Key City Hall insider: Politics drove hiring

Key City Hall insider: Politics drove hiring In plea deal, ex-official says mayor's office gave orders

A former high-level city official admitted Tuesday that workers for Mayor Richard Daley's political organization routinely were rewarded with city jobs and promotions based on how well they campaigned for politicians supported by the mayor.

Daniel Katalinic is the second former city official to say that he ran a political operation that benefited Daley's campaign organization and that he took his marching orders directly from the mayor's office.

In a sign of the potency of political work inside City Hall, Katalinic said that he was still able to get jobs for loyal campaign workers well after he had retired in 2003 as a deputy commissioner in the Department of Streets and Sanitation.

Daley said he was not aware of any illegal activities on his behalf and said that his political successes were based on his personal performance in office.

"My political organization is myself," he said Tuesday at an unrelated event in the Loop. "I ran for election every four years. I have done very well. I go to the people on decisions. ... My elections won on what I have done."

Katalinic's admissions came as he pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court to a single count of mail fraud. He is cooperating with the federal government's investigation into how Daley's administration doled out jobs and promotions to campaign workers as part of what prosecutors called a "massive fraud" that spanned City Hall for more than a decade. Katalinic in June worked undercover for the FBI and secretly recorded a conversation outside the Bridgeport home of Daley's longtime patronage chief, Robert Sorich.

In exchange for his cooperation, Katalinic, 54, faces an agreed-upon minimum prison sentence of 1 year and 1 day, instead of a potential 20-year sentence. Katalinic, who offered only brief answers to the judge during his sentencing, declined to comment outside of court.

`He kicks himself every day'

His lawyer, Jeffrey Steinback, said Katalinic grew up in politics and was a lifelong Democrat. Katalinic realizes that some of his conduct was illegal, he said. "Dan regrets his own foolishness and regrets his own misconduct," Steinback said. "He kicks himself every day."

Earlier, federal prosecutors secured the cooperation of another former city official, Donald Tomczak, once a top deputy in the Water Management Department.

Both Tomczak and Katalinic have admitted to operating political armies each made up of more than 200 workers who campaigned door-to-door for pro-Daley candidates for Congress, governor, state representative and local offices.

Katalinic was indicted in September along with Sorich; Timothy McCarthy, a former Sorich aide; John Sullivan, a former managing deputy commissioner in Streets and Sanitation; and Patrick Slattery, an ex-Streets and Sanitation official. Those four have pleaded not guilty.

In that indictment, federal prosecutors also alleged that former top mayoral aide Victor Reyes, who heads the powerful Hispanic Democratic Organization, was a "co-schemer" in the illegal patronage operation. Prosecutors did not name Reyes, but his attorney acknowledged that Reyes is the "Individual A" referred to in court papers. He denies Reyes did anything wrong.

Katalinic, who had worked for the city from 1970 until his retirement in June 2003, said that Sorich approached him in early 1999 to discuss forming a political group, according to Katalinic's plea agreement.

Sorich, who was a senior official in the Mayor's Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, told Katalinic another group was needed "because the political organization supporting the mayor of Chicago ... needed additional political workers," according to the plea. Sorich allegedly told Katalinic and other political coordinators what candidates the mayor's campaign organization wanted to support and where they should dispatch their workers.

Katalinic said that he met about three times a year in Sorich's City Hall office and gave him lists of names of political workers seeking city employment or promotions. Katalinic said he prioritized the names "based on how much political work they did for the Katalinic organization, and how dependable they were when [he] asked for their political assistance."

Political workers ranked the highest on Katalinic's lists routinely scored jobs and promotions.

After retiring in 2003 as a deputy commissioner in the department's bureau of street operations, Katalinic lobbied City Hall on behalf of Allied Waste Transportation, which operates the city's controversial blue bag recycling program, and he continued to seek favors for his campaign forces.

Katalinic said he gave a list of loyal political workers to the mayor's patronage office in early 2004, and almost all of them received promotions, including one employee who was in Iraq on active military duty when he supposedly sat for a city job interview.

Links to Hired Truck scandal

In his plea, Katalinic also admitted to bribery-related offenses with which he was not formally charged.

Katalinic admitted to accepting about $15,000 in bribes from 2001 to 2003 that were passed to him from convicted city worker John "Quarters" Boyle. The payments were for Katalinic helping favored companies get work under the city's scandal-plagued Hired Truck Program.

In addition, Katalinic admitted to participating in a failed 2004 bribery scheme to cut down two healthy, city-owned trees that were blocking a private development project. A city crew abruptly stopped cutting down the trees after upset neighbors complained.

Katalinic's sentencing was put off until after his testimony against Sorich and others, who are scheduled for trial in early March.

Sorich's lawyer, Thomas Anthony Durkin, said he was looking forward to trial. "This guy admits to taking bribes and now claims that Sorich, who never took a dime, is the bad guy? Give me a break," Durkin said.