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Mayor Daley sees nothing wrong with his brother John getting paid as the insurance agent for the biggest breadwinner in Chicago's scandal-ridden Hired Truck Program.

"It has no effect whatsoever on any decision in government. . . . None whatsoever," the mayor said Tuesday.

Meanwhile, John Daley acknowledged Tuesday he once had two more clients who benefitted from the program.

Last week, the Chicago Sun-Times reported that John Daley, chairman of the Cook County Board's Finance Committee, sold insurance to three of the 165 companies in the city's $40 million-a-year Hired Truck Program.

They are Marina Cartage and MAT Leasing, owned by Michael Tadin, the program's biggest beneficiary, and GNA Trucking, whose owners, Gina and Nicki Cannatello, are the daughter and wife of former Palos Township Democratic committeeman John Cannatello.

John Daley admitted Tuesday that over the years he sold insurance to the trucking company owned by his former Bridgeport neighbor Fred Barbara and to the firm owned by Barbara's wife. Fred Barbara is a nephew of the late Ald. Fred Roti, a made member of the Chicago mob.

Barbara's former secretary and now wife, Lisa Humbert, created Karen's Kartage 20 years ago.

In the Chicago Sun-Times series that exposed corruption and waste in the Hired Truck Program, Fred Barbara said his wife no longer runs the company. It is now overseen by his brother, Bruno, Fred Barbara said.

John Daley refused to disclose how much he got paid from Barbara or Karen's. Nor would he say how long he served as their insurance broker before the relationship ended. He would say only he saw no conflict of interest.

"I'm very conscious of my ethics obligations. I would never cross the line on anything," he said.

Although he accepted nearly $50,000 in campaign contributions since 1996 from companies on the city's trucking gravy train, John Daley insisted he has never used his clout to get more hired truck business for his clients.

"These people were on [the list] before," John Daley said.

Heavy equipment

One Daley client benefits from more than the Hired Truck Program. GNA made nearly $875,000 since 2001 leasing heavy equipment to the city under a separate program, city officials disclosed Tuesday at a news conference.

They also said they suspended Schadt's Inc. from the Heavy Equipment Program because it was suspended last week from the Hired Truck Program. City officials said they were looking at alleged ownership "irregularities."

Schadt's is owned by Carmen Schadt Gurgone, sister-in-law of Michael Gurgone, a former city truck driver and convicted burglar with alleged ties to the mob.

Schadt's leases eight trucks from a Tadin company, state records show. Schadt and Tadin insisted those trucks aren't the ones Schadt's provides the city in the Hired Truck Program.

Last week, an angry and embarrassed Mayor Daley apologized for failing to clean up a Hired Truck Program that pays clout-heavy contractors to do little or nothing, some of them with ties to organized crime.

Who gets the ax?

The Sun-Times reported Sunday that two high-ranking staff members are likely to get the ax: chief-of-staff Sheila O'Grady, whose job it is to keep the lid on governmental explosions, and Budget Director Bill Abolt, whose office inherited responsibility for the Hired Truck Program after a 1998 scandal.

Asked point blank whether he has received any resignation letters, Daley stammered, then said, "When someone submits a resignation, that's personal and, appropriately, I'm [not going] to mention it. ... I'm not going to answer it -- truthfully."

Neither Abolt nor O'Grady could be reached for comment.

The Daley administration fired the former head of the Hired Truck Program, Angelo Torres, on Jan. 26. That same day it received an extensive subpoena from federal prosecutors demanding city records on the Hired Truck Program as part of an FBI investigation.

On Tuesday, Daley said he still did not know who put Torres in the position to run the program. Torres went from booting cars for the city in 1996 in a parking enforcement program to determining which trucking companies would get a piece of the $40 million program two years later.

City officials went on the offensive Tuesday, with Deputy Water Commissioner Richard Kinczyk calling a headline in Tuesday's Sun-Times "absolute bull."

The Sun-Times reported the Water Department hired privately owned dump trucks while 17 city dump trucks sat idle on Monday. The headline on the story read: "'Hired trucks' roll, city trucks sit."

Kinczyk acknowledged that city dump trucks are put aside but said the city does not do it to hire more private trucks, a claim neither the story nor the headline made.

Kinczyk said the city needs to have the city dump trucks in reserve for emergency calls. Several city employees on Tuesday scoffed at that claim.