The Chicago Sun-Times reports:
Robert F. Humbert hit the jackpot when he left the government agency that runs McCormick Place and Navy Pier.
The 73-year-old walked away with $31,524 for 114 unused vacation days by taking an "early-retirement" buyout from the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority on Jan. 15.
That wouldn't be especially noteworthy if Humbert had worked at the agency, commonly known as McPier, for decades. But his career there totaled just 8 years and 10 months.
He still managed in that time to accumulate more than twice the number of unused vacation days as any of the 43 other people who have left with early-retirement payouts so far, even though most of them worked at McPier longer.
You have to have connections to pull this off:
He's also the father-in-law of trucking magnate Fred Barbara -- a longtime Daley friend and nephew of the late Ald. Fred Roti, whom the FBI identified as a "made member" of the Chicago mob.
Barbara's companies have been paid a fortune through city deals under four Chicago mayors, and Barbara's wife, Lisa Humbert, was president of Karen's Kartage, a company that was paid more than $2.5 million from the city's scandal-plagued Hired Truck Program.
Barbara himself participated in a 1980s bombing of Horwath's Restaurant in Elmwood Park, according to testimony in the landmark "Operation Family Secrets" mob trial in 2007, though Barbara -- who didn't respond to a request for comment -- wasn't charged.
Alderman Roti still can make
news.
