Free Republic

From the time Mayor Richard Daley took office, dozens of city department managers gathered before elections at the plumbers' union hall or other sites to get campaign marching orders from top mayoral aides, a former Daley loyalist testified Monday in the City Hall corruption trial. Donald Tomczak, a longtime Water Department official and veteran political operative, said he then would summon his top deputies to his office in the Jardine Filtration Plant to tell them which candidates would get help from hundreds of blue-collar city water workers. After elections, Daley aide Robert Sorich fielded requests for promotions from the political...

Before his recent fall from grace, John Briatta, the mayor's brother's brother-in-law, served as secretary of the Laborers' Annuity and Benefit Fund of Chicago. That's the pension board that oversees retirement benefits for about 9,500 city workers and retirees, most of them from the Department of Streets and Sanitation. In carrying out that responsibility, the board also has control over the investment of $1.7 billion in assets. And if you've lost track, this is the same John Briatta who was fired from his $94,000 city water department job last summer in an alleged payroll scam -- who then last week...