Mayor Daley Sweeps the Hall

Photo: Chicago Tribune

DALEY NEWS

Mayor Richard M. Daley today leaned on a longtime fix-up man to sanitize Streets and Sanitation as he demoted the department's head to his old job in Fleet Management.

Thomas Byrne will take over for Michael Picardi, under fire after investigators found garbage-truck crews slacking off on the job last year — among other things, urinating on the very streets they were supposed to keep clean.

It didn't help that Picardi was running the department in December, when the Daley administration decided to cut costs. Rather than pay overtime, city officials left side roads packed with snow until workers could take care of them during working hours.

Picardi promised to fix things, but the mayor lost his patience. Daley demoted him to City Hall's chief fleet manager, cutting his pay by more than $16,000.

Byrne, brought to the city's beleaguered transportation department to oversee accountability there in 2005, now has another turnaround job on his hands. Daley:

In every job he has had, Tom has proven that he is an experienced
manager who is committed to operational efficiency and accountability —
and that is what I expect him to provide in the new role.

The Sun-Times' Fran Spielman explains how this political romance began:

Twenty years ago, Daley ran for mayor on a promise to bolster school
security with a campaign commercial that showed him slamming a locker
door shut. He forged a bond with Byrne, who was head of the school
patrol unit at the time.

For Byrne, being at the right place at the right time has become righting what's wrong in Chicago — at least in the mayor's eyes.