Two years after leaving a senior City Hall post where he was being accused of accepting bribes, Anthony Pucillo acquired a financial interest in a road and sewer construction company that since has reaped $36 million in city contracts, records show.
Pucillo quit his job as the city’s first deputy transportation commissioner in 1998, the year after city contractor Marco Morales said in a plea agreement that he bribed a person federal authorities called “City Official A.”
In a jailhouse interview in Mexico with the Tribune earlier this month, Morales identified Pucillo as the man he paid to get city business. U.S. authorities also named Pucillo in their written request to Mexico to arrest Morales in September 2001.
Records show that Pucillo apparently has prospered since he departed his city job. He became a vice president of M&Q Sewer and Water Contractors and owns 25 percent of the construction firm’s stock, according to filings the firm made with the city.
M&Q has won $74 million in city contracts since 1990, but nearly half of the total–$36 million–has come since 2000 when Pucillo became associated with the company.
In addition to his financial interest in M&Q, Pucillo obtained an option to buy stock in a female-owned company that gets work under a city affirmative action contracting program, records show.
Pucillo’s affiliation with the companies does not appear to violate city ethics ordinances. “The company is involved in no wrongdoing and never has been,” Glenn Seiden, an attorney for M&Q, said Wednesday.
But the former official’s business dealings raise questions about conflicts of interest.
Pucillo’s attorney has denied that Pucillo did anything improper. Pucillo has declined to comment.
Public records and interviews show Pucillo was a powerful City Hall insider. He and his wife, a former judge, have amassed a portfolio of more than 60 stocks, two modest Florida homes, a small fleet of cars and recreational vehicles and a boat, according to her ethics filings with the Illinois Supreme Court and Florida land records.
Together, Pucillo and his wife, Joan, have pensions from five public agencies where they were employed over the years.
Married in 1970, they are now divorcing.
They have four adult children. At one time, two of their children were on public payrolls and two were on the payroll of a city contractor.
Bribery allegation
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Vito Partipilo, son of the owners of F&V Cement Contractors, told the Tribune last week that he personally delivered about $4,000 to Pucillo in the mid-1990s. Partipilo also said he attended a mayoral fundraiser held in the 1990s at a party room at Comiskey Park.
At one point, Pucillo grabbed Mayor Richard Daley’s hand and “and put it to his heart and said, `Mayor, my heart is for you! I am all for you!'” Partipilo recounted. The crowd broke into applause, he said.
Pucillo and trucking magnate Michael Tadin, a friend of Daley’s, “were kind of acting as hosts,” said a former Chicago Department of Transportation employee who also attended the function. “There was a wide range of people, a lot of people from CDOT. I am sure there were contractors there.”
Pucillo worked in the city’s Department of Streets and Sanitation before being transferred to the Transportation Department in a reorganization. He was promoted to first deputy transportation commissioner in late 1995 or early 1996, according to a former colleague.
Partipilo said Pucillo summoned to his office Partipilo’s father, Frank, and a group of mostly Italian-American city contractors who worked on Transportation Department projects after his elevation.
“He called in the troops,” Partipilo said, recounting his father’s story. Pucillo reportedly said, “You guys have to deal with me from now on. Any problems, deal with me.”
Though the first deputy is second in command, Pucillo concentrated on “the street resurfacing aspect of the job,” but appeared not to get involved in bridge operations, project planning, grant applications and other aspects of the department’s operation, said a former colleague.
The Tribune reported in 1999 that the Daley administration had awarded about $51 million in contracts to resurface streets to National Asphalt Heat Treating. Most of that work came after 1993, when the company hired Tadin and William Pucillo, a convicted felon and Anthony Pucillo’s brother.
“[Anthony Pucillo] was a real good guy,” said an alderman who spoke on condition of anonymity. “He was real personable. He got street stuff done for us. If you had a problem, you could call.”
But the alderman sounded a note of envy.
Pucillo worked on behalf of candidates backed by Daley, running a political operation that was separate from any regular Democratic ward organization, the alderman said.
“Those guys get all the perks and all the good jobs, and we get …,” he said.
“He’d send his guys wherever Daley wanted them to go” at election time, said Frank Coconate, a former candidate for state representative in the Northwest Side district where Pucillo lives in a modest ranch house.
Coconate said two Pucillo relatives once agreed to allow his campaign signs placed on their lawn only to remove them when it was discovered Coconate was not Pucillo’s choice.
Pucillo, 66, also is a lobbyist and a frequent donor to political committees.
He and Ollicup Inc., one of his companies, have made about $17,000 in political donations in recent years, with most of it going to powerful Chicago ward bosses.
M&Q and Cloacina Contractors Inc., the firm for which Pucillo obtained stock options, have donated more than $36,000 over the years to political candidates and committees. Cloacina is a subcontractor to M&Q on city jobs and is owned by relatives of M&Q’s owners.
In his role as deputy commissioner, Pucillo would have been responsible for supervising some of the contracts awarded to M&Q.
Firm linked to past troubles
The firm has also been involved in controversy over a 1993 city contract and the illegal dumping of debris by John Christopher, a former government informant, who bribed the late Ald. Bill Henry to erect a massive dump on the city’s West Side.
In 1996, the company received a notice of claim from the city over the illegal dumping by Christopher, which a company filing with the city said was “resolved.”
Jennifer Hoyle, a spokeswoman for the city’s Law Department, said the firm paid a $150,000 settlement in June 2000 for using Christopher to dump debris.
In 2001, the city sued M&Q over a 1993 construction project on the South Side along Western Avenue.
In a freak accident in 1998, an elderly woman was nearly crushed when a gust of wind knocked over a 900-pound bus shelter. A Cook County jury awarded her $3.2 million.
Her lawsuit alleged that M&Q failed to reinstall the shelter properly during the 1993 construction project and failed to use safe anchors on the shelter. M&Q paid $400,000 and the city paid $75,000.
The city has contended in three lawsuits that M&Q failed to obtain the proper insurance to cover the city. The city received a payment of $56,250 in 2001 that resolved the litigation, Hoyle said.
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