Ex-Daley aides cash in as they depart City Hall

As scandals boil, 13 share in $165,000 for accrued vacation time

Thirteen of Mayor Daley's top aides have either left or been shown the door in recent months as the Hired Truck, city hiring and minority contracting scandals make their way up the ladder at City Hall.

They didn't walk out empty-handed.

Chicago taxpayers have coughed up $164,974 for the accrued vacation times of the newly departed mayoral aides, according to figures supplied to the Chicago Sun-Times in response to a Freedom of Information request.

The city allows employees to carry over as much as one year of vacation time -- a maximum of 25 days a year for the most senior employees -- and to cash out that time upon resignation.

But since employees technically earn vacation time for the following year, they can actually carry over as much as two years' worth of time.

"State law requires all employers -- public and private -- to pay employees for vacation that's accrued," said Lisa Schrader, a spokeswoman for the city's Office of Budget and Management. "The city's vacation policy is not out of step with what other public and private sector employers offer -- with one exception. City of Chicago employees are entitled to no vacation during the first year of work. They must earn vacation in their first year they must not use until the following year."

To claim as much money as some of the top mayoral aides have received, they must have taken only a fraction of their vacation time.

Largest payment: $18,817

The largest lump-sum payment, $18,817, was made to John Doerrer, who succeeded Hispanic Democratic Organization chieftain Victor Reyes as director of the Mayor's Office of Intergovernmental Affairs.

That office is at the center of what federal investigators have called a "massive fraud" -- using sham interviews, rigged test scores and color-coded charts to keep track of political sponsors -- to rig city hiring in favor of politically connected applicants. Reyes' attorney has acknowledged that his client is "Individual A" in a federal indictment that describes that person as a "co-schemer" in the decade-long plot to circumvent the Shakman decree, which was supposed to ban political hiring in Chicago.

Doerrer has not been implicated in the city hiring scandal. But, the fact that the alleged hiring abuses went on under his nose -- either with his acquiescence or because of his inattention to detail -- prompted him to jump before he was pushed.

Smallest sum was $2,057

The second-largest lump-sum payment, $18,449, went to ousted Water Management Commissioner Rick Rice. He was swept out in June along with nine politically connected underlings accused of participating in a payroll scam.

Other payments included:

*$16,923 to Sheila O'Grady, a Reyes protege who worked under her mentor in the Mayor's Office of Intergovernmental Affairs before becoming Daley's longest-serving chief of staff.

*$16,896 to former Personnel Commissioner Glenn Carr, who resigned shortly after O'Grady's replacement, Ron Huberman, acknowledged that an internal city investigation had uncovered unspecified Shakman violations.

*$16,623 to Inspector General Alexander Vroustouris, who was forced out after Huberman accused him of allowing corruption investigations to languish.

*$14,823 to former Budget Director John Harris, who left to become Gov. Blagojevich's chief administrative officer.

*$13,751 to former Chief Procurement Officer Eric Griggs, who was pushed aside in favor of Mary Dempsey to sweep white-owned "fronts" out of a minority contracting program.

*$12,595 to former Health Commissioner John Wilhelm, whose department was untouched by scandal.

*$12,164 to former Buildings Commissioner Stan Kaderbek, who jumped to avoid being pushed amid controversy stemming from a residential permit issued in a planned manufacturing district to a developer who took the commissioner's hand-picked top deputy on a spring break trip to Brazil.

*$9,292 to former Transportation Commissioner Miguel d'Escoto, who was forced out for allegedly fumbling allegations about hundreds of tons of missing asphalt.

*$8,651 to former Streets and Sanitation Commissioner Al Sanchez, whose department is at the center of both the Hired Truck and city hiring scandals.

*$3,933 to former Construction and Permits chief Rafael Hernandez, whom the acting inspector general accused of knowing for weeks that top city officials took the spring break trip to Brazil but failed to report the "inappropriate relationship" to superiors. Hernandez has denied the cover-up charge.

*$2,057 to Mary Jo Falcon, longtime Water Management personnel director who resigned shortly after her computer was seized by federal investigators.