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Wednesday, June 21, 2006
Law - "Hiring Scandals Shine Light on Some States"
"Hiring Scandals Shine Light on Some States" is the headline to an AP story in the Washington Post today. The ILB has had many entries on the Illinois (both Chicago and state) and Kentucky scandals. Here are some quotes:
CHICAGO -- To the victor go the political spoils _ and then the investigations start. Illinois' governor, a Democrat who ran as a reformer and whose predecessor was convicted of graft, now finds his own administration's hiring practices under investigation.Kentucky's first Republican governor since 1971 has been indicted on misdemeanor charges that his administration illegally hired and fired people on the basis of their political allegiances.
And in Maryland, a legislative committee is investigating whether the Republican administration there bounced Democrats out of state jobs.
It all raises questions about whether civil service laws, consent decrees and three decades of court rulings against patronage hiring are really working, or if the temptations and pressures to hand out jobs to friends and supporters are just too great. * * *
"This idea of politics of rewarding your friends and punishing your enemies is something we actually ran against," [Ky. Lt.Gov.] Pence said.
The courts have tried to stop that kind of political quid pro quo, and Illinois is the source of three of four major U.S. Supreme Court cases that restrict the use of party loyalty to decide who gets government jobs and contracts. * * *
But federal prosecutors say illegal patronage is still alive and well _ especially in Illinois _ and they are cracking down. * * *
Under Illinois civil service laws and a 1990 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in an Illinois case known as Rutan, certain nonpolitical jobs are supposed to be filled without regard to politics. [Ill. Gov.] Blagojevich has not been charged and has denied any wrongdoing. * * *
Court decisions limiting political patronage have routinely include exceptions for high-level and sensitive posts where loyalty to an administration is needed.
In Chicago, a city built on the ruthless use of patronage, former city officials are on trial in an alleged scheme in which political connections _ or what Chicagoans call clout _ were used to decide who got put on the city payroll.
That would be a violation of the so-called Shakman Decree, a 1983 consent decree that says only about 1,000 of the city's 37,000 jobs can be filled based on party loyalty.
Michael Shakman, the attorney who won consent decree, said he believes most politicians don't practice illegal patronage. As for the others, he said it is just a matter of time before they get caught because an illegal patronage system requires lots of people to be involved to make it work.
"You can't expect to be able to violate the law on a continuing basis on a large scale," he said.
Posted by Marcia Oddi on June 21, 2006 05:46 PM
Posted to General Law Related