Clout workers' compensation claims are costing city taxpayers millions

The most dangerous job in America?

Underground coal miner? Foundry worker?

How about patronage worker at Chicago's City Hall.

City workers with political clout claim to be injured at a rate that far exceeds any occupation tracked by the U.S. Department of Labor, according to a first-of-its-kind analysis by the Chicago Sun-Times that raises questions about whether all those city workers really were injured, and whether the city adequately investigates workplace accidents.

City workers with political clout claim to be injured at a rate that far exceeds any occupation tracked by the U.S. Department of Labor, according to a first-of-its-kind analysis by the Chicago Sun-Times that raises questions about whether all those city workers really were injured, and whether the city adequately investigates workplace accidents.

Could so many patronage workers really be getting hurt on the job?

Greg Krohm doesn't think so. "This is buffoonery," said Krohm, executive director of the International Association of Industrial Accident Boards and Commissions, in Madison, Wis.

"It's a statistically improbable proportion," said Krohm, a former administrator of Wisconsin's workers compensation program.

One of every five Chicago patronage workers -- most often cement mixers, truck drivers and other laborers -- has filed at least one work-related injury claim seeking compensation from the city during the last two decades. Half of them filed at least two claims. A few filed a dozen claims or more.

That's what the Sun-Times found by comparing two computer databases: the formerly secret "clout list" of 5,800 people kept by Mayor Daley's patronage director and thousands of workers compensation claims filed by city employees since Daley took office in 1989.

At least 1,147 of those patronage workers have filed workers comp claims, including many who never missed a day of work. Typically, they have settled those claims for under $100,000, sometimes for as little as $1,000, the Sun-Times analysis found. All of that money comes from taxpayers: Like most governments, the city doesn't have insurance to cover work-related accidents.

"I can't say any individual is faking it or is not disabled, but patronage operates by rewarding favored employees who do political work or make financial contributions,'' said Michael Shakman, an attorney who has fought patronage hiring at City Hall for decades. "Therefore, the fact that 20 percent of the people on the clout list are taking advantage of disability leaves or workers compensation benefits . . . one has to wonder if they are not just getting another form of political payoffs in return for doing patronage work."

The city has spent more than $38.9 million to resolve 1,719 claims filed by those patronage workers during the last two decades. Another 708 claims are pending. Some with pending cases have been off work for years, disappearing even from the city payroll, as if they were ghosts -- but still, in most cases, getting 75 percent of their salary while on "duty disability."

Among those filing claims were workers convicted of bribery in the Hired Truck scandal, in which trucking companies paid bribes to get work at city job sites.

Disability checks are tax-free. So a city worker who gets 75 percent of his salary -- 66.6 percent from the city and the rest from a city pension fund -- while on disability could be getting paid as much as he would for working. Also, employees on disability leave get full health insurance for themselves and their families.

City of Chicago officials said there have been too many workplace injuries -- city workers missed 117,615 days of work last year, and that doesn't include police and firefighters, whose workplace injuries are covered by separate programs.

They credit improved safety programs for a steady decline in workers comp claims -- a 17 percent drop since 2003, said Lisa Schrader, spokeswoman for the Mayor's Office of Budget and Management. But the number of people on the city payroll also has declined.

And Schrader confirmed that the city sends disability checks to an estimated 91 workers who should be back at work, in less physically demanding jobs, but the city can't find anything for them to do.

Some have been waiting for years. They include a retired judge's son and a state legislator's brother. Many have political connections, based on a Sun-Times analysis of the clout list. That list became public during the trial of Daley's former patronage chief, Robert Sorich, who was convicted last summer in a scheme to give city jobs and promotions to workers who helped get Daley and other politicians elected, in violation of the federal Shakman decree.

City Hall has long tried to reduce workers compensation costs. The accounting firm Deloitte & Touche, hired five years ago to recommend reforms, did two audits of the city's workers comp program. The city refused to release those audits.

Two former city officials said workplace injuries have long been a problem for the city. Too many people claim to be hurt, the claims aren't properly investigated, and the city doesn't do a good enough job of getting workers back on the job, according to the former officials, who spoke on the condition they not be identified, saying they feared their careers could be hurt.

"Either a lot of people were getting injured, or a lot of people were scamming the system,'' one of the former city officials said.

"The fundamental job of the program is to make sure workers don't get hurt and to make sure taxpayers don't get cheated. But the program couldn't achieve either objective.'' The other former city official called the system "a scam and a half" and a "black hole'' into which injured workers disappeared for years without anyone checking whether they could return to work.

