Chicago Clout, a website started out of frustration and an unfair termination from the City of Chicago, is on target for two million hits this year. TWO MILLION HITS!!! My first article was about Mark Brown, a famous Chicago Sun-Times Columnist. However, the site crashed and some of the original articles were not put back in proper order. I forwarded the formal audit to Mark Brown so he could review the results. Chicago Clout has been imitated and copied by many Chicago Newspapers hoping to capitalize on this website. Chicago Clout has been helped mostly by the Avila Family, the McDonough Family, Tony Joyce, Can-TV, Chicago City Workers, Mark Brown, Fran Spielman, Laurie Cohen, Todd Lighty, Gary Washburn, Ben Jarovsky, The Loevy Family, Carleen Channel 7 news, Fox News, Victor Crown, Dave Savini, Phil Hayes and Channel 2 News, Alderman Ed Smith, Alderman Moore, Amy Le, Angie Channel 5 Chicago, Ivan Tomic, J Terrence Brunner, Charles Walker, Dermot Connolly, Bill "Doc" Walls….. I have so many people to thank, I will need to make a better list when I have more time. This site has never taken a single penny of money from anyone, I have paid for this to help others. This site is for Chicago City Workers. Wait I know who else helped, look for your name soon, Patrick McDonough.
10 Replies to “Chicago Clout Official Audit Results Over TWO MILLION HITS”
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Congratulations, Patrick!
THANK YOU PATRICK. GOOD LUCK!
Congrats on the 2 million mark!
(Response) We will have a show with you, I did not forget! Frank Avila Jr. is back in the saddle as out host.
Whine, whine,hine, I hear there is another investigation of you using city time for personal business. You list or highlight former city employees here, who violate rules( that all city employees must follow) as hero’s. They have terrorized their former co-workers or violated the public trust.
Wait you should look at yourself. 99% of City employees work hard, enjoy their job and dont cry wolf when they get caught doing something wrong.
Hey have a Merry X-mass because come the new year we will start returning the favor
(Response) Sounds like a threat. The vast majority of Chicago City Workers got the shaft. Lost promotions, overtime, shifts. Since you are sure there is investigations against me, than I was right the whole time. It is called retaliation, veiled threats, and intimidation, Mayor Daley style Government. 99%?
Hired Truck whistleblower hurt on job
April 7, 2006
BY FRAN SPIELMAN City Hall Reporter
A city plumber who helped blow the whistle on the Hired Truck scandal was injured on the job this week, three months after a hearing officer reversed his firing.
When debris on either side of an eight-foot hole started falling in on him, Pat McDonough smelled a rat.
“I’m suspicious. I was put into a dangerous hole. . . . They might have set me up,” said McDonough, 45.
“They’re certainly not happy about having me back. I embarrassed the Water Department with Hired Truck stuff. . . . There was a lot of stuff that came out. Then, ironically, here I am in a cave-in. . . . Maybe they did it to shut me up. Mysterious things start happening to whistleblowers.”
Criticized safety measures
McDonough said the hole — in an alley at 2625 W. 23rd Place — was not shored up on either side, as safety regulations require. That’s another embarrassing allegation that surfaced during sworn testimony at his Personnel Board hearing.
“During the hearing, under oath, we brought up how there’s no shoring, no safety here in the Water Department,” he said. “They keep working illegally in holes that are not shorn up. . . . I brought it to everybody’s attention. Now, I’m the victim of what I’ve been complaining about.
“Either they set me up for a fall or they’re just blatantly ignoring the laws of shoring and trench safety, recklessly endangering my life and everybody else’s.”
Water Management spokesman Tom LaPorte flatly denied McDonough was set up in retaliation for his whistleblowing.
‘Simple accident,’ official says
“He was emerging from a hole at the work site when some debris appears to have crumbled at the edge of the hole. . . . Photographs suggest some loose debris, but nothing that can be described as a collapse,” LaPorte said. “We have no indication this is anything other than a simple accident.”
LaPorte acknowledged that the city’s safety policy demands that trenches more than five feet deep be protected — either by shoring, sloping of the ground or “equivalent means.” They must also be examined by an employee formally trained and designated as “competent.” At least one is assigned to each crew.
“In this case, we have a signed statement from the competent person indicating his professional judgment that the excavation was safe. We are investigating to see whether our policies were followed,” LaPorte said.
The incident occurred about 11 a.m. Wednesday while McDonough was installing new pipes to restore water service to a house with a reported leak.
He was taken away in a Chicago Fire Department ambulance. On Thursday, he complained of back and head trauma, a wrist injury and hands he described as “all cut up.”
The accident marks the latest chapter in McDonough’s City Hall employment saga. He helped blow the whistle on the Hired Truck scandal, got fired last spring for allegedly violating the city’s residency requirement and was hired back after a city hearing officer reversed his firing.
