On the highway, the mayor's just like you
There are plenty of perks that come with being mayor of Chicago. A bodyguard contingent. A Lincoln Town Car and driver. Tickets to major sporting events. Travel around the world. Doors that fly open to you and remain closed to everyone else.
But there is one perk that does not come with the $216,210-a-year job: your own traffic-free lane on the Chicago Skyway.
On Wednesday, Daley dismissed as "the silliest thing I ever heard" the suggestion that Skyway tollbooths were fully staffed at all times because that's the road Daley traveled to and from his summer home in Grand Beach, Mich.
The claim of special treatment was made by Jack Drumgould, retired personnel director for the city's Department of Streets and Sanitation.
Drumgould testified under a grant of immunity at the federal corruption trial of Daley's former patronage chief, Robert Sorich, and three others.
"Everybody's caught in traffic every day. I don't know where they got that. Don't worry. I'm caught in traffic as much as anyone else," the mayor told reporters at an unrelated news conference.
"It's the silliest thing I've ever heard in my life. It really is silly. It's silly, silly, silly. It is just silly. Silliness. It is silly. Completely silly. . . . You've been on [the Skyway]. Come on. It's silly. . . . You know me. That is the silliest thing I've ever heard."
Mayoral press secretary Jacquelyn Heard said she's living proof that Daley got no get-out-of-Skyway-traffic-free card.
Heard said she has been on the phone with Daley "more times than I can count" when her boss was trying to pass the hours spent stuck in Skyway traffic on his way to Grand Beach.
"I've been on the phone with him going through memos, press interview requests and what have you while he bides his time in traffic," Heard said.
"It's simply not true. I can speak to the fact that he is caught in traffic often because I'm on the phone with him helping him pass the time."
During testimony this week and last, Drumgould said he put political hires in as Skyway toll collectors and followed his supervisor's mandate to keep all tollbooths fully staffed to avoid traffic jams that could delay the mayor.
There was no testimony linking the mayor to the directive.
Drumgould, who is now retired, said there was a high turnover of toll collectors, but he received a steady supply of candidates from the Mayor's Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, where Sorich used to work, and from then-Streets and Sanitation Commissioner Al Sanchez, a key lieutenant in the Daley-created Hispanic Democratic Organization.