REDFLEX’S EXCELLENT CHICAGO ADVENTURE: EDDY BURKE ENTER(ED) THE FRAY

3/26/13

According to yesterday’s Chicago Tribune, which has been at least as dogged on the Redflex story as yours truly (See my 3/17/13 post, REDFLEX’S EXCELLENT CHICAGO ADVENTURE:  THE STORY THAT KEEPS ON GIVING, PART ????, only my latest in a series.), suspicions about the chicanery surrounding Redflex’s red light camera contract with the city of Chicago go back to at least 2007.

Even six years ago, people knew something wasn’t right about the contract and suspected favoritism was being shown to Redflex and now, of course, we know why.   Allegedly, Mr. John Bills, a purchasing manager in the city’s Transportation Department and, probably not coincidentally, a precinct captain in House Speaker Mike Madigan’s 13^th ward Regular Democratic Organization, was on the take from Redflex.   Further, as I noted in my 3/17/13 post, Mr. Bills remained indirectly on Redflex’s pad, after leaving his job with the city, through a Redflex funded non-profit called the Traffic Safety Coalition, which was run by one Greg Goldner, a big fundraiser for and long time friend of Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

Back in 2007, one of Redflex’s major competitors for the camera contract, American Traffic Solutions (“ATS”), suspected that the scales were tipped in Redflex’s favor.  Following a proud Chicago tradition,  ATS went to an alderman, in this case, uber-alderman Ed Burke of the 14^th Ward.   (As far as we know, nobody at ATS of any note lives in the 14^th Ward, which demonstrates how things have changed in Chicago politics, but that is grist for another mill.)   ATS, as it turns out, already had plenty of clout with the city and with Mr. Burke.   One of ATS’s major subcontractors, Quantum Crossings, LLC, has as the chairman of its advisory board Mr. Tom Donovan, whose name is known to anyone who has been familiar with Chicago politics for more than the last few months or so.    Mr. Tom Donovan was once patronage chief for the real Mayor Daley (Richard J., or Richard I) and the Mayor’s immediate successor, Mike Bilandic, otherwise known as Bilandic the Bland, since we are handing out monikers to former mayors.   Mr. Donovan went on to head the Chicago Board of Trade.   While his clout certainly had something to do with his obtaining that job, it’s quite clear that Mr. Donovan was surely one of Richard I’s very bright young men.  But I digress.  Not surprisingly, Mr. Donovan and Mr. Burke have been friends for decades.

Responding to ATS’s pleas, and, doubtless, to Mr. Donovan’s presence in the ATS bidding group, Mr. Burke initiated a bout of combat by mail with the Daley Administration, and, specifically, City Corporation Counsel Mara Georges and CFO Paul Volpe, over the Redflex contract and the shenanigans surrounding it.   As Chairman of the City Council Finance Committee, Mr. Burke threatened to hold hearings about the contract in the City Council.  Supposedly, the Daley Administration relented in July, 2007 and opened the contract to competitive bidding.   Burke never held a hearing in the City Council and the whole thing died.  Redflex wound up with the exclusive contract for red light cameras in the city of Chicago.  Now that the whole issue has blown up in Redflex’s, and, apparently, Mr. Bills’, face, Mr. Burke is interested again and is holding hearings.

A few thoughts…

First, this looks like a case of one clout firm getting upset that its clout was apparently transcended by another clout firm.   ATS, one suspects, was not upset that the scales were tipped; it was upset that the scales weren’t tipped in ATS’s favor.   Of course, no one can say that definitively at this point, but ATS’s hiring of Mr. Donovan’s firm as a subcontractor and its going to Mr. Burke, the king of clout at the time, when it had a problem indicate that ATS knew its way around the block in Chicago.   And one suspects that the powers that be, and maybe even Ed Burke, were asking each other “Who’s (Redflex’s) clout?  How can it be better than our clout?”  

Again, ATS may be entirely on the up and up here, and is almost certainly on the level legally, but being around the politics of this town for a long time makes one cynical.  As Chicago political legend Ed Vrdolyak put it a few years ago “Hey, not even fishing is on the square.”

Second, as the Tribune put it, questions regarding Redflex center on whether a mid-level bureaucrat like John Bills “had the juice to single-handedly steer a $100mm contract.”   No one thinks so.  That, as I have indicated in my many posts on this issue, is the crux of the case.   John Bills didn’t make this decision.  Someone else did.  And the entire $2mm (The number keeps growing, as does the depth of the reported relationship between Mr. O’Malley and Mr. Bills.) paid to Marty O’Malley, another 13^th Ward denizen, for “consulting, didn’t wind up in Mr. O’Malley’s pocket…or in Mr. Bills’ pocket.   Where did the money go?   Who made the decision to hire Redflex over the objections of another qualified firm with plenty of its own clout?

I don’t know whether I hate or love this story, but I do know it only gets more interesting…and will continue to do so.

See my two books, The Chairman, A Novel of Big City Politics and The Chairman’s Challenge, A Continuing Novel of Big City Politics, for further illumination on how things work in Chicago and Illinois politics.