In between, there was explosive testimony at McDonough’s Personnel Board hearing from a co-worker who claimed overtime was for sale in the Department of Water Management and that gambling was rampant on city time at city worksites.
In the ruling that gave McDonough his job back, hearing officer Carl McCormick described a work site “akin to a hellish nightmare” where bribery and bullying reigned supreme. He said it was “difficult to envision a work site more indecent.”
Hired Truck whistleblower sues city
May 17, 2006
BY FRAN SPIELMAN City Hall Reporter
An $85,000-a-year city plumber filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday accusing City Hall of punishing him for blowing the whistle on the Hired Truck scandal.
The suit accuses the city and former high-ranking officials — including Inspector General Alexander Vroustouris, Water Management Commissioner Rick Rice and convicted First Deputy Water Chief Commissioner Donald Tomczak — of participating in a “conspiracy” to punish McDonough.
The defendants were further accused of violating the Shakman hiring decree and McDonough’s rights to free speech and equal protection.
The lawsuit seeks twice the back pay that McDonough lost after being fired for violating the city’s residency rule, a termination that was subsequently reversed by the Human Resources Board. McDonough also is demanding $30,000 in legal fees, reinstatement to “full seniority” and a return to the choice assignment he had before his April 2005 firing.
Corruption ‘out of control’
“My life has been a miserable hell. I lost six months of pay. They switched me to another district that’s way south. They changed my shift. They gave me a cut in pay. I’m not a boss plumber anymore. It’s constant harassment. They can’t leave people alone. They can’t let dead dogs lie,” said McDonough, 45.
“It wasn’t a little corruption. It was absolutely out of control and it was time to rein it in…. I can see if one truck was [just sitting] there. But they had six to 10 semis doing absolutely nothing while they were playing card games. I don’t have the clout to get out of trouble in case we were caught. I thought it was a lot safer to report it. The next day, the person I reported knew about it.”
City: Fired over residency
Law Department spokeswoman Jennifer Hoyle said the residency case against McDonough was “based on a thorough investigation” by Vroustouris, who was fired two months after McDonough.
“The inspector general concluded that he was not a resident of the city of Chicago and recommended that he be fired. That was the sole basis for our attempts to terminate his employment,” she said.
Hoyle would not comment on the harassment claims that pepper McDonough’s lawsuit.
McDonough claims the retaliation — in the form of reduced overtime, promotions denied, less desirable assignments and “differential enforcement” of departmental rules — began almost immediately after he alerted Vroustouris to corruption in the Hired Truck program.
Instead of cleaning up a program that paid clout-heavy contractors, some with ties to organized crime, to do little or no work, Vroustouris “tipped off the targets that McDonough was the source of the complaints,” the suit contends.
“They have terrorized their former co-workers or violated the public trust.”
You’re talking about Daley, right? (NOT JUST)
And every last clouted shit taking up space and wasting our tax dollars, right?
You’re talking about yourself, right?
“99% of City employees work hard, enjoy their job and dont cry wolf when they get caught doing something wrong.”
So, you’re claiming that 99 out of 100 city workers are “…doing something wrong.”?
And, that they get caught doing something wrong?
And, that they enjoy doing something wrong?
And, that, when caught doing something wrong, they never, ever, ever cut a deal and rat out other city workers who are doing something wrong, but have yet to get caught?
You seem to have overestimated the percentage of city workers getting caught doing something wrong, buddy.
If your estimates were correct, there wouldn’t be many city workers left, would there?
(Response) HEY HEY ole buddy ole pal ole chum and buckaro. Put your name on the board or quit acting like you are worried about the “Cicago City Worker”.
It’s not the city workers I am concerned about, though it would be nice if those working for the city, and county, were all concerned about serving their fellow citizens honestly, their fellow citizens being, effectively, both their employers and their customers.
It’s the fact that far too many city, and county, ‘workers’ are workers in name only.
No one likes being cheated, and no one would tolerate being cheated, by those they purchase services from in the private sector, so why should they tolerate being cheated by those whose services they are effectively purchasing from in the public sector?
You may very well give the taxpayers their money’s worth, but can the same be said for some of your fellow city and county employees?
So, when I criticize those city, and county, knuckleheads, the ones who have the gall to attack your efforts to hold them accountable for their numerous fraudulent activities, to even go so far as to threaten you, I do so not primarily out of concern for those honest city and county workers, but out of a desire not to have my pocket picked by thieves and scam artists.
Everyone knows that governmental services cost money and that money should rightfully come from the taxpayers who benefit from said services.
It’s the theft, by frauds, of our tax dollars that really pisses us off.
Nice job Patrick. Chicago Clout Rocks.
Patrick the face of the “Media” has changed so much in the last 20 years, with your little website you have been able to really help people and uncover corruption, you are like a mini Matt Drudge. Those that try to put you down are a part of the old system….rock on dude