From the Sun-Times:

Mark Brown

Enough holes in workers comp claims to drive a Hired Truck through

October 22, 2006
BY MARK BROWN Sun-Times Columnist
There are echoes of the Hired Truck scandal in the city's program for compensating workers injured on the job.

If you've been reading "Clout's Sick List," the latest series by Sun-Times investigative ace Tim Novak, you might have already reached that conclusion on your own.

The most obvious parallel is the intriguing disclosure that 12 former city employees convicted in the Hired Truck scandal are among those who have filed workers compensation claims against the city, among them one of the truck investigation's central figures, John "Quarters" Boyle.

Do you think that's a coincidence, or do you think the people who were able to take advantage of one city program perhaps knew how to abuse another?

If we've learned anything during the past few years about Boyle, whose claim is still pending, it's that his every involvement with city government involved one scam or another. The other 11 each got money out of the city for their alleged injuries -- at least $350,000 total among them. Some received multiple awards.

After reading the Sun-Times stories, you might get the impression that some injury-prone city workers come up lame every time they need a little extra cash to remodel the house, finance a vacation or pay off their debts at the riverboats.

There are other similarities to Hired Truck.

For one thing, it's another problem long known to insiders at City Hall that for some reason never seems to get straightened out, making one question whether it's just a matter of bureaucratic intransigence or whether the dysfunction serves a hidden purpose. In Hired Truck, the hidden purpose of spending millions of dollars on trucks that weren't needed was to generate bribes and campaign contributions.

Force city to cough up audits
As with the hired trucks, the city has invested tax dollars to hire a consultant to perform an audit, two audits in fact, of the workers compensation program, but refuses to make public the results.

With the Hired Truck audit, it turned out the consultant had identified years earlier many of the systemic weaknesses that made the program vulnerable to waste and abuse, but the city had failed to act on the consultant's recommendations.

That's why the city should immediately be forced to cough up the audits of its workers comp program.

That's not the only way in which the city has been less than forthcoming in responding to Sun-Times information requests in connection with its investigation.

For instance, the city won't divulge the names of the "estimated" 91 employees who continue to receive disability pay even though they've been given medical clearance to return to work. (I can't explain why it's only an estimate. You'd think there would be a list, readily available and ready for counting.) These names, of course, are a matter of some embarrassment to the Daley administration because taxpayers essentially are paying these folks to sit at home and do nothing instead of putting them to work.

Got clout? 'Help 'em out'
Through back-door methods, our reporter Novak was able to figure out some of their names, including the brother of a state representative, the son of a retired judge, the son of a union leader and members of certain political groups. It makes you wonder whether the full list would have more such names. Some of them have been waiting to get called back to work for years, although it's not exactly clear that they are eager to do so.

There's another scandal in here somewhere. I'm not telling you the Sun-Times unearthed a smoking gun, but there's a road map there for somebody with subpoena power and the ability to put a witness under oath.

Investigators might start by calling in some of those folks who received immunity for their cooperation in the hiring fraud case of patronage chief Robert Sorich to explain what they might know about political influence in the processing of workers compensation claims.

As it happens, many of them -- in their roles as personnel directors for city departments -- were also involved in decisions about how to handle individuals injured on the job.

Frank Coconate, a former city patronage worker turned Daley administration critic who is often quoted in this column, worked 14 years investigating work-related accidents for the city before he was fired for getting quoted one too many times.

Coconate said it was common for injury investigations to be treated differently, depending on whether the allegedly injured worker had political clout.

If there was a question about whether a worker with clout was really injured on the job, Coconate said he might receive the instruction, "Don't hurt 'em," or "Help 'em out," before filling out the accident report -- meaning write the report in such a way to support the injury claim.

Chicago taxpayers may wish they were as well-protected.