Daley admits to taking trips on EduCap's $31 million jet

BY FRAN SPIELMAN City Hall Reporter

With a surprise assist from Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Mayor Daley fended off questions Tuesday about the multiple trips he now admits he took aboard a $31 million jet owned by a non-profit company under investigation by the IRS and Congress.

“I don't remember all of ’em,” the mayor said of the flights.

Daley changed his story one week after City Hall insisted that a September 2006 trip to Singapore was the mayor’s only travel courtesy of EduCap, a multibillion dolloar student loan charity under the microscope because of the high interest it charges on student loans and the perks it provides to its CEO.

After returning from a weeklong Florida vacation, Daley acknowledged that he took more than one EduCap flight. He also said Catherine and Wayne Reynolds, principals of the non-profit and its affiliated Academy of Achievement where his wife Maggie Daley once worked, are “very close friends.”

A May 2005 flight log obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times shows Daley taking the EduCap plane from Monterrey, Calif., to Van Nuys, where he reportedy attended a U.S. Conference of Mayors meeting.

Maggie Daley was aboard for four legs with a VIP roster of passengers that included the Reynolds; now convicted former Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens and his wife, and former White House Chief of Staff Michael Deaver and his wife, the record shows

Mayoral press secretary Jacquelyn Heard said Maggie Daley used the EduCap jet as a paid employee of the Academy of Achievement. There "may have been other" flights by the mayor, she said, but, "I just don't have the documentation."

"The implication in all of these questions is that somehow he's broken a rule or law. We've been advised that, based on the trips we're confirming, there's no tax obligation because he traveled in his capacity as mayor," Heard said.

The Academy of Achievement unites current and future world leaders for a weekend of seminars. Its members include Tutu, who just happened to be visiting Chicago on Tuesday.

After listening to the rapid-fire questions about the mayor's travel, Tutu was incredulous.

"I just want to say I can't believe this," Tutu said.

The achbishop called the Academy of Achievement a "scintillating range of outstanding people" who are joined for a weekend with young people on track to make "a heckuva difference to the world."

"I would hope that is what you would be wanting to concentrate on -- please," Tutu said.

Daley added, "But in Chicago, the press has to find always negative things. That's how it is."

Tutu closed by doing something the mayor would never do: blessing the news media.

“Let me hope that my presence will have acted like, you know, I will absolve you and make you holy,” he said.