Daley turns blind eye for detail to cronies' faults

October 10, 2002|By John Kass.

When Mayor Richard Daley wants to squash a lowly city worker who lacks a political sponsor, a bizarre transformation takes place:

Da mare who talks like dis becomes an orator eager to make speeches about public accountability.

Recently, he demanded the head of a principal who called police to break up a fight at her elementary school. She figured that cops wouldn't respond if it was a weaponless fight, so she lied and said a kid had a gun.

Daley said she'd pay "serious consequences!"

"You have to be responsible for your conduct!" Daley fumed, turning purple, ripping on the principal. "Responsible! You have to be responsible."

He brags that he takes pride in the smallest details, which is why, he says, he's such a great manager. But sometimes, he pretends to forget.

Like when he's asked questions about his pals who pull in millions and millions on kinky deals; or about his friends with Outfit connections who get $100 million in city-related contracts; or the thugs on the city payroll who work the precincts for his candidates.

Then he transforms, becoming:

Mayor Little Big Man.

That is to say, a man who is little, but big in power, like a spoiled child possessing a terrible genie in a lamp, a genie that can crush you with a giant blue fist as big as a house.

So he was in full LBM mode when City Hall reporters dared ask him for comment on my Wednesday column.

It was about John "Quarters" Boyle, a boss of the Coalition for Better Government, one of Daley's favorite groups of tough guys and ex-cons. They're on the city payroll and they've done his bidding during campaigns.

The coalition also works for Ald. Richard Mell (33rd) and his son-in-law, U.S. Rep. Rod Blagojevich (D-Mell).

Quarters got his nickname because he served three years in prison for stealing $4 million in toll-booth quarters from the Illinois State Toll Highway Authority. Later, he was rewarded with a city job.

Boyle was suspended for 29 days on charges of sexually harassing a female colleague.

The city's sexual harassment report said Quarters allegedly made lewd comments about how large her "buttocks" appeared in her pants.

Then he allegedly grabbed her "by the buttocks," according to the report.

But Quarters, who is supremely political, received only a 29-day suspension for his grabby behavior.

Yet Little Big Man wants to ruin the life of the principal for trying to get the cops to her school to stop a fight.

Naturally, since he's so detail obsessed, he was asked about Quarters.

"I have no idea," Mayor Little Big Man said, almost snarling, amazed that anyone would dare ask him such a thing. "You know how many people we have on the city payroll?"

Then he started verbally attacking a fellow Tribune reporter, Gary Washburn, who covers City Hall.

He asked if the reporter knew Bob Greene, who resigned recently from the Tribune after a sex scandal with a high school girl.

"Did you know him personally? Did you talk to him?" Little Big Man sneered. "Oh, you didn't? Did you ever sit next to him?"

This took place on the South Side, at an opening of a big-box retail store. A crowd of store supporters picked up on what he wanted. They began laughing.

It was that suck-up kind of laughter you hear around bullies in a schoolyard, as kids hope that if they only keep laughing, the bully won't turn on them.

Little Big Man smiled, enjoying the laughter, perhaps because there was fear in it.

As he paused, a reporter reminded him that Quarters spent time in prison for stealing quarters and then was hired by his administration.

"I'm just telling you that 40,000 employees work for the city, and I don't know every one of them. So that's your answer," Little Big Man said.

Asked if Quarters should have been hired, he said, "Gee, I don't know.

"Should [Greene] have been hired? I don't know. Same thing. What's good for the goose is good for the gander," he said.

Maybe Little Big Man didn't notice, but once the paper realized what the columnist had done with the girl, the columnist was gone.

But Little Big Man keeps Quarters around.

His defense of Quarters encourages the thugs. And it also encourages his wrought-iron fence boys, and the Outfit-connected Duffs, the insider airport and towing contractors, the $400 million Millennium Park profiteers, the $600 million Soldier Field, the CTA land giveaways, and so on.

Meanwhile, firefighters, cops, city workers and teachers must grovel for contracts and a raise.

The bill for this arrogance is measured in taxpayer dollars, hundreds and hundreds of millions of them--not quarters.