Another Flunky Humiliates Da Boss

Again.

From the Sun Times:

Commissioner suspended after giving work to man who scammed city

January 9, 2010

By STEVE WARMBIR AND FRANK MAIN Staff Reporters

A high-ranking city commissioner was suspended today for three months without pay after the Chicago Sun-Times revealed his department paid more than $11 million to a business owner who had previously pleaded guilty to ripping off the city.

Fleet Management Commissioner Michael Picardi was called on the carpet in a face-to-face meeting with Mayor Daley today.
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So at a time when even city worker saints are, at best, being rewarded for their good works with weeks of unpaid furlough days (and, very quietly, unpaid overtime) or, at worst, begin laid off into the teeth of the Great Recession…this jamook fucks up publicly and gets to hang onto his city gig with a slap on the wrist?

This makes even less sense when you realize this isn’t even the first time in the last 12 months Big Mike has embarrassed Da Boss.

From this June, 2009 Tribune article:

Daley replaces his Streets and Sanitation boss

Mayor Richard Daley today demoted his Streets and Sanitation commissioner and replaced him with a troubleshooter from another department.

Michael Picardi will return to his old job running the Fleet Management department after rising through the City Hall ranks to become Streets and Sanitation boss in 2005.

Picardi will be replaced by Thomas Byrne, the city's transportation commissioner. Byrne, a former deputy police commissioner, said he "welcomes the challenge."

Byrne was brought into transportation in 2005 to oversee audits and accountability issues in the department following revelations that more asphalt had been ordered than was needed for numerous projects.

Picardi's high-profile department was the subject of criticism in two key areas in 2008 -- garbage pick-up and snow removal.

In a Daley administration effort to reduce overtime pay, city crews in early December 2008 waited until regular working hours before plowing side streets following a snowfall, leading to treacherous road conditions that had residents and aldermen furious. Picardi reversed course on the snow plowing following the controversy.

In October, the city inspector general reported that investigators who secretly watched city garbage truck crews spied workers loafing for hours each day, taking long lunches at home, drinking beer from plastic cups and even urinating on the street. The report also faulted the Streets and Sanitation department for failure to properly oversee the crew
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So Picardi's penance back then was to be "demoted" back into his old job, and this time he's been sentenced to three months hard time on the sofa.

Of course, to put this in context for those of you who aren’t from here, you have to understand that Da Mare only really gives a shit about 3-4 of his Departments -- anything to do with police and fire, and anybody who uses cars or concrete on a massive scale. But beyond that?

Meh.

With many other Departments, Hizzoner hands out the titled positions to mollify various constituent groups and pay off political friends, lets disposable proxies and interns with no ties to the Department run it by remote control, uses their staff as layoff fodder, and never bothers with them unless they land the city on its ass in court or on the front page of the Sun Times.

The Daley Way often leaves the real lifting or grifting in some Departments to get done down at a First Deputy or Managing Deputy level, while Hizzoner's pals at the Commissioner level take the bows and put their names on the letterhead. This being the case, it should come as no big surprise that, no matter how badly they may screw up, Commissioners almost never get sacked. They take fully-vested early retirements, or buy-outs, or sweet little gigs are found for them deep inside the bureaucracy, or they get shipped far, far away, but one way or another they’re taken care of; that’s part of the deal.

So if you’re stunned that, at a time when the City is broke and facing record layoffs, this one guy manages to break Rule Number One – twice – and not get tossed under one of his own Fleet Department buses to the very road that his former Department once failed to clean, you should know we have a special, technical term for people like you.

We call you Minnesotans.