A savvy veteran who was a top lieutenant under former Mayor Richard M. Daley is returning to City Hall under Mayor Rahm Emanuel.
Joan Coogan, chief of staff to the CTA board, will serve as Emanuel’s $180,000-a-year first deputy chief of staff.
Newly appointed Emanuel chief of staff Joe Deal said he convinced Coogan to return to City Hall because of the toughness and talents he saw during their years together under Daley.
During the Daley years, Coogan served as a lieutenant, then director of intergovernmental affairs. She worked to shape and advance Daley’s agenda in the City Council, even as federal prosecutors were accusing the office of rigging city hiring to benefit the Hispanic Democratic Organization and other pro-Daley armies of political workers.
An attorney, Coogan was never tainted by the scandal. She also has worked as a lobbyist and in county government under former Cook County Board Presidents Richard Phelan and John Stroger.
“She’s a smart, trusted colleague who I’ve known and worked with for many years,” Deal said Friday.
Referring to the $2.1 billion project to renovate the CTA’s Red Line and Purple Line, Deal said, “She’s been running point on the transit TIF project, coordinating agencies. She got to know a lot of the team. She demonstrated what I’ve known for a long time: that she’s very smart, very strategic and will be a great asset in advancing the mayor’s agenda.”
A source, who spoke on the condition of not being named, said Coogan would ride herd to make certain Emanuel delivers on his two-year promise to hire 970 additional police officers over and above attrition to combat a 50 percent rise in homicides and shootings that has Chicago well over 711 killings in 2016.
She also will be involved in budget and economic development issues, the source said.
Last month, Deal became the fifth person in five years to serve as Emanuel’s $195,000-a-year chief of staff. He replaced Eileen Mitchell, who resigned after a rocky 15 months that showed her to be an uncomfortable fit in a thankless job.
Under Mitchell’s watch, the City Council and the Chicago Board of Education approved $1.2 billion in tax increases to deal with the pension crisis. After hard-fought negotiations, aldermen also agreed to regulate the ride-sharing and home-sharing industries and approved a new multi-tiered system of police accountability.
As a result of those tough decisions already made and the 2017 budget unanimously approved, Deal’s seat won’t be nearly so hot. His biggest challenge will be to carry off the police hiring surge.
Emanuel’s first chief of staff was Theresa Mintle, a distant cousin of Daley. At the time, Mintle had been serving as chief of staff to the CTA board. Coogan was Daley’s director of intergovernmental affairs.
When Mintle returned to City Hall, Coogan got Mintle’s job at the CTA, where she has been ever since.
At the CTA, Coogan also served as board chair and trustee of the Retiree Health Care Trust for CTA Employees. She is a trustee and past chair of the board of trustees for the CTA’s pension fund.
Under Daley, Coogan was known as an effective, tough-as-nails negotiator who sometimes rubbed aldermen the wrong way. She wasn’t subtle in pushing the mayor’s point of view with the City Council.
But Coogan’s wealth of experience at all levels is likely to be an asset in the pivotal year before Emanuel must decide whether to seek a third term.
“The aldermen didn’t like her style,” said a source familiar with Coogan’s work. “They found her to be abrasive. But she’s an effective and bright lawyer and a very quick study. She knows everybody.
“If Joe Deal was going to pick someone, he couldn’t do any better than Joan Coogan. If Alex Holt were to leave, Joan Coogan would be a great budget director. If the mayor picks Anna Valencia as city clerk, Coogan could slide into Anna’s [intergovernmental affairs] job. Joan Coogan has been there and done just about everything.”
Sources said Deal is not hiring Coogan — at a salary that’s $10,000 higher than he got as first deputy chief of staff — with the intention of sliding her into any other job but, instead, to be his right hand.
