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Jarrett Leaving As Head Of Planning
Chicago Sun-Times - Friday, September 15, 1995
Author: MARY A. MITCHELL
Planning and Development Commissioner Valerie Jarrett said Thursday that she will leave her cabinet post at the end of the month to become executive vice president of Habitat Co.

“After my vacation - where I did a lot of soul searching - and conversations with my family, we decided this opportunity was really too good to pass up,” she said.

At a press conference early in the day, Mayor Daley ducked questions about Jarrett’s departure. He later issued a statement praising her performance.

“She has been great in a tough job,” Daley said. “You often have competing interests, developers, community groups and preservationists. It is not easy finding a balance that’s good for the whole city, but Valerie has done it.”

One of Jarrett’s responsibilities at Habitat will be to oversee scattered-site housing.

Jarrett, 38, has lasted through three administrations and is seen by some key business, civic and community leaders as the force behind Daley’s push for neighborhood redevelopment.

“I’ve worked with commissioners for the last 24 years, and I think Valerie Jarrett is one of the most resourceful, creative and dedicated persons in city government that I have ever met,” said Jonathan Kleinbard, vice president of the University of Chicago.

But behind the scenes, there were feuds with some of Daley’s advisers, including Paul Vallas and Gery Chico, who since have been dispatched to the Board of Education.

The Planning Department has been criticized as being bloated with deputies and slow to finalize loans with developers. Recently, it came under fire for its role in a $5.5 million loan deal with a movie company suspected of having mob ties. The administration later yanked the loan.

“Daley asked me to stay,” Jarrett said. “When you make tough decisions, you are not always popular. . . . I always felt and still feel I had the mayor’s complete support.”

Jarrett, whom Daley chose for the job in 1991 during a sweeping reorganization of his administration, was considered the highest-ranking African American in the cabinet.

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LOOPHOLE LETS CITY BACK OUT OF STUDIO
Chicago Tribune - Friday, June 30, 1995
Author: Joseph A. Kirby and John Kass, Tribune Staff Writers.
A simple X in a “no” box buried in a terse, bureaucratic four-page questionnaire will allow the Daley administration to scotch a $5.5 million, low-interest loan it promised to associates of organized crime figures who planned to build a $10 million West Side movie studio.

The failure of principals to disclose the 1994 gambling indictments of investors William and Sam Galioto gives the city a legal escape hatch, Mayor Richard Daley said Thursday

But dead or not, questions about the deal linger.

How did people with established connections to mob boss Sam “Wings” Carlisi convince at least two aldermen, a city agency’s review committee, one City Hall commissioner, several mayoral aides and even the mayor that the city should invest more than $5 million in their venture before anyone detected something amiss?

The mayor conceded Thursday that many politicians, businessmen and Hollywood officials privately suspect that organized crime is involved in some aspects of local moviemaking. But those suspicions set off no whistles at City Hall until after the mayor had signed off on the loan.

“Yes. There have been accusations of that,” Daley said of links between movies and the mob . Once specifics about mob ties to the studio investors surfaced, he said, “We stopped it.”

Mayoral aides said Daley vetoed the loan after reading a confidential FBI report that outlined organized crime’s influence on a number of local production companies.

Yet Daley could not explain why suspicions about the industry didn’t short-circuit the loan deal when representatives of StudioWorks first sought funding from the city’s Department of Economic Development. According to various sources, the genesis of the deal dates back to 1991, when then-27th Ward Ald. Rickey Hendon, now a state senator, first introduced the Galiotos to top city officials, including Valerie Jarrett , the city’s economic development chief.

On Thursday, Daley appeared to excuse Jarrett, saying that while others in city government might have been aware of mob links to moviemaking that would have made them leery of granting the loan, she was not.

Jarrett was not alone. State officials, too, had pledged a year ago to arrange as much as $750,000 in loans for the group if it succeeded in securing city financing, according to Marshall Rosenthal, a spokesman for the Illinois Department of Commerce and Community Affairs. Officials of the Prime Group, an established Chicago real estate company, also were working as consultants for StudioWorks.

But on Tuesday, one day after the groundbreaking ceremony at 2200 W. Madison St., the city, the state and Prime Group had all backed out of the deal.

Daley said he would stand by Jarrett and wanted her to continue in her post. But a different sentiment was circulating among some mayoral advisers who speculate that some bureaucrat will have to pay the price for the mayor’s embarrassment. The likely candidate appears to be Jarrett, sources said.

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