{"id":569361,"date":"2010-05-18T16:35:39","date_gmt":"2010-05-18T20:35:39","guid":{"rendered":"tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d8341c60fd53ef01348112f056970c"},"modified":"2010-05-18T16:35:39","modified_gmt":"2010-05-18T20:35:39","slug":"stroger-gets-rare-win-over-commissioners-on-hiring-freeze","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/569361","title":{"rendered":"Stroger gets rare win over commissioners on hiring freeze"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Posted by Hal Dardick<\/em> at 3:35 p.m.<\/p>\n<p>Cook County Board President Todd Stroger scored a rare victory today when commissioners could not muster the votes to make stick a hiring freeze they tried to impose in the wake of the latest county hiring controversy.<\/p>\n<p>The board voted 9-6, with one commissioner voting present, to override Stroger\u2019s veto of the freeze. That was two votes short of the number needed to thwart Stroger and restrict hiring.\n<\/p>\n<p>Just two weeks ago, the board voted 16-1 to approve the freeze. Today, however, commissioners were presented with an opinion from the state\u2019s attorney\u2019s office that concluded the freeze would not survive a legal challenge.<br \/><\/br><br \/><\/br>The board cannot restrict the authority of Stroger or other elected officials to hire, fire and promote individuals, as long as he stays within the confines of the budget approved by commissioners, according to the opinion by Asst. State\u2019s Atty. Patrick Driscoll.<br \/><\/br><br \/><\/br>\u201cThe ordinance would result in an unconstitutional change in the form of government,\u201d Driscoll wrote in response to a question posed by Commissioner Joseph Mario Moreno, D-Chicago.<br \/><\/br><br \/><\/br>Stroger had threatened to sue if commissioners overrode his veto. The ordinance would have barred further hiring by all elected county officials.<br \/><\/br><br \/><\/br>Exceptions would have been made for the Cook County Jail, so it can meet federal standards, and the independent Health and Hospitals System, which is being reorganized. The board also could have approved \u201cemergency\u201d hires.<br \/><\/br><br \/><\/br>Two other measures designed to rein in Stroger\u2019s authority that also were approved two weeks ago remain in place. They require Stroger to report within three days all contracts, new hirings, firings, promotions and raises not previously approved by the board.<br \/><\/br><br \/><\/br>The board\u2019s move came after disclosures that Stroger\u2019s administration paid $24,975 to a company owned by Carla Oglesby, who Stroger hired for $120,000 as a deputy chief of staff after his failed re-election campaign. Oglesby was the spokeswoman for Stroger\u2019s campaign.<br \/><\/br><br \/><\/br>Oglesby was suspended for five days but returned to her job last week, after Stroger first said she would be suspended until the conclusion of an investigation by the county inspector general.<br \/><\/br><br \/><\/br>The contract for Oglesby\u2019s company is one of the items being looked at the by the inspector general, sources said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Posted by Hal Dardick at 3:35 p.m. Cook County Board President Todd Stroger scored a rare victory today when commissioners could not muster the votes to make stick a hiring freeze they tried to impose in the wake of the latest county hiring controversy. The board voted 9-6, with one commissioner voting present, to override [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3992,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-569361","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569361","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=569361"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569361\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=569361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=569361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=569361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}