Monday, January 04, 2010

With Chicago Conventions Down : 100K Jobs Up at Convention Center

The Chicago Sun-Times reports:
Even as convention business has plummeted, the number of people on the payroll of the government agency that runs McCormick Place and Navy Pier who are paid more than $100,000 a year has grown.

A Chicago Sun-Times analysis of payroll records shows 54 employees of the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority were making at least $100,000 as of September 2009. That's eight more than the agency, familiarly known as McPier, had in 2006, the records show -- a 17 percent increase.
But there's more:
The roster of McPier's six-figure workers also includes Michael R. Degnan, son of former top Daley aide Tim Degnan, and Ronald Marasso, who at one point was working a $91,000-a-year McPier job by day at the same time he had a $41,000-a-year job with the Cook County sheriff's police at night.

Marasso, a son-in-law of late Chicago Ald. Fred Roti (1st), took an unpaid leave of absence from his night job guarding the old domestic violence courthouse at 13th and Michigan in July 2001 before resigning that post in August 2003. He now makes $129,280 a year as McPier's facilities director for Navy Pier and McCormick Place.
Alderman Roti was identified in 1991 in the United States Attorney General's annual report as a made member of the Chicago Mob.