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* UPDATED x1 * Patronage monitor points to four questionable CDB hires as reason to deny state’s push to vacate Shakman Decree

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* In retrospect, appointing the Macon County Democratic Party chair as head of the CDB might not have been the wisest move. Sun-Times…

The watchdog appointed to investigate potential patronage by state officials determined the Illinois Capital Development Board made several hiring mistakes — including hiring a person on a “Clout List” with close ties to former Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

Noelle Brennan, the lawyer assigned to monitor the state’s compliance with the Shakman consent decree, released her findings in a court filing Wednesday. Her response comes as the state has fought to vacate the decree, which it’s been under since 1972. The Shakman decree banned political considerations in hiring and firing, though there are some exceptions.

Brennan requested in the filing that the state’s motion to vacate the decree be denied, considering the recent findings.

According to the filing, the violations occurred when the Capital Development Board sought to hire several “contract specialists” as the state launched its Rebuild Illinois Capital Plan. That program saw its budget grow from $28 million in 2018 to more than $9 billion in 2021. The plan is set to invest $45 billion into roads, early childhood centers, bridges and other state facilities over the next several years. […]

The monitor initially found the hiring process used for these vacant positions violated several personnel code provisions — and, specifically, that the hiring of four people raised concerns given their history, as the Chicago Sun-Times reported last month.

The continued investigation found that two of those four people had been fired by the state previously. That included the person with ties to Blagojevich. Another person hired was the son of one of the agency’s top officials and did not meet the minimum qualifications for the position.

* From that earlier Sun-Times story…

In a written statement in response to questions, Pritzker’s general counsel Ann Spillane pointed out that the state itself originally brought the Capital Development Board matter to Brennan’s attention and that, in her interviews with state employees, the monitor has not even asked about political patronage.

“The governor is committed to ensuring all state hiring and employment practices are conducted with the highest ethical standards and is proud to have built the most diverse administration in Illinois history,” Spillane said, adding that the Shakman case has cost the state more than $1 million in just the past 18 months.

While generally complimentary of the state’s reform efforts, Brennan suggests in her filings that the problems at the Capital Development Board could point to broader shortcomings in how the state is rolling out its new “Comprehensive Employment Plan,” which is supposed to form the basis for the job reforms that would make Shakman oversight unnecessary.

*** UPDATE *** From the governor’s chief legal counsel Ann Spillane…

The Governor is committed to ensuring all state hiring and employment practices are conducted with the highest ethical standards and is proud to have built the most diverse administration in Illinois history. As evidence of that commitment, we have increased resources and staffing to create a robust Rutan compliance program, established a training program for everyone involved in hiring, and implemented an electronic system to modernize the State’s human resources. The court has noted this administration’s extensive progress on improving state employment practices. No one, including the Shakman Plaintiffs and the Special Master, disputes that significant progress. The Special Master’s December report concluded by explaining that “the State has significantly improved its employment practices over the last several years,” noting that the State’s actions have led to “substantial compliance” with the 1972 Decree.

The state believes it has met all objectives of the 1972 Shakman Consent Decree in the decades since it was put in place and the continuation of the Decree is costly and far beyond its original scope. As a cost of over $1 million for just the last 18 months and an ongoing cost of nearly $100,000 per month, we believe it’s our duty to focus State resources on hiring needed employees, not paying more attorneys’ fees. At this point, the Plaintiffs cannot point to a single violation of the law in multiple administrations. In fact, Plaintiffs now say that they support the State’s motion to end the Shakman decree and believe the State should take minor steps to end the case by April.

ON CDB:

• The administration identified a procedural mistake by CDB in filling a position and flagged that mistake for the special master. That is how she learned of the procedural issue.
• The special master has now reviewed CDB’s hiring for over four months and has not identified any evidence of patronage or any evidence that any employee committed misconduct. She has identified mistakes.
• Throughout this case, the State has adopted as many of the special master’s recommendations as possible into our practices. We are reviewing the special master’s report and will use it to ensure that HR personnel learn from any procedural mistakes CDB employees made and avoid similar mistakes in the future.

posted by Rich Miller
Thursday, Feb 10, 22 @ 8:45 am

Comments

This monitor just wants to keep the gravy train going.

Comment by Demoralized Thursday, Feb 10, 22 @ 8:49 am
Headline should be:

“Patronage monitor points to hires as reason not to dry up her legal revenue stream.” There’s always going to be stuff. That’s what the OEIG is for.

Comment by Ebur-floozy Thursday, Feb 10, 22 @ 8:52 am
===son of one of the agency’s top officials and did not meet the minimum qualifications for the position.===
Being related is one of the minimum qualifications.

