{"id":250566,"date":"2010-01-29T22:41:00","date_gmt":"2010-01-30T03:41:00","guid":{"rendered":"tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d8341c60fd53ef0120a82f019d970b"},"modified":"2010-01-30T18:27:46","modified_gmt":"2010-01-30T23:27:46","slug":"watchdog-sees-constant-danger-of-illegal-hiring-at-city-hall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/250566","title":{"rendered":"Watchdog sees ‘constant’ danger of illegal hiring at City Hall"},"content":{"rendered":"

Posted by Todd Lighty <\/em>at 9:40 p.m.; updated Saturday at 5:27 p.m.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Mayor Richard Daley\u2019s administration has put up \u201cstiff resistance\u201d to the inspector general\u2019s attempts to fully investigate and root out political favoritism in city hiring, according to a new report filed Friday in federal court.<\/p>\n

Inspector General Joseph Ferguson\u2019s report, which concluded \u201cthe dangers of political hiring remain real and constant,\u201d comes as Daley is pushing this year to end court oversight of the city\u2019s scandal-plagued hiring system.<\/p>\n

Ferguson said his investigations into hiring abuses have been hampered because Daley\u2019s top lawyer routinely invokes attorney-client privilege to stop him from obtaining crucial documents; the mayor\u2019s compliance office does not share key information; and the city has failed to discipline employees involved in illegal hiring practices.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

In his report, Ferguson suggested a city ordinance that bars him from investigating alderman be lifted. He said the ordinance has prevented him from looking into a Tribune report in November that aldermen had put family members, campaign operatives and others with political connections on a stealth taxpayer-funded payroll.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis prohibition poses a severe obstacle to and gaping hole in any comprehensive effort to curtail improper political influence in hiring,\u201d he said in the report.<\/p>\n

He concluded the court should stay involved in city hiring \u201cuntil the operational resistance has been ameliorated and the broad risks have been significantly reduced.\u201d<\/p>\n

A spokeswoman for the city\u2019s Law Department said she had not seen the report and had no immediate comment. On Saturday, Daley dismissed the report as limited to one issue and not an indictment of City Hall\u2019s overall relationship with Ferguson\u2019s office. <\/p>\n

The inspector general\u2019s office in November sued Daley\u2019s top lawyer, Mara Georges, after she refused to turn over subpoenaed documents, citing attorney-client privilege.<\/p>\n

Ferguson, in an interview, said he believed the city could fix those key areas to achieve \u201csubstantial compliance,\u201d the legal threshold for getting out from under court control. \u201cThe mayor has a critical role in reinforcing the importance of cooperation of all employees in moving the city toward substantial compliance,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Ferguson\u2019s critical report follows one filed in December by Noelle Brennan, the court monitor. She alleged the mayor\u2019s Office of Compliance, which would take over her duties once the court case ends, violated hiring regulations and misled her about efforts to deal with hiring abuses.<\/p>\n

City Hall is operating under a decades-long consent decree aimed at keeping politics out of most personnel decisions. The judge in that case appointed Brennan in 2005 after federal authorities accused Daley\u2019s patronage chief and others of circumventing that decree by rigging hiring to reward the mayor\u2019s political allies with jobs, promotions and overtime.<\/p>\n

According to Ferguson\u2019s report, the inspector general found favoritism in the hiring of student interns. Investigators looked at intern hiring in seven departments from 2005 to 2008. The office found that about half of the 900 interns who got jobs had connections to city employees and a number of the connected interns later were hired into full-time city jobs.<\/p>\n

Ferguson found that interns \u201cwere pre-selected based on their connection to a city employee, and in instances, the hiring criteria was tailored for the desired candidate.\u201d<\/p>\n

tlighty@tribune.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Posted by Todd Lighty at 9:40 p.m.; updated Saturday at 5:27 p.m. Mayor Richard Daley\u2019s administration has put up \u201cstiff resistance\u201d to the inspector general\u2019s attempts to fully investigate and root out political favoritism in city hiring, according to a new report filed Friday in federal court. Inspector General Joseph Ferguson\u2019s report, which concluded \u201cthe […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3992,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-250566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3992"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=250566"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250566\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=250566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=250566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=250566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}