Many injury-prone city workers shared the same political patrons, according to the Sun-Times analysis of the clout list, showing jobs and promotions between 1989 and 1997. The analysis found:

• • Those who sought jobs, promotions or raises from Dominic Longo, a political operative once convicted of vote fraud, were most likely to file workers comp claims against the city. Of the 110 who sought Longo's help, 33 percent filed at least one injury claim. The city has spent more than $1.4 million to resolve claims from Longo's troops. More claims are pending. "It's a coincidence, or they're a------s," Longo said this week.

• • Laborers' International Union Local 1001, which represents city laborers, sponsored at least 96 people for cityobs, promotions or raises, 32 percent of whom filed injury claims.

• • The Hispanic Democratic Organization North, part of a political group created by Daley, sponsored 106 people; and 30 percent filed claims.

* Thomas Simmons, an administrator in the city's General Services Department who also runs a political group called Citizens for a Better West Side, sponsored 164 people; 24 percent of them filed claims.

• • Ald. Ike Carothers (29th) was the clout for 96 people; 25 percent filed claims. "How do you know what will happen in the future?'' Carothers said.

• • Al Sanchez, the mayor's former streets and sanitation commissioner who's also an HDO leader, sponsored 108 people; 17 percent filed claims.

The high number of claims from patronage workers suggests that city officials "either select people who shouldn't be doing the job in the first place, or you're creating an unsafe environment," one former city official said.

Last year, 2,366 city employees filed injury claims, with 637 going on "duty disability,'' according to the City Council Finance Committee. The city paid more than $36 million last year on workers comp claims for medical bills, disability payments and cash settlements.

Forty percent of the claims came from garbage men, tree trimmers and others who work for the Department of Streets and Sanitation. Another 15 percent came from Department of Water Management employees and about 10 percent from Department of Transportation workers.

Those agencies are at the heart of a City Hall hiring scandal that's led to the conviction of Daley's patronage director and three others. The agencies refused to release the names of workers who said they were hurt on the job, saying such information had to come from the City Council Finance Committee, which handles workers comp claims.

The Finance Committee, headed by Ald. Edward M. Burke (14th), released data on the total number of workers comp cases filed each year, as well as the costs for medical bills, disability payments and settlements.

But Burke's committee would not release names of workers claiming to have been injured, saying such disclosure is prohibited under the Illinois Workers Compensation Act. Under that law, employers must report all workplace injuries to the state.

Those injury reports are confidential -- until a worker files a claim with the Illinois Workers Compensation Commission, seeking compensation for a workplace injury.

The commission provided a computer database of 24,082 cases filed against the city since 1980. The database included the names of injured workers and, in cases that have been resolved, how much the city paid the worker.

The Sun-Times matched those cases to Sorich's clout list of 5,800 names of people who sought jobs, promotions or raises during Daley's first eight years as mayor. The newspaper found that at least 20 percent of the people on the clout list had filed claims, perhaps more.

In examining the claims against the city, the Sun-Times also found:

• • Among those filing injury claims were relatives of politicians and reputed mobsters.

• • Multiple family members filed claims -- fathers, sons, cousins and other relatives.

• • • Nearly 150 city workers were awarded disability payments until they die, after being declared unable to work. The Sun-Times found three of them at non-city jobs, which could jeopardize their disability payments if the city ever challenged them. These "permanent and totally disabled" workers also get pension credits for all their years on disability. So, once they reach retirement age, they can begin collecting a pension, on top of their disability checks.

• • Some employees spent just a few months on the city payroll before filing an injury claim -- and have been collecting disability payments for years.

• • A reporter tracked down a few city employees on disability leave at homes outside the city, a possible violation of the city's residency mandate requiring city workers to live in Chicago. They said they were only visiting those homes. City employees can be fired for living outside Chicago, but city officials said they cannot fire employees on disability.

Contributing: Robert Herguth

At Chicago City Hall, there are 20 injury claims for every 100 patronage workers, a Sun-Times analysis found. For comparison:

Industry, reported injuries per 100 full-time employees
Iron/steel foundries	17
Hog/pig farming	16.9
Light-truck manufacturing	16.3
Mobile-home manufacturing	15.4
Animal slaughtering	13.3
Ship and boat building	12.9
Sugar manufacturing	12.2
Structural steel/ precast contractors	10.5
Waste collection	9.8
Bituminous coal underground mining	8.3
Highway, street and bridge construction	6.4
Water, sewage and other systems	6.0

SOURCE: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics