Retired Daley threatened by terrorists? I don't think so
Ever since 9/11, city officials from Mayor Daley on down have downplayed Chicago as a terrorist target. So we have the tallest building in the nation? So what?
When faced with stunningly indisputable evidence, such as in 2004 when Khalid Sheikh Mohammed told American interrogators that the Sears Tower was in a planned second wave of attacks, the fallback position by Chicago officials was always: “There's no current threat.” Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded, who could believe him?
Even when former President George W. Bush said last fall in an appearance at the Union League Club that Chicago had indeed been a terrorist target, the mayor and law enforcement poo-poo'd such an outrageous notion. What would Bush know anyhow?
Now there is undeniable evidence that Chicago was, as recently as February, on al-Qaida's transit hit list. The city was named on planning records discovered in Osama bin Laden's Pakistan compound the night it was raided by U.S. Navy SEALs.
Maybe that evidence has finally convinced Mayor Daley of the need for increased security. Why else would Daley feel it necessary — or right — for a taxpayer-funded police assemblage and city cars with assigned drivers to protect him and his family in retirement?
Police bodyguards and chauffeur-driven Town Cars have been contentious budget items for years, especially when used by city department heads and aldermen. Even those who rip Alderman Ed Burke and far less important political figures for their insistence on city cars, drivers and bodyguards, few are critical of the need to protect Chicago's mayor.
Chicago's duly elected, current mayor.
Years ago, Mr. Daley removed the option of carrying his own private protection by banning handguns in the city. However, if Daley feels the need to surround himself with armed bodyguards, burly men to run interference against adoring fans or someone to drive him to the grocery store, that is his business and he should pay for it.
Especially at a time when the city has a $750 million deficit and is struggling to post enough police as it is, the five or six cops and cars required to protect him could be better used somewhere else.
It shouldn't be a money issue for Daley once he turns the city over to Rahm Emanuel next week. Even if Chicago's longest-tenured mayor hasn't saved a penny, he will be paid tens of thousands of dollars per speech and could make hundreds of thousands on a book deal.
Even if Mr. Daley delivers the worst speech ever heard, mumbling his way through a half-hour at the podium, it is doubtful that banquet attendees would feel the need to throw their dinner knives at him or chase him to the parking lot for a good pummeling.
Besides the speech circuit and book deal, Mr. Daley will receive a handsome pension from his various public service jobs over the years. His annual, tax-free payments will total almost $185,000.
That isn't the end of it, however.
Under Illinois campaign laws he also has access to unspent campaign funds once he leaves office.
There was $1,115,655.65 in the Richard M. Daley Campaign Committee bank account as of late March, according to records on file with the Illinois State Board of Elections.
This money could surely provide Mr. Daley some first class protection, perhaps even on the scale once required by Rod Blagojevich or these days by Lindsay Lohan or Angelina Jolie. With that much cash, Daley could be driven around in an armored vehicle and be carried in and out of public places in a bombproof bubble.
There would probably even be enough money left for Mr. Daley to continue paying for entertaining, White Sox tickets, gifts for his friends, floral arrangements, pizza deliveries, cellphones, office space and staff salaries. Those are some of the expenses that were paid by his campaign committee in the first three months of this year that totaled almost $150,000, according to filings with the state.
Mr. Daley contends that he needs, deserves and is entitled to police protection and free livery service because other ex-mayors received them. The last living mayor who served a full term, Jane Byrne, didn't get a police detail. Neither did her snowbound predecessor Michael Bilandic, and Bilandic succeeded Daley's father Richard the Great, who died in office.
There is a much cheaper alternative to taxpayer-funded security and a fleet of Town Cars for the soon-to-be-retired Chicago mayor. Provide him with a cellphone. That way, just like the rest of us, he can call Yellow Cab for a ride and 9-1-1 if some punks are egging his house.
Chuck Goudie, whose column appears each Monday, is the chief investigative reporter at ABC 7 News in Chicago. The views in this column are his own and not those of WLS-TV. He can be reached by email at chuckgoudie@gmail.com and followed at twitter.com/ChuckGoudie.