Water Chief Left Daley High And Dry

Milwaukee Problems Unknown Or Overlooked

January 18, 1996|By John Kass and Rogers Worthington, Tribune Staff Writers.

City Water Commissioner John Bolden had something urgent to tell Mayor Richard Daley.

He said he couldn't wait, but he did, quietly, in the outer office, looking like a normal man on time for an appointment, not like someone minutes from public disgrace.

A bureaucratic survivor at age 53, Bolden had skated away from disaster before. Four weeks after being fired in Milwaukee from a top public works post, he landed on his feet in Chicago with a raise. And he kept his salary in Chicago, even though he had ceded control of his department to Daley aides.

But he had done the politically unpardonable. He had compromised Daley's administration in Operation Silver Shovel, the federal investigation that through him is reaching into the mayor's cabinet.

Ushered inside to speak to Daley minutes before the Jan. 10 City Council meeting, Bolden told the mayor the bad news: He had accepted two $1,000 cash payments from John Christopher, the ex-con and corrupt waste hauler who worked as a wired government informant.

"It wasn't pretty," said a mayoral source. "The mayor didn't blow his stack; he just sat there as Bolden told him he took the money and that he would resign. Bolden kept telling the mayor he didn't do anything for the cash, that he just took it, but the mayor wasn't interested in the explanations."

Bolden has not been charged in the probe, but his admission to Daley and his resignation last week is a personal embarrassment to the mayor and has fueled paranoia in the executive suite that Silver Shovel will scoop up more than just undistinguished aldermen and a few city inspectors.

It also has prompted a reassessment as to why Bolden was hired in the first place to his $103,000-a-year post after a spotty track record in Milwaukee.

Aviation Commissioner David Mosena, who was chief of staff when Bolden was hired, said Bolden appeared to be a good choice.

"He had solid credentials--a master's degree in finance from the University of Chicago. He was an engineer. Several people checked up on him," Mosena said. "There was an inference made about his management style in Milwaukee, but we checked it out and found it unsubstantiated. It was a good decision based on the facts that we had."

But what Mosena and others chose to ignore was that Bolden had had a history of shaping the rules to fit political circumstance, which is something of a political credit in Chicago. What hounded Bolden out of Milwaukee--questionable contract practices and the use of city cars to travel regularly to his home in Chicago--didn't seem all that important to the men who hired Bolden a few weeks later.

Before Milwaukee, Bolden had worked in the backwaters of Chicago government: He was an engineer at the Chicago Urban Transportation District, which was set up to build a subway that was never begun. He also was a city traffic engineer.

He received his $85,162-a-year public works job in November 1988 after Milwaukee Mayor John Norquist launched a nationwide search. Norquist, like Daley, was under political pressure to include more minorities in his administration.

But early on, Bolden drew the attention of Milwaukee Ald. Thomas G. Nardelli when he used the city's minority-business ordinance to rework city towing contract language that cut out experienced firms. Nardelli, chairman of the Finance and Personnel Committee, said Bolden shaped the requirements to force the established firms to quickly find minority partners.

R/C Towing Inc., a minority startup company that had no towing trucks, no staff, no insurance and no bonding, won the city's towing contract. Bolden testified for the company at its certification hearing and defended it throughout.

"We ended up with a contractor with no ability to tow and had to hire subcontractors. But it was very skilled in how to bill," Nardelli said.

And Bolden's department was responsible for approving invoices, which also became a problem.

Milwaukee city officials said in September 1991 that the firm had overbilled by almost $400,000 from the time the contract was let in January 1990. It was alleged that R/C Towing double-billed about 375 times, overbilled $108,000 for storing towed cars that had been towed to salvage dealers, and overbilled $25,000 for storing cars that had been signed out by their owners.

"They would take vehicles and tow them around the corner and bill the city for a tow," Nardelli said. "But someone in (public works) was in fact satisfied that they were towing."

While Bolden ignored the mounting criticism, Norquist began to feel the political pressure.

"They screwed up the job or were unable to do the job and Bolden took the heat, rightly so," said Joseph Pecor, administrative manager of Milwaukee's Common Council.

By then, Norquist had requested Bolden's resignation in the aftermath of another controversy. This one involved Bolden's use of a Milwaukee city car to drive to his home on Chicago's South Side on the weekends. In his 19 months in Milwaukee, Bolden drove 46,000 miles on his city car.