Was state deal to state jobs?
Business owner helped brother-in-law get on Blagojevich administration payroll -- then landed state contract
A secret hiring database kept by former Gov. Rod Blagojevich's administration is shedding new light on a controversy over lucrative pressure-washing jobs that went to a Cicero company owned by a major Blagojevich campaign contributor.
The contributor -- William Mologousis, owner of Pressure Washing Systems Environmental Inc. -- helped his brother-in-law Robert Millette land a $95,000-a-year job as the Illinois Department of Transportation's finance and administration chief in 2003, the records show.
(Scott Stewart/Sun-Times)
Candidates recommended by Lon Monk:
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Candidates recommended by Billy Mologousis:
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Candidates recommended by Ald. Richard Mell:
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The next year, Mologousis' company got a $522,000 contract to pressure-wash state bridges, building facades and expressway tunnels. The deal also included a "pilot program" under which his company, known as PWS, would clean and seal a half-dozen IDOT salt storage domes.
Millette, 38, doesn't want to talk about whether the contract was linked to his job.
"I'm not going to have any comment," says Millette, who lives in Downstate DuQuoin and no longer is a state employee. "I've got another job. It has nothing to do with these people."
Messages left with Mologousis, who also has multimillion-dollar pressure-washing contracts with the City of Chicago, were not returned.
The pressure-washing flap unfolded in summer 2005 after the Associated Press revealed that PWS had been paid more than $7,000 to wash and seal a new salt dome, duplicating work that the dome's builder already had done.
After that story, IDOT released an April 26, 2005, memo in which Millette disclosed his family tie to Mologousis but insisted "I have not and will not have any input" regarding PWS' contract with the Department of Central Management Services.
IDOT in July 2005 suspended Millette, who resigned his job that September. The state paid PWS a total of $394,554 in 2005, 2006 and 2007, but the firm hasn't done any state work since then.
PWS' clout with Blagojevich dates to his first run for governor. The company and some of its employees contributed to Blagojevich's campaign, giving $25,530 between June 2000 and July 2003, including expenses for a November 2001 fund-raiser.
Mologousis, 42, is among 386 people who sponsored 5,700 candidates for jobs, promotions or appointments controlled by Blagojevich's administration between 2003 and 2005, according to the hiring database, which the Chicago Sun-Times reported on earlier this month.
Overall, nearly 2,500 of those candidates got hired, transferred or promoted, with many of them landing low-level jobs in which politics isn't supposed to play a role.
The database is in the hands of federal prosecutors, who indicted Blagojevich late last year on charges that he traded state-government actions for campaign contributions and other benefits for himself. FBI agents in Springfield interviewed IDOT employees about PWS in 2005, but the contract has not surfaced in Blagojevich's corruption case. No other criminal charges regarding it have been filed.
Mologousis, according to the database, got 11 people hired or promoted -- 10 of them at IDOT.
Six remain on the state payroll. They include Millette's wife, Angela Korbar.
Korbar had been working for the state Capital Development Board when Blagojevich took office. She transferred to IDOT in January 2004, increasing her annual pay from $30,324 to $52,620.
She now works as a Downstate human resources manager for IDOT, earning $63,000 annually.