Chicago Way Exposed: Minority Hiring Fraud Part 2; Inspector general wants McMahon business banned from city work

The Chicago Sun-Times has part 2 of their impressive series on the connected in Chicago:

A few months after Mayor Richard M. Daley took office in 1989, Nancy McMahon and her sister-in-law Kathleen McMahon — two stay-at-home moms — went into business. They started Windy City Electric Co., which would go on to win millions of dollars in work from the City of Chicago — including contracts set aside for women contractors.

Under its two current deals with City Hall, Windy City Electric has been paid more than $10 million over the past five years.

Now, Joseph Ferguson, the city of Chicago’s inspector general, is urging Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration to permanently ban Windy City, its owners and their husbands from doing any more work for the city. Ferguson says that, eight years ago, the sisters-in-law falsely claimed they were the operators of Windy City so they could be certified by the city as a woman-owned business enterprise. That made them eligible for city work set aside for women-owned businesses.

Among those city jobs: City records show they were supposed to get $100,000 as a subcontractor on a project to install wireless Internet service — Wi-Fi — at Chicago’s two airports as part of a deal that ultimately paid Daley son Patrick Daley $708,999. But Windy City lawyers say the company was never involved in that project.

Here's part part one of the story. Attention Patrick Fitzgerald: is the U.S. Attorney's office allergic to Alderman Ed Burke??