Posted by Hal Dardick at 10:43 a.m.; last updated at 2:23 p.m. with aldermen who voted against
The City Council today overwhelmingly approved an ordinance barring aldermen from using a stealth payroll account to hire relatives — after a committee earlier altered the measure to grandfather existing employees.
The vote was 33-5. Only Ald. Bernard Stone, 50th, spoke against it, saying the measure was "absolutely ridiculous" and would create a special class of people who can’t work for the city "because of the mere fact that they happen to be a relative of an alderman."
Ald. Thomas Allen, 38th, first proposed the change last November in response to a Tribune story that revealed aldermen were using a $1.3 million payroll controlled by the Finance Committee to hire relatives, campaign operatives and workers with political baggage.
One of the employees with political baggage was a former full-time city worker ousted over sexual harassment allegations who had been placed on a city do-not-hire list.
Attorneys with expertise in the federal court consent decree that prohibits political consideration in hiring for most city jobs said the payroll may violate that decree, but Allen’s change does not address those issues.
The story also noted at least four aldermen had used the account to hire relatives, prompting former 29th Ald. Isaac Carothers, who since resigned his post after pleading guilty in federal court to bribes, to say: “All us (aldermen) have family members on the payroll. That’s nothing new.”
Other aldermen said that statement landed all of them in hot water with the public, something Allen alluded to today.
“I would submit that if you walked down the street and asked 100 people if they thought this was appropriate, I would bet a hundred out of a hundred would say no,” Allen said at a meeting of the Rules and Ethics Committee where the measure was amended this morning.
Under the measure, aldermen would no longer be able to hire relatives, as several have done, but those already paid from the stealth account could continue to work for their aldermen relatives.
“We are not trying to throw anyone out of a job or prohibit those people from continuing to work, but this would apply only to new hires,” Allen said. “So, the current hires would be grandfathered.”
That change, made during the Rules and Ethics Committee meeting, appeared to be a compromise to get sufficient votes for passage.
“After talking to a number of my colleagues, they were concerned about current employees,” Ald. Margaret Laurino, 39th, said during the committee hearing before the full council vote. “Should Ald. Allen amend this on the face to grandfather in existing employees, I think that this would indeed be a very good ordinance.”
Stone also spoke against the measure at committee.
“The general public’s opinion of the aldermen themselves is so low, that if you are going to sit and worry about what their opinion is of hiring members of the aldermen’s family, it’s probably no greater than what it is of the aldermen,” Stone said.
“I don’t care what you tell me, that is unfair,” Stone told Allen of his proposal. “It is certainly contrary to the statement that all people are created equal. It is certainly contrary to the 14th Amendment of the United States Constitution, which we fought the Civil War over, and you are creating a special class by saying that relatives of aldermen cannot serve because they are relatives, because by chance of birth they were born relatives of aldermen.”
The other aldermen voting against the ordinance are Alds. Anthony Beale, 9th; Lona Lane, 18th; Willie Cochran, 20th; and Ray Suarez, 31st.
Stone in recent days also has taken a strong stand against Mayor Richard Daley’s proposal to let the inspector general’s office probe aldermen. Allen said that proposal and his effort are not related.
The little-known Revenue Committee account has been around for decades, and employees paid through the fund don’t show up on the regular city payroll.
According to the line item in the budget, aldermen are allowed to hire people "to perform secretarial, clerical, stenographic, research, investigations or other functions expressly related to the office of aldermen."
The jobs also don’t appear to be on the city’s court-mandated list of positions deemed exempt from the political hiring ban, according to private attorney Michael Shakman, whose lawsuit led to the decades-long court ban on political influence in city personnel decisions. And they are not "posted," a procedure aimed at giving everyone an equal chance, clout or not, to compete for the jobs.
City officials have said the employees paid through the fund are contract workers because they do not receive a city pension or other city benefits. But Shakman has questioned that statement, because the city withholds the employees’ taxes and sends each one a yearly W-2 tax form.