officials have acknowledged that some of the companies in the program have been paid even though their trucks have sat unused.
Certain program participants have ties to organized crime and, in some cases, more than one company is owned by members of the same family, according to a report in the Chicago Sun-Times.
The Tribune reported Friday that Robert Ricciarelli, who has overseen the Department of Streets and Sanitation’s share of the Hired Truck program, moonlights as manager of an adult bookstore. The business is housed in a Dixmoor building that once was a notorious brothel that federal prosecutors in the 1980s contended was linked to the mob.
Twelve companies have been suspended from the program in recent days.
City Budget Director William Abolt and Transportation Commissioner Miguel d’Escoto told reporters last week that a city audit in 2003 found major flaws in the program stemming from lack of centralized control, poor oversight and other mismanagement. They said they have been working ever since to solve the problems.
“I will tell you the truth, no one told me,” Daley repeated. “I don’t micromanage people. I select good people. I give them responsibility. I let them make the decisions and be held accountable. If there is a problem they can come to me. That’s how I manage government.
“This could have been solved at any time,” Daley said, fuming. “Why wasn’t it solved? . . . Some people think they can handle [problems] themselves.”
Responding to a question about a possible staff shake-up, Daley said, “I will assess and I will make decisions that are beneficial to the people of the city of Chicago and some decisions will be very difficult. But I will make them.”
Attempts to reach Abolt and d’Escoto for comment were unsuccessful. Spokesmen for the two officials directed questions to Daley’s office.
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“The mayor said he will discuss this with his managers, and I am sure that is what he will do,” said deputy mayoral press secretary Maria Toscano.
In the City Hall chain of command, department heads are supposed to report to Daley’s chief of staff, Sheila O’Grady.
Hired Truck has been plagued by problems for years, and the city paid nearly $1 million in 1998 to Ernst & Young to identify weaknesses and recommend improvements.
The audit produced 24 recommendations. Benson said Friday that action has been taken on each but he and Corporation Counsel Mara Georges, who also appeared at the news conference, were hazy when asked which steps were taken after the report’s completion and which have come during the recent attempt to impose reforms.
Georges acknowledged that substantial work on one key recommendation–to “develop better systems to control estimating, selection and use of trucks”–came within the last six months and has not yet been fully implemented.
Among a series of changes announced this week in response to the scandal, Daley has ordered the end of the program in its current form. Under his plan, new Hired Truck participants would be admitted under a stringent application process.
Under one reform designed to spread around the business of the $40 million-a-year program, a cap will be placed on the number of trucks belonging to any firm that can be used in a day.
That would severely limit the business of some companies that now enjoy millions of dollars of business a year from the program. Among them are Marina Cartage and MAT Leasing, both of which are owned by Michael Tadin, another Bridgeport businessman who is a longtime friend of Daley’s.
Asked if he is serious about limiting business with Tadin, Daley replied, “Yes. Any of them. All of them, or any of them.”
Later he said, “There are no sacred cows. There are no sacred individuals.”
Daley said his intent “is not to punish the legitimate firms but to weed out those bent on breaking the rules. It is my hope that our reforms will help clear the way for more companies, especially women- and minority-owned firms, to become part of the program.”
But the head of one minority-owned company, among the 12 participants suspended this week, said Friday he has been terminated for no valid reason.
City officials said Wilson & Steward Co. was sidelined for asking Ricciarelli to seek a waiver for an overweight truck ticket.
“I never asked Ricciarelli to intervene,” said Jesse Steward, owner of the firm. “The city hasn’t contacted me or said anything to me.”
He said he got the ticket in April 2002 and paid a $1,200 fine.