Comment by Bruce( no not him) Thursday, Feb 10, 22 @ 8:52 am
It’s awfully swell for Brennan that she parlayed her initial remit of investigating IDOT hiring practices into examining the hiring process of all agencies.

Comment by Arsenal Thursday, Feb 10, 22 @ 9:04 am
==The continued investigation found that two of those four people had been fired by the state previously. That included the person with ties to Blagojevich. Another person hired was the son of one of the agency’s top officials and did not meet the minimum qualifications for the position.==

One of them was also a former Quinn and IDOT “staff assistant.”

Comment by NonAFSCMEStateEmployeeFromChatham Thursday, Feb 10, 22 @ 9:08 am
Why are the names redacted? Aren’t personnel hiring and salary information public information any way? Isn’t this fairly easily discernable?

Comment by Bothanspied Thursday, Feb 10, 22 @ 9:28 am
==Why are the names redacted? Aren’t personnel hiring and salary information public information any way? Isn’t this fairly easily discernable?==

Perhaps attorney-client privilege, possibly?

Comment by NonAFSCMEStateEmployeeFromChatham Thursday, Feb 10, 22 @ 9:30 am
Good to see our old friends Lon Monk, Joe Cini, Jack Lavin and Co mentioned at various points in the filing.

Comment by NonAFSCMEStateEmployeeFromChatham Thursday, Feb 10, 22 @ 9:36 am
===That’s what the OEIG is for===

That is what the OEIG is for, but clearly the existence of the OEIG’s hiring monitoring, the existence of annual ethics training, and the very clear message that these kinds of things should not be happening has not successfully prevented some people from treating state government as the patronage scheme that illegally operated for decades.

I think it would also be a mistake to assume that this report has identified the only illegal patronage that has recently occurred.

The question should be and should remain whether or not the state is going to take these violations seriously enough to implement meaningful punishments for the people involved in them.

===Another person hired was the son of one of the agency’s top officials and did not meet the minimum qualifications for the position.===

Case in point, this top official should no longer be employed. Even Rauner had an independent order on nepotism and if a top official isn’t able to recognize the issue posed by this hiring, or the hiring staff aren’t able to recognize the issue caused by this hiring, well then, maybe they shouldn’t be responsible for hiring at a state agency either.

I don’t think the state is ready to remove the monitoring, not yet. Not when there are a significant number of people in senior positions that originally received their position with the state through political patronage and have a deep desire to avoid recognizing that the process by which they came to be employed was illegal and prevented a person with better qualifications from being brought on board.

Comment by Candy Dogood Thursday, Feb 10, 22 @ 9:36 am
===One of them was also a former Quinn and IDOT “staff assistant.” ===

If the person who was signing the time sheets and orchestrating the hiring of IDOT staff assistants that never showed up to work at an IDOT office because they were performing work at other agencies is fit to be the Chief of Staff at DHS, the people hired illegally probably shouldn’t be automatically disqualified.

If the Pritzker administration wanted to send a message on illegal patronage, they probably would have avoiding giving senior positions with a lot of responsibility to the people who were directly and unequivocally responsible for those schemes. It really sends the wrong message to people at places like the Capital Development Board.

Comment by Candy Dogood Thursday, Feb 10, 22 @ 9:40 am
“her filings that the problems at the Capital Development Board could point to broader shortcomings” isn’t that how witch hunts start? “I’m just asking questions…”

Comment by Skeptic Thursday, Feb 10, 22 @ 9:56 am
=== isn’t that how witch hunts start?===

No. Witches do not exist. In appropriate hiring and illegal patronage hiring in Illinois State government does exist and the scope of such investigations is limited by default.

I recognize that getting the state out from under the Shakman decrees would be a considerable win, but the decrees were blatantly ignored for decades and required a very embarrassing supreme court ruling against the State that everyone should be ashamed of the fact it needed to exist in the first place.

Comment by Candy Dogood Thursday, Feb 10, 22 @ 10:05 am
==In appropriate hiring and illegal patronage hiring in Illinois State government does exist==

I assume since you consistently seem to have something stuck in your craw about who the state hires that you have made numerous reports about this sort of hiring to the OEIG.

Comment by Demoralized Thursday, Feb 10, 22 @ 10:12 am
-stuck in your craw -

Nothing says “I’m guilty of hiring my unqualified friends “ quite like that.

