Roti relatives fix potholes, pave streets
And, for years, paving in Chicago has been under the control of one family -- the Rotis, who have held sway at City Hall and with the Chicago Outfit for generations.
Roti family members not only ran the city program, they also used trucks owned by other Roti relatives to haul asphalt and other paving materials.
One Roti relative, Charles Scalfaro, oversees the paving program, responsible for neighborhood streets and alleys, as a general foreman for the Department of Transportation, a Chicago Sun-Times investigation has found.
Over the years, Scalfaro has decided when streets would be repaved, assigned city workers to do the jobs and overseen the work, according to city documents and sources with knowledge of the operation. His duties also included supervising trucks hired to haul asphalt and other materials -- which the city no longer uses on paving jobs, a reform put in place in response to the Hired Truck scandal.
Two city crew chiefs, called asphalt foremen, who supervised paving work and who sources said were, in turn, supervised by Scalfaro are now in prison for taking bribes from private truck drivers who have been convicted of stealing tons of asphalt, according to court testimony. The thefts -- and bribes -- went on between 2002 and 2004.
A third asphalt foreman -- also under Scalfaro's supervision -- is in prison for taking bribes from a private truck driver who wanted the city to pay him when he wasn't working.
Scalfaro has never been charged or disciplined in the thefts. The city says it found no evidence he was involved. He was suspended last year for a violation of city rules -- supervising a family member, his brother's wife. According to sources, Scalfaro, 45, remains in charge of the paving program.
For years, the paving program relied on trucks hired through the city's Hired Truck Program, which is under a continuing federal investigation.
Yet another Roti relative, Nick LoCoco, decided which trucks were hired for paving jobs. LoCoco, the city's foreman of motor truck drivers, often hired trucks owned by Roti family members -- including one truck he secretly owned, court records show. LoCoco, a reputed mob bookie who married into the Roti family, retired in 2002. But his truck kept getting city work until 2004, when he was arrested. He died in a horseback-riding accident before trial.
LoCoco put his truck under the name of Bausal Trucking, which billed the city as much as $8,000 a month for LoCoco's truck and passed along the payments to him, prosecutors said. Bausal has not been charged.
Three trucking company owners admitted bribing LoCoco to hire their trucks -- and their nonunion drivers. LoCoco was also a Teamsters official representing city truck drivers.
At least eight trucking companies owned by Roti family members worked for the Department of Transportation through the Hired Truck Program. Among them: Miffy Co. Inc., which listed Mary Frances 'Miffy' Roti as president. She used Scalfaro -- a cousin of a cousin -- as a reference when she applied to the city in 1998 to certify Miffy as a woman-owned business, allowing the company to get special consideration for city work.
Miffy got the certification. Then, in 2004, the company was suspended from city work after officials found Roti wasn't running it, as she'd said she was.
Scalfaro and LoCoco worked together in a city building at 1501 W. Pershing, overseeing hundreds of neighborhood paving projects requested by Chicago aldermen, records show. Scalfaro still works out of there, along with at least five other Roti relatives, the Sun-Times found.
Scalfaro and other city asphalt workers are members of Laborer's International Union Local 1001, which other Roti family members ran until being forced out in recent years over alleged mob ties. There also have been allegations that union members paid bribes to get city jobs and that some stole asphalt from the city, a 1997 union report alleged.
More relatives on the payroll
The city Transportation Department employs at least 11 members of the Roti family. But many more are on the city payroll. At least 36 members of the Roti family have city jobs -- from truck drivers to a fire captain, an alderman's secretary to assistant commissioner of a city agency, the Sun-Times found.
At least 21 others receive city pensions. Altogether, Roti family members get more than $3.1 million a year in paychecks and pensions, city records show.
At one point, the paving operation employed five Scalfaros -- Charles; his brothers Paul and Thomas; Paul's wife, Roseann, and Thomas' son, also named Charles. In 2004, Charles Scalfaro, the paving boss, was supervising sister-in-law Roseann Scalfaro, officials found -- a violation of city rules. Asked about this, city officials at first said he'd OKd his sister-in-law's vacation and sick days. Later, they said he vouched for her when her city ID card wouldn't swipe to record she was at work.
Roseann Scalfaro's job was to monitor asphalt from Reliable Asphalt Co. She was supposed to go to Reliable's plant to verify the right amount of asphalt was loaded into trucks for city jobs.
Roseann Scalfaro told a reporter she didn't get the job because of her husband, a foreman in charge of pothole crews, or brother-in-law. 'Charlie Scalfaro never put me in any [asphalt] plant,'' she said. 'Charlie doesn't have that kind of power.''
After Charles Scalfaro's bosses confronted him about supervising his sister-in-law, CDOT got a call from the mayor's then-patronage chief, Robert Sorich, according to sources. Sorich -- now on trial for alleged corruption -- made no specific request, the sources said, and Charles Scalfaro got a five-day suspension.
'If you messed with Charlie, you'd get a call from the fifth floor,' said one source, referring to the mayor's office.