City making an example of sewer boss

Charged with passing Daley petitions on job

This is what it has come down to, now that Mayor Daley's former patronage chief has been convicted of rigging city hiring and promotions to benefit pro-Daley political workers.

A $39.65-an-hour assistant foreman of sewers asks 40 of his Water Management Department co-workers at 39th and Ashland to sign Daley's nominating petitions in December -- signatures that were never even filed -- and officials throw the book at him.

The 63-year-old worker is not only arrested on the job in front of the very co-workers who turned him in. He faces termination proceedings after being charged in a criminal complaint announced by the city's inspector general at a press conference attended by the mayor's chief of staff.

Lester Cioch -- a precinct captain in the 32nd Ward Regular Democratic Organization once run by political powerhouse Dan Rostenkowski and former Ald. Terry Gabinski (32nd) -- is charged with the misdemeanor crime of violating state and municipal ethics laws prohibiting political activity on city time.

To say Inspector General David Hoffman is trying to make an example of Cioch to show that it's a new day at City Hall is an understatement.

"We think it's stop-the-presses material. ... The fact that it's one person ... doesn't mitigate the strength of the message," Hoffman said.

"City workers have the right to do political [work] as long as they're following the rules. But if they are being pressured to do it, it's important to get that message out now -- before the election -- so they can understand that they have the right to say, 'No.' If they are the ones putting the pressure on, I want them to hear that message now so they think twice before they maybe push someone that they supervise to do some political work in the next two weeks."

Hoffman said his office is investigating "multiple" complaints of various forms of political coercion.

"Retaliation issues are not just that you're going to lose your job potentially. It can be that you lose the possibility for promotion, that you lose overtime that other people who do political work get, that you lose the favorable assignment, that you get transferred to a less-favorable place," he said.

Mayoral chief of staff Ron Huberman attended the news conference to highlight the changes Daley has made to prevent what happened in the days when now-convicted former First Deputy Water Commissioner Donald Tomczak commanded an army of political workers and used promotions, overtime and assignments to reward and punish co-workers.

"We're talking about one incident. We're talking about a situation where employees in that department ... rang the bell and said, 'Hey, there's a problem here.' You see a system that works and ... works well," Huberman said.

fspielman@suntimes.com