Tollway Board Games
New head named without governor's input
By STEVE RHODES
Updated 11:27 AM CST, Mon, Feb 9, 2009
The Illinois Tollway Authority has a new executive director, but he's hardly a symbol of the Pat Quinn Fumigation Era. The authority's board picked its new leader without so much as telling the new governor.
Quinn found out about the new agency head the way the rest of us did: reading about it in the paper.
"We are not going to take it quietly," Quinn told the Daily Herald Sunday. "You can tell them, 'I'm on my way.'"
Quinn has vowed to remake the authority, long a hotbed of scandal and cronyism.
The tollway move is also likely upsetting to Martin Sandoval, chairman of the Illinois Senate Transportation Committee. Just last Friday, Sandoval called for a national search to fill the position.
The job opened up when acting directer Dawn Catuara stepped down. She had the position because Jeff Dailey quit in December after just a few weeks on the job. And Dailey got the job only after Brian McPartlin bailed out to go to work for an engineering company that had done millions of dollars in business with the authority - until Attorney General Lisa Madigan questioned McPartlin's waiver from the state's ethics laws and McPartlin had to look for other work.
The newest acting director, by the way is Mike King. Perhaps fittingly, he was most recently the tollway's public relations chief.
Copyright NBC Local Media
First Published: Feb 9, 2009 9:21 AM CST
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