4 city aides face new job charges

Federal prosecutors leveled fresh charges Thursday against four former top aides to Mayor Richard Daley as the investigation of fraudulent hiring in the Daley administration spread to the city's Buildings and General Services Departments.

Authorities added three new counts to their case against Robert Sorich, Daley's former patronage chief; Timothy McCarthy, who also worked in the mayor's office; and former Streets and Sanitation Department officials John Sullivan and Patrick Slattery.

The new charges came a week after a federal judge refused to dismiss felony allegations that the four Daley aides rigged the city's hiring process to ensure public jobs and promotions for campaign workers.

In the new charges, prosecutors accused administration officials of corrupting the process in hiring a truck driver, a laborer and a building inspector.

Sorich and McCarthy allegedly fixed the selection of a building inspector in the summer of 2004. Although the indictment offers no details on who got the job, the alleged incident occurred shortly before a controversy over the qualifications of new building inspectors.

Two sons of top Carpenters Union Local 13 officials quit in September 2004 after the city accused them of falsifying their resumes. The young inspectors--one only 19 years old at the time--were on the job only days before the uproar over their lack of qualifications for their $50,000-a-year jobs.

The resignations of the young inspectors prompted the Daley administration to announce that officials would check the resumes of 14 other inspectors hired in the same class. The inquiry yielded allegations against two more new inspectors, also Local 13 members.

Local 13 officials could not be reached for comment Thursday.

Prosecutors also referred to the city's General Services Department for the first time in the new charges but gave no details about possible corruption in that department.

The ongoing investigation had already touched the Streets and Sanitation, Water Management, Aviation and Transportation Departments. Those departments are rich in high-paying, blue-collar jobs.

In Streets and Sanitation, the largest City Hall department, the alleged hiring fraud involved the bureaus of street operations, electricity and forestry, according to court records.

Prosecutors accused Slattery, who was the personnel director for Streets and Sanitation, of covering up hiring fraud when officials at Local 1001 of the Laborers International Union of North America questioned the promotion of laborers in the summer of 2004.

Slattery allegedly compelled city officials to "make false statements and certifications to union officials who were investigating the city's hiring practices, in an effort to conceal the existence of sham and rigged interviews."

Officials at Local 1001 couldn't be reached for comment.

Randall Samborn, spokesman for U.S. Atty. Patrick Fitzgerald, declined to comment on the latest development in what Fitzgerald has called a "massive fraud" in City Hall hiring. The corruption allegedly began in 1993 and continued until last year.

Patrick Deady, the lawyer for McCarthy, said he was underwhelmed by the new indictment, which brought the total to six specific events involving alleged hiring-related offenses. Deady said in typical mail-fraud cases, prosecutors often bring as many as 20 separate charges.

"They allege that the scheme is all pervasive, a shadow hiring process since 1993 with all of these city departments and all of these people," Deady said. "Yet, they've only charged six events. ... You would think there would be countless events. How many people have been hired and promoted in the City of Chicago over the past 12 years?"

Sorich's lawyer, Thomas Anthony Durkin, attacked the latest indictment. "If they want to put a prettier dress on a pig, it still won't affect the smell of a case obviously designed to intimidate the city into acquiescing to some sort of federally orchestrated Civil Service Commission a la the Post Office," Durkin said.

Slattery's lawyer, Patrick Blegen, said the additional charges had not changed the defendants' posture toward the case. "Even in light of this superseding indictment, we still are very much looking forward to going to trial and fighting these charges."

The trial is scheduled for early May before U.S. District Court Judge David Coar. Coar last week refused to dismiss the criminal case, giving a boost to prosecutors in their "frontal assault" on patronage hiring.

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