Mayor Richard Daley’s last two school board presidents freely and widely used their school board credit cards to charge thousands of dollars in meals, travel and gift-giving, according to documents obtained by the Tribune.
The credit card use by Rufus Williams and Michael Scott, who committed suicide, was on top of the yearly spending allowance each man received–$19,200 for Williams and $36,000 for Scott in public money.
Williams, in an interview, defended his charges, saying they all related to school business.
“My credit card use was fully proper,” he said. “There is clearly reasonable and rational explanations for each charge. Each related to our children and to our schools.”
Williams declined to answer questions about items attributed to him, such as more than $6,000 charged in September 2008 with the vendor who supplies food and beverages at Soldier Field; a $650 limousine ride in August 2008; and a $640 tab in January 2009 at Table 52, an acclaimed restaurant on the city’s Gold Coast.
Scott, who had replaced Williams as board president in March 2009, charged about $1,000 on average each month for meals and alcohol at notable city eateries such as The Chicago Firehouse, Rosebud Prime Restaurant and Spiaggia, according to documents.
The Tribune previously disclosed that Scott, who committed suicide in November, improperly used his board credit card to pay for a trip last fall to Copenhagen to lobby for Daley’s failed bid for the Summer 2016 Olympics. After the newspaper’s inquiries, Scott began to repay those charges.
The documents also show that a former board staffer used the taxpayers’ credit card for a $2,500 gift to Daley’s Chicago 2016 Olympic bid committee. The Tribune’s inquiries into the board’s spending habits last year sparked an investigation by the school district’s inspector general and prompted the board to hire an outside lawyer at $295 an hour also to investigate. Both of those reviews are ongoing.
Williams said the inspector general’s office had interviewed him late last year.
Scott, a Daley loyalist, died Nov. 16 of a self-inflicted gunshot wound before he could be interviewed. Why Scott took his own life remains a mystery. Police have not found any note, and the motive for his suicide is unknown.
–Todd Lighty and Azam Ahme
Read the original article from Tribune News Services.