This is how the smart guys play you.
In 2002, Robert Degnan "retired" as Mayor Daley's Commissioner of Fleet Management to accept a job at the CTA that had been created just for him. His old job paid $115,260; his new job paid $116,000.
So why did he do it?
"By jumping through an early retirement window, Degnan got a lump-sum bonus of 10% of his annual city salary," the Sun-Times notes. "He was also free to collect both a city pension and a CTA paycheck."
Robert Degnan is the brother of Tim Degnan, one of Daley's closest political friends.
Now Degnan has quit his CTA job and will collect $10,997 annually for his pension there. Which isn't a big deal, but he's still getting $92,208 from his city pension.
So he's still over that magical six-figure mark at at time when pink slips and tax hikes are hammering everyone else.
"It's a shining example of why the city's pension system - and all other local government systems authorized by the General Assembly - need to be reformed and structured to what is economically reasonable for taxpayers, rather than insiders who are able to manipulate the system," Civic Federation President Laurence Msall told the Sun-Times.
It's not just the pension system, though. Let's take a trip down memory lane.
"Kruesi and friend Tim Degnan, brother of Robert Degnan, are among the mayor's confidants. Earlier this year Kruesi hired Robert Degnan, Daley's then-commissioner of fleet management, creating a brand new, well-paid position for him, even as the CTA's financial outlook was worsening," the Sun-Times reported when Degnan was appointed "general manager of system maintenanence support."
Robert and Tim aren't the only Degnans who seem to be on the Daley Friends & Family Plan.
In 2006, federal investigators started looking into the purchase of new furniture for CTA headquarters.
"The [$5.9 million worth of] furniture was supplied by Desks Inc., a 50-year-old company once owned by Patrick Degnan, brother of Timothy Degnan, a top political strategist for Mayor Richard Daley," the Tribune reported. "The firm received the business through Fifield Companies, a Chicago development company that the CTA hired in 2002 - after Degnan sold the furniture business - to design, construct and furnish the building."
And then there's Tim Degnan Jr.
"Tim Degnan Jr., the son of Mayor Daley's former political enforcer, was accused of looking the other way in 1997 while an underling ran a private car wash on city time," the Sun-Times reported three years ago. "But instead of firing or suspending Degnan Jr., the son of the former director of the Mayor's Office of Intergovernmental Affairs was quietly transferred from the Department of Sewers to the Water Department, where he remains to this day as a $100,000-plus-a-year general superintendent."
Finally, let's not forget Tim Degnan himself, who was named in one court filing during the trial of Daley patronage director Robert Sorich as "one of several former mayoral aides who could be linked to a conspiracy to rig city hiring and promotions," though he was never charged.
So who will do Robert Degnan's job at the CTA now? Probably no one, which tells you all you need to know.
Steve Rhodes is the proprietor of The Beachwood Reporter, a Chicago-centric news and culture review.