Comment by A Horse is a Horse Thursday, Feb 10, 22 @ 10:21 am
==In appropriate hiring and illegal patronage hiring in Illinois State government does exist==
I’m not seeing how a small, obscure Board saying “Oops, we goofed, here’s what we did wrong and here’s what we’re doing to prevent it in the future” is proof positive of widespread hiring irregularities, but you be you.

Comment by Skeptic Thursday, Feb 10, 22 @ 10:44 am
Who the State hires is an important public matter. The public trust in Illinois has been repeatedly undermined by the ongoing tendency to hire for patronage.

We certainly don’t like to talk about how Governor Thompson stole tens of thousands of jobs from the public in order to use them to reward his donors and political allies. We also certainly don’t like to recognize that there is no defense of that practice that we can pretend is in the public interest. We also have a tough time acknowledging that proceeding Thompson were likewise stealing jobs from the public in order to reward donors and political allies.

We have a tough time acknowledging that in current state employment there are still thousands of people who received their initial position with the State of Illinois in an inappropriate or illegal fashion and worse yet, the people who were hired illegally don’t really like to acknowledge that they were hired illegally on any level. It’s a tough bridge to cross. It’s tough to be that honest with yourself.

You can just dismiss me as a pile of hearsay, but if you’re curious about the goings on in this front you can visit the OEIG’s website and read their monthly newsletters or if you’re so inclined read their founded reports.

I don’t trust the OEIG process to be perfect and there’s a lot of room for reform to make that better.

Comment by Candy Dogood Thursday, Feb 10, 22 @ 10:56 am
50 years of work and this is the evidence they use to justify keeping it going for the whole state? Get outta here.
A couple questions I have related to shakman:
What is their definition of a win? What is their exit strategy?
How much money gets spent every year for them to still not able to eliminate the whole reason their jobs exist?
How much staff time is spent responding to them on issues that go nowhere?
How many quality job candidates do we lose or not even attract in the first place because the hiring process is so slow and cumbersome?

Comment by Anonish Thursday, Feb 10, 22 @ 10:59 am
==If the person who was signing the time sheets and orchestrating the hiring of IDOT staff assistants that never showed up to work at an IDOT office because they were performing work at other agencies is fit to be the Chief of Staff at DHS==

That would be Ryan Croke, Quinn’s last CoS and now DHS CoS.

Comment by NonAFSCMEStateEmployeeFromChatham Thursday, Feb 10, 22 @ 11:00 am
- the people who were directly and unequivocally responsible for those schemes. -

That’s a pretty definitive statement, care to show your proof? You remind me of my Trump loving coworkers who were positive Hillary was going to prison back in 2016.

Comment by Excitable Boy Thursday, Feb 10, 22 @ 11:41 am
- I don’t think the state is ready to remove the monitoring, not yet. -

What has she accomplished with all this money we’ve given her?

Comment by Excitable Boy Thursday, Feb 10, 22 @ 11:42 am
=== In fact, Plaintiffs now say that they support the State’s motion to end the Shakman decree and believe the State should take minor steps to end the case by April. ===

That is because there is a pending appeal before the 7th Circuit regarding the last time the Pritzker administration filed a motion to dissolve the consent decrees. If it means anything, the 7th Circuit seemed very sympathetic to the governor’s case. You can listen to the oral argument here:

http://media.ca7.uscourts.gov/sound/2021/mn.21-1739.21-1739_12_10_2021.mp3

Needless to say that the Plaintiffs are very nervous about a sweeping 7th Circuit decision that would jeopardize its other cash cow cases with other defendants. If the Governor’s case is completed before the 7th Circuit rules, the issue becomes moot and no negative case law would come of the appeal.

Comment by Hannibal Lecter Thursday, Feb 10, 22 @ 11:57 am
I like that people are upset at the Special Master for existing instead of being upset at the idea that an unqualified child of a senior person at a board responsible for overseeing billions of dollars of funds somehow got hired.

How that happened is really what should be explained to the public. Fixing it is important, but why was the process still broken to begin with?

Comment by Candy Dogood Thursday, Feb 10, 22 @ 11:59 am
- I like that people are upset at the Special Master for existing instead of being upset at the idea that an unqualified child of a senior person at a board responsible for overseeing billions of dollars of funds somehow got hired. -

Lol, it’s a good thing the Governor’s office pointed that out to her then. What happened, did her dog eat her paperwork on that one?

Comment by Excitable Boy Thursday, Feb 10, 22 @ 12:06 pm
To the post, I think we have to take a look at the history of the case and why it was filed. In 1969, Michael Shakman filed suit because, as a candidate to be a delegate to the State Constitutional Convention, he argued that his rights were violated because patronage workers campaigning against him did not give him a fair shot at reaching the ballot. This was a time when potential employees needed a letter from their local committeeman to be able to get a job in City or County employment. Anyone who has looked into the history of this case knows that times have changed - even when compared to the circumstances involved with the Governor’s case (which arose due to patronage practices implemented by the Quinn administration).

