One of the confounding aspects of the Daley administration is its ability to dodge reponsibility for crises in which serious loss of lives occur. Most of the horrific incidents under his tenure involved City or County (which he controls, despite the window dressing of independence) agencies or staff making decisions that at least were part of the scenario that led to the disasters.
Columnist Mark Brown had it exactly right in yesterday’s Sun-Times when he asked about Friday’s County building fire:
"Excuse me, but where was the indignation? Where was the pain? Where was Mayor Daley’s anger?
This was a terribly stupid way for six people to have to died in this day and age, right up there with the senselessness of the E2 nightclub disaster and the Lincoln Park porch collapse. It didn’t have to happen"
And I would add the great Heat Wave of 1994.
It shouldn’t be left to Cook County Public Guardian Patrick Murphy, who lost three staff members in the fire to say (from today’s Sun-Times) that "he wants an independent inquiry board to look into the evacuation and response and takes issue with Mayor Daley’s and Fire Commissioner James Joyce’s contention that nothing went wrong in the response to the fire."
The Mayor always runs to the cover of "nothing went wrong" in the face of disaster. He has never, to my knowledge, expressed any outrage at or held accountable City or County officials for the deaths that occured on his watch that involved city inspectors, emergency response departments or teams, or anyone else.
Could it be that it is beacuse many of the departments where these decisions were made are run by political hacks instead of true professionals. Take James Joyce: he is a member of the Joyce clan that is this/close to the Daleys (relative Jeremiah being one of Daley’s closest political confidants and a regular beneficiary of the City’s largesse). I know Joyce. He is a nice man, but his skill runs to doing only what the Mayor says when the Mayor wants.
I hope that the local press stays on this for months, hammers Daley hard, and brings it up again and again during the next election — a term in Chicago’s mayoral politics I use lightly.