I wonder if there’s a back story here.

A state judge presiding over a clout hiring case that has shaken Gov. Blagojevich had the backing of an undisclosed political sponsor before he got that post, newly released documents showed Tuesday.

Andrew C. Barris, a Blagojevich administration hire, had been the administrative law judge in the state Civil Service Commission case of two fired state personnel employees.

But on Friday, Barris quietly withdrew from the case of Dawn DeFraties and Michael Casey without explanation.

On Tuesday, Barris’ name surfaced on a list of 2,103 job applicants that had political sponsors. The list was disclosed by the administration to bolster its argument that DeFraties and Casey acted alone in breaking state hiring rules.

It seems reasonable that he should step down, considering the names on that hiring list were forwarded to DeFraties, many by the governor’s office and almost all by the governor’s political allies.

UPDATE: And on a related note…

Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s administration has nearly doubled the number of policy-making jobs exempt from the state’s personnel code, even as it was claiming it had shrunk the state work force by thousands of employees.

In January 2003, when Blagojevich took office, 396 jobs in state agencies were exempt from the personnel code under a special section for administrative positions. By June of this year, that number had grown to 745.

The Civil Service Commission approved the exemptions, and to say the pace has quickened since this governor took office would be a gross understatement.

The number of 4d(3) exemptions surged after Blagojevich took office in January 2003. Civil Service Commission records show that there were 396 exemptions in January of that year. By June 30, 2003, the end of the state’s fiscal year, the number was up to 471. On June 30, 2004, the number had increased to 642, and to 692 the following year. By mid-June of this year, the number stood at 745. The exemptions include both newly created jobs and existing jobs the administration wanted exempt from the personnel code.

In the last three full years of Gov. George Ryan’s administration, the Civil Service Commission approved only 80 4d(3) exemptions.

The governnor’s office claims that they converted the old “term” appointments (essentially four-year tenure for favored insiders) to “exmept” spots.

In the last full year of the Ryan administration, Ottenhoff said, there were 1,348 term appointments in state government. As of June, the number was down to 761, she said.

There’s always a catch, though.

Ottenhoff could not say how many of those jobs were converted to exempt positions, as opposed to how many were eliminated or unfilled because of staff reductions initiated by the administration.

Read the whole thing.