You don't mean to tell me that the much-vaunted Democrat machine of my youth is still pulling the strings, taking kickbacks and giving out patronage jobs in the city run by Boss Daley's son, do you?

When Mary Jo Falcon started work as personnel director in the Chicago Sewers Department in 1994, she picked up some stern advice from her predecessor, who told Falcon that her real boss worked in a faraway office in City Hall.

The powerful man was Robert Sorich, and she could expect instructions from him on whom to hire, Falcon was told, according to court documents describing the scene. But his name was never to be penned on any documents. If questioned, she was to "deny everything. Deny, deny, deny."

Sorich, who worked in the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, was Mayor Richard M. Daley's patronage chief until a federal grand jury indicted him last year on charges of rigging city hiring to favor campaign workers and others with notable political connections. In court this week, he will be fighting for his own reputation and, in a way, his boss's.

Prosecutors aim to persuade 12 jurors that Sorich and his associates made sure their favorites, whatever their qualifications, got secure jobs as building inspectors and bricklayers, tree trimmers and truck drivers, in a city heavily perfumed with government corruption.

That Sorich's office was right down the hall from the famously micromanaging mayor's is the tantalizing subtext of a case expected to open a window onto the way business is conducted in Daley's City Hall.

Prosecutors are not saying whether they think Daley is pulling levers behind the curtain. The five-term Democratic mayor has been questioned, but not implicated and not charged. His public response: "I don't play any role in hiring; no, I don't. I never have."

Not that Illinois politics have ever been clean -- rewarding political allies with public largesse is an old custom. And I'll be honest about it, my grandfather's connections to Democrat Senator Paul Douglas was the key to my grandmother scoring college scholarship for all four of her children back in the in the early 1950s. Those party ties also explain how my grandfather managed to score a plum job as a state policeman in the late 1930s, at a time when the department was noted as much for its patronage as for its professionalism.

Not, of course, that the GOP hasn't been involved in such shennanigans as well -- former Gov. George Ryan was recently convicted of using his office for personal gain.

This could be interesting -- showing once again that the more things change the more they stay the same.

Posted by: Greg at 10:44 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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