Katalinic Speaks, Feds Listen

By Amy Hart in News on Nov 16, 2005 5:22PM

Governor Blagojevich must be pleased to see the city’s hiring scandal replaced his own on the front page of the morning papers.

Yesterday Daniel Katalinic, former Deputy Commissioner for Chicago’s Department of Streets and Sanitation, made a deal with federal prosecutors to spill how he organized city workers to work on political campaigns in exchange for promotions or raises handed out by Mayor Daley's Office of Intergovernmental Affairs.

Katalinic was apparently busted when a witness secretly recorded him discussing how he took bribes to help Hired Truck companies get work from his department.

Once he left the city in 2003, Katalinic became a lobbyist for Allied Waste Management, the company responsible for the city’s blue bag recycling program, and was still able to get jobs for campaign workers.

Mayor Daley said he was not aware of any illegal campaigning done on his behalf and waxed philosophical by telling reporters, “My political organization is myself.” The reporters evidently forgot to remind him that “no man is an island, entire of itself.”