Controversy over new exec-director choices at Illinois Tollway (PERSONNEL)

The Illinois Tollway quest for a new executive-director has generated controversy in Chicago and Boston - in Chicago because one of the five announced finalists is Kristi LaFleur, an aide to the state governor Pat Quinn. She is his deputy chief of staff for economic development and recovery. And the Tollway job search has caused a stir in Boston because another finalist is former Massachusetts Turnpike chief Matt Amorello.

Other contenders are local transit/political people:

- Richard Kwasneski executive director of the Joliet Arsenal Development Authority, chairman of the Pace, the suburban bus division of the larger state owned Regional Transportation Authority, and a former Lemont village president.

-  Jerry Hurckes, a Metra transit grant administrator, trustee of Oak Lawn, and former chief of staff for US congressman Dan Lipinski, and before that his father US Congresman Bill Lipinski

- Leanne Redden, transit agency RTA senior deputy executive director for planning and regional programs

Transit lobbyists

The three transit agencies represented in the job hunt depend more on government grants than on fares to cover their costs, so a key skill is lobbying and politics. Pace, for example, only manages to raise 20% or $63m in fares toward its $318m operating expenses, relying on taxes and grants to cover its huge deficit.

You have to wonder if these people would know how to pass their day at a financially self-supporting enterprise with no legislators or federal agencies to lobby for handouts.

Only Amorello has run a pike

Among the finalists Amorello, oddly, is the only one with any experience of running a tollroad.

Yet he has taken a huge beating in the press in Boston for his Illinois Tollway job application which they obtained.

Boston Herald

The Boston Herald begins a report: "Disgraced former Big Dig boss Matthew J. Amorello - a finalist for a plum $189,000 job running a Chicago-area tollway - used his resume to paper over a checkered history of money miscues on his watch - and ignored the deadly ceiling collapse that forced his resignation."

It lists  "debacles on his watch" - most connected with the Turnpike's administration of the Big Dig project, but also the Turnpike's investment of tens of millions in 'swaptions' that went belly-up.

Amorello says in his job application that he has been "self-employed" as a "consultant" since 2007 when he was forced out of his Turnpike job.

The Boston Herald quotes a judge in his divorce proceeding in December 2008 as ordering Amorello to "get a job" after he claimed he had "just $240" in his bank account.  

He says in his job application he is earning $90k/year.

Amorello was accused by the state ethics commission of self-serving behavior and fined $2,000 over authorizing a cash-out of $73k in his own unused sick pay time before his forced departure from the Turnpike.

Howie Carr

Columnist Howie Carr writes of the man he always calls Fat Matt:

"The toll road in the Land o’ Lincoln asked him about his “REASON FOR LEAVING.”

" 'Resignation,' he wrote down.

"Resignation? I guess the next time you see cops surrounding a place, lobbing tear gas canisters inside and the governor with a bullhorn yelling, 'Come out with your hands up!' consider that a resignation."

And:

"Among the, uh, strengths that Fat Matt would bring to his new job is his experience in what he terms 'major plan/project presentations.'

"Yes, there was nothing like a Fat Matt 'project presentation.'

"Let’s roll tape of Fat Matt in 2006 after the tunnel collapse, explaining to the public what a tieback is:

“ 'Tieback is the the structure that holds the uh, a series of uh uh, shelves that hold up uh as if uh a da - uh uh a shelf where you tie the the the structure to the ceiling and then you place these concrete piles on the uh pie - uh panels on that shelf.”

And:

"Before he interviewed last week, he e-mailed the agency: 'Would it be possible to arrange for a ride back to O’Hare airport after the interview?'

"In other words, Fat Matt wanted a free ride. He told them the truth."

Elephant skin

If one of the qualifications for an Illinois Tollway CEO is a thick skin Amorello's experience with the Boston press should make his candidacy in Chicago a shoo-in.

TOLLROADSnews 2010-03-18