Hired Truck Program - Political Fallout

Political Fallout

Despite the revelations in the Sun-Times, the city defended the program. As the first indictment was unsealed from a sweeping Federal investigation, Chicago City Corporation Counsel Mara Georges said the $40 million-a-year program "is a good program which does a good benefit to the taxpayers of Chicago. It saves taxpayer money. It allows the city to efficiently get jobs done. It is the appropriate use of private resources, as opposed to the city having to engage in its own use of resources.”

The scandal was damaging to then-Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, whose brother sold insurance to three major trucking companies. Additionally, 25 percent of all Hired Truck money went to companies from Daley's 11th Ward power base, accumulating $47.8 million between 1999 and October 2003. Additionally, $108,575 in campaign contributions flowed to the mayor from companies in the program beginning in 1996.

In February 2005, Daley denied complicity in the unfolding scandal saying, "Anyone who believes that my interest in public life is in enriching my family, friends or political supporters doesn't know or understand me at all. My reputation and the well-being of this city are more important to me than any election."

In February 2006, John Briatta, whose sister is married to Cook County Commissioner John P. Daley, the mayor's brother, pleaded guilty to taking at least $5,400 in bribes to steer Hired Truck work to a trucking company.

The litany of cases of bribery grew to include former City Clerk James Laski, who was charged in January 2006 with taking bribes and obstructing justice after federal agents caught him on tape encouraging witnesses to lie to a grand jury and deny that they had been giving him $500 to $1,000 a week in cash bribes to keep getting business from the Hired Truck program. Laski resigned his $135,545-a-year job and gave up his law license. In March 2006 he pled guilty. Laski came into office as a reformer after his predecessor, City Clerk Walter Kozubowski, was convicted in a ghost payroll scheme for paying a total of $476,000 to six "ghosts" for little or no work over a dozen years. Kozubowski was sentenced to five years in prison. In June 2006, Laski was sentenced to two years in prison.

It was also revealed that tons of asphalt paid for by the city were stolen by truck drivers in the Hired Truck program. The asphalt was then used on private jobs.