Is Rahm just 'lucky' or what?

Could BBB have made the $20.5M no-bid deal with SUPES without nod from Rahm & Vitale?

Answer: Or what...

S-T's Fran Spielman says:

Mayor Rahm Emanuel is lucky the FBI investigation targeting his hand-picked schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett came to light one week after the election instead of one week before it.

C'mon Fran. You know better than that. Luck is when your meter ran out a half-hour ago and you return to the car and find no ticket on the window. We all know what "getting lucky" means and it has nothing to do with the feds holding off their announcement of an investigation until after an election.

I also believe that Spielman is wrong in thinking that current contract negotiations revolve around the "girlfriend" relationship between Barbara Byrd-Bennett and Karen Lewis. BBB came into the 2012 negotiations the same way she is leaving them in 2015 -- in hiding. She played Rahm Emanuel's pawn then and she's taking the fall for him now. Does anyone really believe that BBB could have handed out $20.5M no-bid contracts to Paul Vallas' partners, on her own? With no nod from Rahm or David Vitale?

No, the reason she will take her (paid) leave before her contract expires in June (spend more time with her family?) is to avoid lengthy criminal-trial blood spilling where the public sees how the sausage is really made at CPS as well as on the 5th floor of City Hall. It's in open court where the name of the buyers as well as the sellers of a deal-gone-bad usually comes to light.

In the mean time, it's getting pretty crowded with former top, black, CPS administrators down here, under the bus. Right, J.C.?  Right, Eason-Watkins? Lesson for potential successor.

These contract negotiations, like the last ones, won't be settled over breakfast at Meli's.