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Tuesday, October 25, 2005

Law - Patronage/merit hiring in Chicago and Kentucky in the news again

Chicago. A story today in the Chicago Tribune reports:

The Daley administration should get another chance to challenge a long-standing court decree restricting patronage hiring at City Hall, a federal appeals court ruled Monday.

The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered a lower court judge to reconsider the validity of the Shakman decree, which blocks the city from basing hiring decisions on the political affiliations of job applicants.

The three-judge panel found that more recent legal cases and other new circumstances should be taken into account by the court in determining whether the 1983 decree should stand.

The ruling comes as federal prosecutors continue their investigation into hiring fraud at Mayor Richard Daley's City Hall and a court-appointed monitor reviews the city's personnel practices. * * *

Shakman's fight for merit-based hiring at City Hall goes back more than 35 years, to the era of the current mayor's father, Mayor Richard J. Daley.

Shakman was a candidate for the 1970 Illinois Constitutional Convention when he and one of his backers sued the city. They alleged that city workers were not free to campaign for Shakman and other independent candidates because they owed their jobs to the Cook County Democratic Party's political machine.

Shakman won a 1972 federal court decree that prohibits the city from firing or promoting public employees based on politics. The 1983 decree forbids city officials to factor political considerations into hiring for almost all job openings.

The only exceptions to the decrees are for about 1,000 policy-making positions on the city's payroll of about 38,000 workers. * * *

U.S. Atty. Patrick Fitzgerald's office has alleged that the hiring fraud in the Daley administration spanned the last 12 years and involved jobs in at least four of the biggest city departments. Prosecutors declined to comment Monday.

The Shakman ruling could hurt the government's case, said an attorney for former Daley aide Robert Sorich, who is accused of directing patronage fraud. "This is a significant ruling as it affects the underlying basis of the criminal charges," said Sorich's lawyer, Thomas Anthony Durkin.

The Tribune story includes this neat summary:
THE SHAKMAN DECREE: Attorney Michael Shakman's lawsuit led to a 1983 federal consent decree that bans most patronage hiring. The Daley administration has fought the decree, saying it is too costly to implement and is no longer needed.

MONDAY'S RULING: A federal appeals court sent the case back to a lower court to reconsider whether the decree is still valid. [Here it is - Shakman v. Chicago (7th Cir., 10/24/05)]

WHAT'S NEXT: Shakman says the ongoing federal criminal probe of political hiring at City Hall will only strengthen his case. The Daley administration says it will cooperate with a federal hiring monitor while trying to void the decree.

Kentucky. In Kentucky the investigation into whether the Governor's hiring practices violated the state's merit hiring laws continues. The ILB has had a number of entries on the Kentucky problems. In an 8/30/05 entry, the ILB quoted from a Louisville Courier Journal of that date: "Gov. Ernie Fletcher used the power of his office yesterday to pardon nine current or former members of his administration who were indicted in an investigation of alleged illegal hiring."

Today's Louisville Courier Journal story on the matter begins:

FRANKFORT, Ky. -- Gov. Ernie Fletcher has asked a judge to tell grand jurors to stop indicting people that Fletcher says he has pardoned in the state hiring investigation.

Fletcher asserts in a motion filed yesterday in Franklin Circuit Court that his Aug. 29 pardon applies to anyone other than himself who might be indicted in the investigation for actions through that date.

He maintained that four indictments issued since then illegally infringe on the governor's broad power to pardon.

"In order to maintain the separation of governmental powers between the Judicial and Executive Branches, this Court must now personally admonish the special grand jury that it is unconstitutional to purport to indict persons encompassed by the Governor's amnesty," said Fletcher's request.

Attorney General Greg Stumbo, whose office initiated the investigation and presents evidence to the jury, said he will fight Fletcher's request.

Asked whether a judge can legally order a grand jury to not issue indictments, a spokeswoman for Stumbo's office said that such a request appears to never have been tested.

"A judge gives a grand jury a charge and gives it guidance, but this office is unaware of any case where a judge tells a grand jury not to return indictments," said Stumbo spokeswoman Vicki Glass.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on October 25, 2005 01:02 PM
Posted to General Law Related