Outrage at excessive worker claims takes a day off
We were all there Tuesday morning for Mayor Daley's news conference with the Chicago Police Department. It was designed to be a show and tell. Confiscated cars. A table stacked with bundles of cash and bags of dope. Another table loaded with automatic and semi-automatic weapons with enough firepower to blast you into Indiana.
The purpose of the news conference was to talk about how the city is finding new and creative ways to go after drug dealers who rape communities, rob society of precious resources and skate off into the sunset without paying even a tax penalty.
It's outrageous, and the mayor won't stand for it. Daley's absolutely right when he says, "Why should they get away with this and nobody does anything about it?"
So the mayor is doing something about it. Computer data analysis, sophisticated technology and the joint collaboration of city agencies and law enforcement are all being thrown at the problem. Leave no stone unturned.
Oddly, what was missing from Tuesday's news conference was mayoral outrage on another front. Another way we are being ripped off. It has to do with the monstrously high workers compensation claims that are being paid out by the city.
For the last week, Sun-Times investigator Tim Novak has been reporting a story that should make taxpayers' blood boil. He discovered Chicago patronage workers have the most dangerous jobs in America. Their propensity for injury, unbelievably, is higher than that of a Kentucky coal miner, an Iowa pig farmer or an Idaho slaughterhouse worker. Experts Novak tracked down say it as plainly as it can possibly be said. "This is buffoonery," declared Greg Krohn, executive director of the International Association of Industrial Accident Boards and Commissions. "It's a statistically improbable proportion."
Daley was out of town when Novak's story broke. But his chief of staff, Ron Huberman, quickly jumped to the mayor's defense, saying anything that has to do with worker comp is handled by the City Council Finance Committee. That's the committee headed by Chicago's all-powerful 14th Ward alderman, Ed Burke.
Burke, in turn, told the Sun-Times that his staff has done the best it can "to prevent abuse and fraud" and "if somebody has a better way to do this, then I welcome that information."
Maybe the alderman should start by visiting a coal mine, pig farm or slaughterhouse to figure out what makes those places so much safer than a city job.
Clout is the issue here, and let's not pretend that we're talking about anything else. What Novak found again and again was that the highest rate of injury seems to happen to people whose names were discovered on the once-secret "Sorich clout list." Robert Sorich, the mayor's former patronage chief, was convicted in federal court earlier this year of rigging the hiring of unqualified but politically connected city workers. It turns out that one in five of those workers, including now imprisoned Hired Truck scam artist John "Quarters" Boyle, filed at least one, often more than one, claim. So every year you and I pay out $36 million in disability compensation. Some of those workers deserve it. But some of them definitely do not.
Tuesday, the mayor was asked if he thought it was a coincidence that so many people on the clout list end up filing claims. "I don't know," said Daley, "I don't know about that." Can this mayor who would put a camera on every street corner and brags about Chicago's "national reputation for innovative programs," not have the tools at his disposal to fight this fraud?
It's hardly new. Three years ago, Sun-Times City Hall reporter Fran Spielman wrote several articles about city disability claims. One talked about Chicago taxpayers footing a $136,036 bill for a Streets and Sanitation worker who brutally beat his daughter's boyfriend while out on disability for an injured hand.
On one score, Daley and Burke are correct when they say this a complicated problem involving not only the city but also the state and the matrix of laws that govern worker compensation. But just like the scourge of drug dealers, it's a problem they've known about for too long. There are plenty of questions the city just hasn't or won't answer. That includes the chummy relationships between Burke and outside attorneys he hires to handle these cases. It includes two taxpayer-funded audits of workers comp that the mayor claims the city can't release.
So, to quote Daley from Tuesday's news conference, just like in drug investigations, it's time to "follow the money." We need to know who's getting it and why.