CHICAGO -- Mayor Richard M. Daley took a bold step to mend Chicago's image four years ago after it was battered by scandals over hiring fraud at City Hall and millions of dollars in contracts for well-connected trucking companies.
Searching for a fresh face, Daley picked federal prosecutor David Hoffman to revitalize the dormant post of city inspector general and root out corruption.
Four years later, though, the heat is on the mayor again as Hoffman pushes ahead with an investigation of how Daley's own nephew got a contract in the sewer department and other business making investments for city pension funds.
Hoffman also has turned up evidence of payoffs in the building department and blasted a $1.15 billion deal under which Chicago parking meters were privatized as a serious shortchanging of the taxpayers. And he vows to keep up his fight against what he sees as the evils of a system entrenched for decades.
"Whatever our history is, it doesn't mean we can't change," Hoffman said.
Would-be reformers are celebrating, but the mayor is
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"The problem with David is that whistle blowers are just not loved," said Alan Gitelson, a Loyola University political scientist who watches City Hall.
Graft is nothing new at City Hall. But in 2005 two cases were focusing intense pressure on Daley -- hiring fraud that sent key patronage aide Robert Sorich and three other men to prison and millions of dollars in hauling contracts for truckers who made political donations or actual payoffs.
Some were businessmen close to the mayor.
To clean up corruption, Daley turned to Hoffman, a soft-spoken but tough graduate of Yale and the University of Chicago law school who had clerked for Chief Justice William Rhenquist and prosecuted drug-selling gangs in Chicago's federal courts.
But he may have proven tougher than the mayor reckoned on.
When city pension fund officials ignored Hoffman's subpoenas for records relating to $68 million allocated to mayoral nephew Robert Vanecko to invest, he went to friends at the U.S. attorney's office.
The investigation is now a federal case.
Can Hoffman survive the pressures?
It's against the law for the mayor to fire the inspector general outright. But he can appoint someone else in September when the term expires.
Daley coolly told reporters in February, however, that Hoffman can stay on as inspector general after the term expires "if he wants."
"He has done a very good job," Daley said.
Even naming someone else in September could pose problems for Daley.
"Hoffman's been a huge pain in the butt," says Andy Shaw, a former television newsman who has taken over as executive director of the Better Government Association of Chicago. "But the reappointment jury is still out because the political fallout if he dumps him is potentially worse than the revelations from Hoffman's office if he stays in and keeps sniffing."
Meanwhile, Hoffman, 42, is still hard at work corruption-busting.
"The problem over the decades is that there has been so much of it," says Hoffman. "And I think there's been so much frustration over how hard it is to make changes that people get cynical. That's an understandable reaction."
"If anyone thinks that because people get cynical it means they accept corruption I don't think that's true," he says. "It's hard for people to summon the energy to fight corruption and fight for reform because so many people have failed in the past. But that's not a reason to give up and stop trying."
With former Gov. George Ryan serving a 6 1/2-year racketeering sentence and former Gov. Rod Blagojevich under indictment, people want reform, Hoffman says.
"People feel differently now -- they're angrier and they're much more energized about trying to make changes," Hoffman says.
Hoffman's hard-nosed independence has made enemies as well as friends.
Alderman Bernard Stone, who recalls the era when the Chicago Democratic Machine ruled the city unchallenged, has been blasting Hoffman in the Council regularly since the inspector general's office joined the Cook County state's attorney in a vote-fraud investigation targeting a political ally of Stone.
The alderman says Hoffman should stop looking into such matters and confine himself to issues such as whether city programs are working or need to be more effective.
"He envisions himself as something like J. Edgar Hoover," grumbles Stone.
Hoffman supporters bristle at such remarks.
"David Hoffman is running an independent and aggressive inspector general's office -- maybe too aggressive for Alderman Stone," says Patrick J. Collins, a former assistant U.S. attorney who sent Ryan to prison and more recently served as chairman of Gov. Patrick J. Quinn's Illinois Reform Commission.
Hoffman, who is also a member of that commission, says the inspector general's office must be "effective and independent if the city is not only to be as clean as possible but perceived as clean as possible because reputation matters and perceptions matter."
"And in light of the reputation issues of the city," he says, "one of the things I feel is that this is exactly the office that needs to be strong."
