The Chicago Sun-Times reports:
Former Hired Truck kingpin Michael Tadin has snared a three-year, $39.4 million contract to operate and maintain one of three waste-transfer stations that Mayor Daley once attempted to lease.
Tadin-owned MAT Leasing was chosen to operate the largest of the three facilities at 750 N. Kilbourn -- where city crews once sorted through garbage for recyclables in blue bags -- after assembling a subcontracting team that includes two firms that cashed in on the scandal-plagued Hired Truck program.
South Chicago Trucking Corp., a women's business enterprise, and BBD Trucking, a minority-owned company, each will receive a $2 million share of the Tadin contract.
With 43 trucks paid by three city departments, BBD was the largest black-owned company to ride the Hired Truck gravy train. One of its drivers pleaded guilty in 2005 to stealing city asphalt and delivering it to a private job site while driving a BBD-owned Hired Truck.
Here's more from the
Chicago Sun-Times about Tadin's past:
Chicago's powerful Roti family had nearly double the number of companies in the city's Hired Truck Program than has been reported.
Roti relatives and business partners owned 17 companies -- one of every 10 companies in the program -- that provided trucks to the city until 2004, when a Chicago Sun-Times investigation revealed that the city often paid for trucks that did little or no work. The newspaper linked nine Hired Truck companies to the Rotis then.
Further examination now shows that Roti family members and associates actually owned 17 companies that, together, were paid more than $5.5 million of the $40 million spent on the Hired Truck Program at its peak, in 2003....Marina Cartage and MAT Leasing (nearly $2 million) -- owned by Michael A. Tadin, longtime friend and former business partner of Fred Barbara. Tadin's uncle Frank Bertucci was a godchild of Barbara's late grandfather -- Roti family patriarch Bruno Roti Sr. Tadin's employees have included Ronald Marasso, a son-in-law of the late Ald. Roti.
For more on Michael Tadin's former business partner of domestic terrorist fame:
Fred Barbara. It appears that Mayor Daley doesn't mind having Chicago's tax dollars going to "questionable" people.
