Nov 13, 2009 9:01 pm US/Central
Analysis: Cash-Strapped City Is Top-Heavy
CBS 2 Chief Correspondent Jay Levine Found Layers And Layers Of Mid-Management
CHICAGO (CBS) ―
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CBS
Too many bosses.
That's how some describe efforts to cut the city's budget by laying off workers. Hourly workers are feeling much more of the pain than their six-figure-salaried bosses.
CBS 2 Chief Correspondent Jay Levine went looking for some of those supervisors and reports what he found.
The bosses weren't talking -- nor were the bosses' bosses -- about what we found in the mayor's $6 billion budget. In three departments alone, more than 200 top managers are each pulling in around $100,000 a year.
Mayor Daley dedicated a restored railroad bridge Friday – a $4 million project he called investing in the city's infrastructure.
Also on hand was the commissioner of one of three departments who employ 20 deputy Commissioners; 18 assistant commissioners and 25 assistants to the commissioner.
"We don't believe we have an excessive number of managers within the Department of Transportation," Acting Transportation Commissioner Thomas Powers said.
Where are they, Ald. Scott Waguespack asks.
"For as many as there are, I don't see them out there in the ward doing the things that I think they should be doing," he said.
In the Department of Water Management, for example, we found 31 deputy commissioners, assistant commissioners and assistants to commissioners. What do they all do?
One of those deputy commissioners would be out to see us in five minutes, we were told. Forty-five minutes later, we were still waiting.
One new commissioner is trying to kick the old management habit.
"We're gonna knock our supervision down from 30 supervisors on the street down to 10," Streets and Sanitation Commissioner Thomas Byrne said Thursday.
Though Streets and San still has five superintendents, 15 assistant superintendents, two division superintendents, 50 ward superintendents, 49 ward coordinators, eight directors and three supervisors.
That's layers upon layers of management who should be supervising a work force. But last week, CBS 2 showed workers either standing around watching someone else work, or scavenging for discarded treasures, while they were supposed to be putting in new street curbs.
"The reporting you did on the two instances where there were workers standing around and there was no foreman, no supervisor on the job, no regional superintendent -- that just shows a lack of leadership from the top down," Waguespack said.
Ald. Waguespack says the mayor could make them cut management ranks, if he wanted to. But right now they're part of a budget that if you read really carefully, you find really hard to believe.
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