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When I put in a call to Cook County Board President John Stroger Tuesday morning, it was to talk about race -- not corruption. But by the time he called back, there was more news breaking out of the Dirksen Federal Building downtown. The U.S. attorney's office had just announced it was charging yet another politically connected person in the ever-growing Hired Truck scandal. That makes 16 so far. And it's somebody, it turns out, that Stroger knows well. John Cannatello, 59, according to the feds, got a whopping $6.6 million in Hired Truck work in exchange for payoffs and political contributions and by pretending his trucking firm was a woman-run business. Cannatello is not just an ordinary guy in this investigation. He's an important cog in the political wheel of city and county politics. He has a Bridgeport pedigree, has been an 11th Ward precinct captain in the Daley ward army, and has worked for the city Water Department and later for the Cook County Forest Preserve. His last boss was Stroger. It was in 1994 that Stroger was elected president of the Cook County Board. Cannatello, then the committeeman of Palos Township, was the first of the suburban Democratic committeemen to back him. There are rewards for that kind of loyalty. The next year Cannatello got an excellent job as regional superintendent of the Cook County Forest Preserve. "I had to OK him to get that job," said Stroger. Stroger makes no bones about the fact that he hired Cannatello. He makes no bones about the fact that it's OK, whether you work in media or government, to hire people you know and trust. "I do want some who have political connections working for me because I have to get out and sell my programs and sell what I'm doing." But, he added, "They also have to be willing to do the work they've been hired for." Well, one of the big unanswered questions in the federal complaint against Cannatello is whether he was a real county worker or a ghost payroller. That's because for many of the same years he was alleged to have been running a "woman-owned" trucking company, he was supposedly busy at the Forest Preserve. The same question applies to his wife, Nikki. She, too, was an employee of Cook County government, working for the Health Department, for much of the same time she was supposedly the head of that same trucking company, GNA Trucking. This latest criminal complaint comes at a time when the Cook County Board is a bloody battleground over Stroger's proposed budget. At issue is whether there is indeed a $73 million shortfall that has to be filled with some sort of tax increase, as Stroger believes. Or whether there is plenty of fat in the form of jobs that could be cut. The original reason I called Stroger Tuesday was because he had raised the specter of race as the motivating force behind those county commissioners who oppose him and what he wants to do. The strongest voices of Stroger opposition are Anthony Peraica, Forrest Claypool, Larry Suffredin and Mike Quigley. Like the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, they have been relentless in arguing that county government, including the Forest Preserve District that employed Cannatello, is bloated and mismanaged beyond belief. All of them are white. Stroger says he's not playing the race card. It's just, he says, that friends and supporters keep telling him the current County Board battle reminds them of the old Council Wars when Mayor Harold Washington did combat with white aldermen led by Ed Vrdolyak. Stroger says he's simply saying what other people see. Race in Chicago should never be discounted as a motivating factor in anything. And yet, it might be noted that Commissioner John Daley is also white. He and his brother, the mayor, wanted Stroger to run for County Board president and helped him win. John Daley is Stroger's powerful right-hand man on the board. John Daley is also an insurance guy who has made untold thousands of dollars insuring some of the Hired Truck companies currently under the federal microscope. That includes GNA, the "woman-owned" firm the feds claim is really run by Cannatello. Though Cannatello and his wife have retired from their jobs in county government, I count six other Cannatellos on the payroll. We the taxpayers have been very good to this family. We can only hope, for their sake, they have been good to us.