On a Saturday morning in the summer of 1966, Vinton Bacon, general superintendent of the Chicago Metropolitan Health District, took his car to a gas station near his suburban home for a gas and oil check. The officer found four sticks of dynamite attached to the car’s engine. Only a faulty connection prevented them from exploding.
Over the previous four years, Bacon had attacked corrupt practices at the agency, “earning the resentment, even the hatred, of many politicians, district employees, contractors, union officials, suppliers and a known undercover organization in Chicago as The Syndicate,” he said. an ENR article. The agency managed wastewater and stormwater for Chicago and more than 100 adjacent municipalities, serving five million residents, covering 858 square miles, with a workforce of 2,100.
During 1961, Chicago Tribune reporter George Bliss wrote a cascade of articles detailing how District workers were being paid for no-show jobs; about a gambling club, drinking and sleeping in one of the District’s plants; and a cover-up by the District’s personnel director. Bliss discovered and made public that the agency’s payrolls were filled with more than 1,000 political and labor-sponsored workers, while by law only 19 positions were exempt from civil service status. Bliss received the Pulitzer Prize for local reporting in 1962.
Additional reports from Chicago newspapers and civic organizations “found dishonest real estate deals, overpayments for electric supplies, overpriced contracts to friends of MSD officials, MSD engineers on the payrolls of contractors whose work they supervised, unnecessary contracts, unfulfilled contracts and responsible jobs in the hands of incompetents and criminals”.
That intense exposure led Mayor Richard Daley to appoint a panel of seven business, labor and civic leaders to find a new general superintendent for MSD. He told the panel to provide the MSD board with a list of three candidates to choose from. After a five-month search, during which they interviewed 60 candidates, the panel proposed one candidate instead of three: Bacon.
Bacon possessed a remarkable combination of academic stature, technical achievement, and managerial ability. After earning his civil engineering degree from the University of California, Berkeley, his first job was with the East Bay Municipal Utility District. At the Los Angeles County Sanitation District he conducted cost studies and analyzed treatment plant operations. During World War II he served with the US Public Health Service, establishing training and recruitment for typhus control programs in San Antonio. For six years he served as executive officer of the California State Water Pollution Control Board, conducting applied research, developing statewide policy, coordinating the work of nine regional boards, and testifying before of the state and congressional committees.
After Bacon received the position of general superintendent in November 1962, he discovered that he was disabled. When he tried to fire MSD’s chief of staff for incompetence, Bacon found he did not have the authority to hire or fire his senior staff members. After he retired, the board gave him the authority he needed. In his first three years, Bacon reduced patronage employees on the payroll from 900 to 150. He also instituted policies that reduced absenteeism by more than 30%. Contractors who failed to meet the deadlines paid about $400,000 in fines (about $4 million in 2024 dollars).
In June 1966, Bacon discovered irregularities in the results of an MSD examination of operating engineers. An investigation by an independent consultant found statistical and physical evidence of fraud. Thirty-nine answer papers had been removed and replaced with other answer papers with more correct answers, and the answers of four candidates with pass marks had been changed to give them fail marks. The bomb in Bacon’s car was found on the same day it was announced that the state attorney general was opening an investigation into the testing device.
Later that day, Bacon told reporters he would be in his office the next morning and planned to continue his vigorous investigation into the rigged exams. “I’m not running away from any investigation because someone tried to kill me,” he said. “A feat like this certainly indicates that we are dealing with something that has some people very shaken.” The police were assigned to watch Bacon, his home and his family, including his college student daughter.
Two months after the attempted car bomb, Bacon received a letter threatening his life. He speculated that the second threat may have been prompted by his announcement that he had found evidence of fraud in the results of an earlier MSD exam for crane fatteners given in 1964.
On another front, the District, at Bacon’s urging, filed a $10.5 million, six-count lawsuit against a sewer contractor for defective work on a project completed in 1962.
In November 1966, Chicago voters showed their strong support for Bacon’s fight against corruption by electing all four Republican candidates on a reform slate to MSD board positions, defeating four Democratic incumbents who were often had opposed Bacon’s efforts.
Bacon’s valiant work resulted in him being named ENR’s Man of the Year (now known as the ENR Award of Excellence) in 1967. Later that year, Illinois Gov. Otto Kerner, signed a law giving Bacon power to appoint the agency’s purchasing agent, chief of staff, attorney, secretary, and director of research and development, removing those powers from the trustees. But battles between Bacon and the old guard persisted, culminating in his dismissal in 1970.
Bacon’s obituary in the Chicago Tribune in 1997 quoted his son Donn: “An Illinois State Senate committee found that his firing was unfair and improperly carried out . In addition, he was vindicated when several of the trustees responsible for his dismissal were charged with criminal charges.”
Bacon went on to teach civil engineering at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee.
