They say rats are the first to leave a sinking ship !

Daley's chief procurement officer abruptly resigns


July 14, 2009

BY FRAN SPIELMAN City Hall Reporter
Mayor Daley’s $169,020 chief procurement officer abruptly resigned Tuesday, spinning the revolving door in a department that has struggled to boost black contracting and weed out minority fronts.

Montel Gayles was appointed in January 2008 to replace Barbara Lumpkin, who resigned after two years on the job.

Less than three months later, Gayles embarrassed and infuriated Daley with kid-gloves treatment of James Duff, head of a mob-connected family that became the poster child for minority business fraud in Chicago.

Gayles banned Duff from doing business with the city for just three years, even though Duff pleaded guilty to fraudulently obtaining $100 million in janitorial contracts earmarked for minorities and women.

When Daley and African-American aldermen raised the roof, Gayles switched the punishment to a lifetime ban. Shortly before his about-face, Gayles had defended the three-year penalty, telling the Chicago Sun-Times, "I don't know the Duffs from the Diffs."

Daley made no effort to conceal his anger and kept Gayles in the doghouse for months. Nevertheless, Gayles remained on the job for 16 months before resigning. City Hall insisted that he was not forced out.

Now, a mayor who has changed chief procurement officers six times in the last eight years without solving the black contracting problem that infuriates African-American aldermen will have to fill the hot seat once again.

“I wish him well in his future endeavors,” Daley said in a press release announcing Gayles’ decision to “pursue opportunities in the private sector.”

Gayles, former executive director of the Daley-chaired Public Building Commission, did not return repeated phone calls.

On Friday, Gayles testified before a City Council committee and disclosed numbers that have become all too familiar to African-American aldermen: only 7 percent of all city contracts awarded during the first quarter of 2009 went to blacks, compared to 14 percent for Hispanics and 35 percent for Asian-Americans.

Ald. Ed Smith (28th) believes the constant turnover at the top of Procurement Services is impeding the city’s efforts to bolster black contracting.

“I thought he was on the right track. He worked with us. He tried to put mechanisms in place to improve these numbers, but he didn’t have a chance to make a case for himself. He was not there long enough,” Smith said.

“I’m just concerned that we’re losing some key people from our community in these spots. The person who proceeded him was also black and she ended up leaving also. I don’t know what happened [to Gayles], but I’m really concerned to find out what happened.”

Gayles’ departure comes at a time when the Daley administration is laying the groundwork to renew a construction set-aside ordinance that’s due to expire Dec. 31.