No. 22 Pleasure City by Mark Fishman

Author:Mark Fishman
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781771833103
Publisher: Guernica Editions
Published: 2018-10-10T16:00:00+00:00

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The Midwestern city’s mayor was interviewed for two hours by federal investigators, looking into corruption at City Hall. They asked him questions related to city policies and procedures for hiring, promotion and certain city programs. The sky was still bright with afternoon sunlight when the investigators left City Hall in two sedans with darkened windows.

The hiring scheme allegedly involved sham job interviews and falsified documents and spanned the last twelve years, touching at least four of the largest City Hall departments. Prosecutors charged that the city administration illegally gave out jobs and promotions to reward campaign workers for the mayor and pro-mayoral candidates.

The accusations of rigged personnel decisions followed thirty-two indictments on bribery and other corruption charges in the city’s Hired Truck Program. Twenty-three defendants, including twelve city employees, were convicted. The federal corruption probe began with the Hired Truck scandal but has since widened to take in the system of hiring and promotion at City Hall, which prosecutors claimed has been thoroughly tainted by politics and cronyism.

It was alleged that hiring fraud in the administration defied longstanding federal civil court decrees that forbid politics from affecting most City Hall job placement. A defense lawyer suggested that prosecutors were making a crime out of political patronage.

After sixteen years leading city government, the mayor himself refused to say whether he would run for re-election.

“Things like this, you get embarrassed,” he said. “Things like this, you get mad. Things like this, you get disappointed, but then you do something about it.”

One of the sedans went south on Water Street, near the river, taking one of the prosecutors in the direction of the airport; the other sedan, with a couple of lawyers in the backseat, turned at the corner of Water and Wells Street going east toward the lake and a hotel.

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