Forest Preserve to pay $500,000 in political hiring case
BY LISA DONOVAN Cook County Reporter/ldonovan@suntimes.com December 16, 2010 2:40AM
Updated: August 4, 2011 4:20PM
Cook County taxpayers are on the hook for a half-million dollar settlement with job seekers who say county forest preserve bosses passed them over and filled vacant positions with less qualified, politically-connected applicants in violation of a federal court order.
That’s according to the latest report filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court by the forest preserve’s court-appointed hiring watchdog. The hiring Compliance Administrator, Jan Carlson, also noted the settlement includes forest preserve staffers who complained they were fired as a result of political payback or denied promotions that were instead handed to employees with clout.
“The claims brought ... involved primarily the manipulation of the hiring process to benefit lesser qualified but politically connected job candidates,’’ Carlson wrote to U.S. District Judge Sidney Shenkier.
Some 105 claimants — or about half of those who filed legal claims — will see some of the $555,772 in cases that date back to 2005.
In one “egregious’’ case, a job candidate seeking a position with the forest preserve police force was put on a “failed’’ test list after scoring 66 percent, while another candidate who scored 49 percent was hired, Carlson wrote.
Another four police applicants didn’t appear on the “failed’’ police test list, but were never hired. At the same time, the district hired another job applicant who failed the police written and psychological exams and was rated the “least acceptable candidate’’ by the forest preserve district, according to the report.
The practices point to violations of a federal court order that bans most political hiring in city and county government.
The hiring monitor also noted delays and other problems obtaining documents, ranging from job postings to test scores, from the forest preserve district, which delayed the settlement process.
Michael Shakman, whose 1969 lawsuit set in motion the federal court ban on political hiring and a series of consent decrees — including the one with the forest preserve — says the agency has a long way to go to level the playing field.
“This is a pretty small agency with a pretty sorry history of political misconduct in hiring,” he told the Sun-Times. “This is an agency that has seen lots of political discrimination in the employment process and isn’t cooperating to ferret it out.”
The hiring monitor wrote that the forest preserve must act “aggressively and upon its own initiative to eradicate vestiges of political discrimination, create a culture free from illegal political considerations in employment and implement procedures to ensure the long term prevention of the use of impermissible political considerations in employment.”
The report comes the same day as newly minted county board President Toni Preckwinkle, who was elected on a vow to rid county government of do-nothing patronage hires, announced a new team would lead the district: the new Forest Preserve Superintendent is Arnold Randall, Mayor Daley’s former planning and development chief who also worked on Daley’s losing bid to bring the 2016 Olympics to Chicago, and Mary Laraia will serve as deputy superintendent.
Preckwinkle spokeswoman Jessey Neves called the hiring violations detailed in the report a “serious problem’’ that Randall and Laraia will address when they officially begin their jobs Thursday.
“Part of our focus [in the campaign] has been on reforming hiring and staffing at the forest preserve,’’ she said.
In his report, the hiring monitor stated that with the claims out of the way, his office will now shift to creating hiring and job promotion policy.
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