CONVICT IN HIRED TRUCK PROGRAM

One of six trucking firms that are new to Mayor Daley's scandal-plagued
Hired Truck Program has quit just two weeks after the Chicago Sun-Times
raised questions about an owner's felony conviction for hauling 31 pounds
of marijuana. The city was initially unaware of the drug crime conviction
of Oscar Rojas, president of Rojas Concrete Inc., despite Daley's pledges
to clean up the program and do criminal background checks on all
applicants. In fact, the city for days insisted the Sun-Times was wrong,
saying the Oscar Rojas convicted of a drug crime in Texas nine years ago
was a different man than the Rojas whom the city just let into the Hired
Truck Program July 1.

On Tuesday, the city acknowledged its error after pulling the fingerprints
of the man arrested in Texas and seeing they matched Rojas' prints. The
city declined to say whether Rojas' conviction would have kept him out of
the program, adding it's irrelevant since Rojas quit last week. "A
10-year-old conviction does not necessarily exclude him from the program,"
said Lisa Schrader, a spokeswoman for the city's Hired Truck Program.
Schrader declined to comment on any conversations city officials had with
Rojas since the Sun-Times discovered his conviction, or why Rojas dropped
out. Rojas, 32, of Chicago, did not return repeated phone calls seeking
comment. His business was among 59 firms -- new ones like Rojas' plus
companies that had been in the Hired Truck Program before -- that were
allowed in under tighter rules Daley put in place after a Sun-Times series
exposed corruption in the $40 million-a-year program.

Those reforms did include criminal background checks, and the city
conducted one on Rojas, finding a Texas criminal case for him. City
officials, though, believed they had two different men because the national
criminal database somehow had the wrong information on Rojas for his
criminal arrest down in Texas. The city came up with two different mugshots
and Social Security numbers.

But their birthdates were exactly a year apart.

The Sun-Times confirmed Rojas' conviction by calling the Texas courthouse
where he was tried, having the clerk pull the court file and determining
the personal information for the Chicago contractor matched the Texas
felon. They had the same birth date, the same Social Security number and
the same Illinois driver's license.

Rojas' attorney in Texas, Bill McCoy, said his client pleaded guilty to the
drug crime and was sentenced to 10 years of probation and a $2,000 fine.
Rojas was discharged early from probation in November 1998. Rojas had been
driving from San Antonio to Chicago on Oct. 21, 1993, when police stopped
him about two hours east of Dallas because he was Hispanic and had
out-of-state license plates, McCoy said. Hidden in the rear quarter panels
of the 1984 Buick Coupe that Rojas was driving alone was 15 packages of
marijuana wrapped in duct tape, according to the police report. In the last
three years, the city has paid Rojas Concrete nearly $4 million for
sidewalk and other concrete work. Schrader said it was up to the city's
procurement office to determine whether it will continue to use Rojas
Concrete on other city jobs.

Rojas' attorney, Glenn Seiden, defended his client on Tuesday. "He's worked
in good faith and given the taxpayers a good value for any job he has
done," Seiden said.