There aren’t many political organizations with precinct workers anymore. There aren’t patronage jobs except for the positions that are generally referred to as Exempt. Back in the day, you would put a precinct worker on the back of a garbage truck. That doesn’t happen anymore. I think the time has come for this litigation to end. Not because there aren’t mistakes or misconduct - There are mistake and misconduct does happen. Its just that the remedies do not do anything to prevent the issue.

If an elected official is hell bent on violating the rights of employees or applicants, they will find a way to do that with or without a federal monitor. The question is, what is the remedy? In every other state in this country, the remedy is for the impacted employee or applicant to file a lawsuit in federal court citing a violation of their civil rights. There is nothing preventing those harmed by patronage practices from filing a suit. To me, that should be the remedy. We shouldn’t have federal courts so entrenched in the operations of a state or local agency as to where the line is blurred as to who is actually in control.

Comment by Hannibal Lecter Thursday, Feb 10, 22 @ 12:09 pm
===a good thing the Governor’s office pointed that out to her then===

I agree that it is a good thing that the administration complied with a court order.

Comment by Candy Dogood Thursday, Feb 10, 22 @ 12:10 pm
==We also have a tough time acknowledging that proceeding Thompson were likewise stealing jobs from the public in order to reward donors and political allies.==

Many of whom were most likely part of the Bill Cellini “friends and family” plan.

Comment by NonAFSCMEStateEmployeeFromChatham Thursday, Feb 10, 22 @ 12:11 pm
=== idea that an unqualified child of a senior person at a board responsible for overseeing billions of dollars of funds somehow got hired. ===

But the monitor’s role is not to weed out nepostism. It is to monitor to ensure that political reasons or factors are not involved in hiring decisions. While the distinction may not matter much to you, it matters very much for the purposes of this federal litigation. The litigation is to prevent political discrimination, and the Monitor did not find that this hire, while problematic, was the result of political discrimination.

Comment by Hannibal Lecter Thursday, Feb 10, 22 @ 12:12 pm
This is a very important issue. Two points i want to add to this discussion:

- Is patronage hiring tied to the executive branch and political campaigns, worse than the hiring of lesser qualified people based on influence from GA members, and/or private sector lobbyists? What is being done to address that

- If the process to insulate the State from patronage hiring creates 100 forms and a 1 year long hiring process and it limits the State to hiring 300 people per year, when, due to retirements, the State needs to hire 600 people per year, thus creating an understaffed government that functions poorly; does the solution create a larger problem?

Comment by Merica Thursday, Feb 10, 22 @ 12:24 pm
I can only speak to the employee background investigations I conducted when I worked for the Illinois Gaming Board. Does nepotism factor into the hiring of some employees? Absolutely. Does political affiliation factor into the hiring of some employees? Absolutely. Is the OEIG interested? Absolutely not.

Comment by Just what it is Thursday, Feb 10, 22 @ 12:33 pm
I’m not sure how this can be considered a reason to keep the Special Master around. This happened on the Special Master’s watch. The only reason the Special Master found out about it is the Governor’s Office pointed out irregularities in the hiring. If the Special Master did not exist, the OEIG could have done the same thing. If the Special Master doesn’t prevent this kind of thing and only finds out about it if someone else points it out to them, why do we need it?

Comment by Twirling Towards Freedom Thursday, Feb 10, 22 @ 2:04 pm
===There aren’t patronage jobs except for the positions that are generally referred to as Exempt.===

Au contraire, mon frere. Merit Commissions operate on the principle the hiring authority can choose anyone they want from the top rank class. This was discussed during the George Ryan trial. And there is an informal Attorney General’s Opinion (no, it isn’t online) issued (1991-4) related to Sheriff’s Merit Commissions (request came from Knox County), stating the hiring authority could pick whoever they wanted from the top rank. Suspect that is why the GOP statewide candidate from Sangamon County is running for SoS - it has a Merit Commission, not a Civil Service Commission.

Comment by Anyone Remember Thursday, Feb 10, 22 @ 3:24 pm
Anyone Remember — Even if what you State is true, it still would not permit the hiring authority to hire individuals for non exempt positions based on political reasons or factors. If politics is considered, that would be political discrimination.

Comment by Hannibal Lecter Thursday, Feb 10, 22 @ 5:19 pm