ChicagoClout

can you say bye bye to our city jobs.there all going to the contractors so daley can build his war chest because he knows he may be on his way out,at least lets hope he is on his way out.we must all take a stand against daley,our unions,alderman and all others that are hell bent on selling our city jobs to the higest bidder.

Daley told Scott to bet the ranch on the Olympics because it was a sure thing. Scott bet the ranch and paid with his life when it went belly up. And all the board members and the president at these schools involved in the scandals were booted from their jobs. What would have happened had they said no to all these politicians who wanted their friends admitted to these schools. They would have lost their jobs anyways. And why has the gauntlet not fallen on these politicians. The feds are asses.

Inspector general 'will not shrink from conflict'
CITY INSPECTOR GENERAL | Broken home, Boston's mean streets shaped tough ex-prosecutor
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November 23, 2009

BY FRAN SPIELMAN City Hall Reporter/fspielman@suntimes.com
Joe Ferguson is the eldest son of a working-class single mom and a father he never knew who survived that rejection -- and the mean streets of Boston -- to become a dogged federal prosecutor in Chicago.

Now, Ferguson must learn the art of political survival in the biggest shark tank of them all: City Hall.

» Click to enlarge image Last week, the City Council handed Joe Ferguson a four-year term as Chicago's corruption-fighting inspector general.

(Brian Jackson/Sun-Times)

Last week, the City Council handed Ferguson a four-year term as Chicago's corruption-fighting inspector general, replacing David Hoffman, a thorn in Mayor Daley's side who resigned to run for the U.S. Senate.

Ferguson, 49, takes the reins at a time of conflict. The inspector general's office is suing the Daley administration to gain access to confidential information needed to investigate a no-bid contract with a former top mayoral aide.

The new inspector general hopes to build the relationships with city department heads needed to avoid such conflicts. U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald calls him a "good team player."

But, Ferguson said, "If that doesn't help get you to go, you have to take it to more contested arenas. I will not shrink from that conflict."

If Ferguson was a shrinking violet, he would never have survived his blue-collar Irish upbringing in Boston's Charlestown neighborhood.

Forced busing was the order of the day, and racial strife was the result. Ferguson "learned the streets" and played sports to survive neighborhood thugs who viewed serious students as "threatening."

His mother was a legal secretary whose husband left her alone to raise three kids under the age of 2.

Joe was the oldest. He was forced to become the "man of the house" while still just a kid, struggling to deal with what he calls the "ostracizing and shame" that went along with having a father he never knew.

"When she was not around, I was responsible for what went on in the house. I would cook, clean, make sure the children got bathed and keep everybody in order. Sundays were [spent] ... preparing meals for the week that would go in the freezer so I could come home from school and cook," Ferguson recalled.

"I learned a close appreciation for the struggles single mothers raising children in the city have to go through and the stresses it brings on them."

Of the three Ferguson kids, only Joe made it through high school and college. His brother joined the Marines, got a GED, and is now a cook for the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus. His sister got her GED and associate's degree as an adult and counsels troubled teenage girls in Massachusetts.

To this day, Ferguson said he has "no relationship" with his father -- not even after finally meeting him as an adult. It happened after his brother's emotional odyssey.

"He needed to meet the person who was his father. My brother searched for my father, located him, and my father reached out for me," he said.

Ferguson described the meeting as "emotionally complicated," adding, "The one thing that was foremost in my mind in interacting with him was not to betray my mother who was there for me always."

It wasn't until Ferguson was a history major at Lake Forest College that he developed his first "meaningful relationships with males who were good role models."

One of them was Michael H. Ebner, now a professor-emeritus of American history. Ebner took an interest in the kid from Boston who "left no assumptions unquestioned."

"Joe always had his own take and, tucked into a pocket of his mind, evidence that no other student had found. It turned the whole tenor of the discussion around," Ebner said.

"The great sociologist David Riesman talked about 'self-directed people and other-directed people.' Joe Ferguson is unequivocally self-directed."

After college, Ferguson returned to Boston for five years to raise the money for grad school by working as a waiter and restaurant manager. He found his soulmate, an artist working her way through school as a waitress.

They married before Ferguson started Northwestern Law School and had their first child a few years later. It turned into a commuter marriage -- with the baby shuttling between parents -- when Ferguson got a job clerking for a federal judge in Chicago and his wife taught art at the University of Iowa.

"It was very stressful. My skill seeing a single woman raise a family came in handy," Ferguson recalled of those hectic days racing to day care to pick up his oldest son.

After two years at the law firm of Sidley & Austin, a hiring freeze at the U.S. attorney's office was lifted, enabling Ferguson to realize his dream of public service. That's where he has been for the last 15 years, specializing in labor racketeering, terrorism and public corruption cases.

Lori Lightfoot, a friend and former prosecutor, recalled Ferguson's devastating cross-examination of an expert witness in the case of a man accused of Medicaid fraud who claimed to have provided psychiatric services to nursing home patients who turned out to be in a vegetative state.

Not only had the expert witness himself been accused of fraud and barred from serving as a Medicaid provider, he had bad-mouthed the defendant before being hired as his expert witness.

"Joe slowly and methodically took this guy apart. It was so devastating, the defendant pleaded guilty before the next witness was called," Lightfoot said.

"When the case ended, the judge [Shakman Judge Wayne Andersen] told us the jury wanted to see us. We walked into the jury room, and they all stood and applauded. They were absolutely mesmerized by Joe's brilliant cross-examination."

Fitzgerald has made Daley's life miserable with his dogged pursuit of the Hired Truck, city hiring and minority contracting scandals. But Ferguson calls the opportunity to work under Fitzgerald "one of the great privileges of my life."

"It's not how hard he works. It's about the singular intellect and drive, coupled with humility and an appreciation for the human element in everything that is truly rare. There is no ego, which is extraordinary in someone as talented as he is," Ferguson said.

Chicago taxpayers may someday say the same about Ferguson. But the comparison stops at Fitzgerald's legendary workaholic ways.

"He's 24/7 committed, but he's also sort of grown over the years. He'll soon be a family man himself," Ferguson said.

"As for me, given the place I came from -- a broken family without a father being a father -- having family life central has just been critically important to giving my life meaning."