Mayor Byrne defends payments to family

Mayor Jane M. Byrne says there's nothing wrong with paying members of one's family out of one's political was chest and that it's a city tradition. The Mayor -- responding to criticism after the release of a financial statement indicating she paid her husband, Jay McMullen, and daughter, Kathy Byrne, nearly $86,000 -- said the late Mayor Richard J. Daley, patriarch of the city's vast political machine, did the same sort of thing. Members of the mayor's family collected m ore than $100,000 from her political fund last year.