Tim Novak and Fran Spielman have been reading my blog. Ahem. No, not really, in fact, they took the widely discussed Chicago culture of corruption as a launching point, and attempted to affix a dollar amount to all the recent scandals.
When Mayor Daley asked Chicagoans to cough up $293 million more next year to finance the cost of city government, there's one tax he failed to mention: The Corruption, Waste and Mismanagement Tax.
It's almost impossible to calculate the cost of the Hired Truck, city hiring, minority contracting and police corruption scandals.
It's even harder to determine how much more it costs taxpayers when employees and contractors with clout are hired over more qualified competitors and then watched less closely.
But one thing is certain: Chicagoans pay a price for corruption, waste and fraud.
If they didn't, Daley would never have agreed to establish a $12 million fund to compensate victims of the city's rigged hiring system after the conviction of his former patronage chief. And the mayor would not have abolished a $40-million-a-year Hired Truck program so tarnished by scandal, a federal investigation has already resulted in 45 convictions, 29 of them city employees.
"There's still a corruption tax in Chicago," said Jay Stewart of the Better Government Association.
[Click to read more about the specific scandals, and their estimated costs The cost of corruption :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: Hired Truck Scandal]
I am not sure, are all big cities as corrupt as Chicago? Still, Chicago is a nice place to live, a great place, in fact, but wouldn't it be better if so much taxpayer money wasn't diverted to line the pockets of connected insiders?
