At least that’s the opinion of the Crain’s Chicago Business editorial board who believe the IDOT hiring scandal has smudged Quinn’s Mr. Clean image.
Writes the Crain’s Chicago Business editorial board:
If you have ever wondered whether Gov. Pat Quinn’s actions match his Mr. Clean image, you now have your answer: not so much.
The patronage scandal swirling around the Illinois Department of Transportation has scuffed up Mr. Quinn’s reputation as a political reformer. It’s one he cultivated over decades. Mr. Quinn’s early public service resume includes creating the Coalition for Political Honesty in the 1970s, an organization that successfully pushed to shrink the Illinois House of Representatives. The move hardly was popular with members of that august body.
“Say what you will about populist Pat Quinn,” John Camper wrote for the Chicago Daily News back in 1977. “Anyone who has been booed by the members of the Illinois House of Representatives can’t be all bad.” A few years later, Mr. Quinn further burnished his gadfly bona fides by forming the Citizens Utility Board, a consumer watchdog group that holds the state’s power, gas and phone companies to account.
Lately, however, Mr. Quinn looks like just another standard-issue ward heeler, overseeing a department handing out jobs to cronies like candy to Halloween trick-or-treaters. The state’s top investigator reported late last month that IDOT improperly hired more than 250 people in the past decade, and the practice accelerated under Mr. Quinn.
Investigators found no evidence that Mr. Quinn or his staff members were aware of impropriety, but former IDOT Secretary Ann Schneider, whom Mr. Quinn appointed in 2011, said recommendations for agency hires came from the governor’s office.
Perhaps it was too much to hope that Springfield was ready to be cleaned up. But it was nice to think that if anybody was going to try, good ol’ Pat Quinn would. Now he has handed another self-styled reformer, Bruce Rauner, a ready-made cudgel, which the Republican gubernatorial candidate has been swinging gleefully at Mr. Quinn on the campaign trail.
Quinn is now asking for a new review into the hiring practices at IDOT. Associated Press reporter Sophia Tareen has more:
Gov. Pat Quinn said Friday that he’ll ask the Illinois Department of Transportation’s secretary for a new review of hiring connected to a position that’s been the subject of an investigative report and federal lawsuit.
The state’s Office of the Executive Inspector General reported last month that IDOT sidestepped anti-patronage rules over the past decade and improperly hired 255 midlevel “staff assistant” positions. The day before the report was released, IDOT’s secretary said it would lay off the remaining 58 people still in the job and abolish the title.
However, questions remained whether anyone hired as a staff assistant may still work in other administration jobs, as the report, which had redacted names, didn’t note it and officials with IDOT and Quinn’s office weren’t immediately able to provide further information Friday.
“I’ll ask the secretary to review that to determine if anyone who had the title in the past went and got another position,” Quinn told reporters Friday.
Moody’s says pension situation in Illinois still “daunting”
Despite the pension reform law Illinois lawmakers passed last year, Moody’s investors service says Illinois, and its cities, are still facing “daunting pension challenges.”
WIUS reporter Amanda Vinicky has more on Moody’s report:
The Moody’s report lays it out starkly: Illinois’ pension burden is significantly higher than other states. And yet Illinois’ legal framework gives “very limited” flexibility for dealing with that.
Still, there’s no way for credit analysts or anyone else to know what the result of a court battle over the 2013 law will be; unions and other retired public employees say reductions to their retirement benefits are unconstitutional.
Sen. Daniel Biss, an Evanston Democrat, who supports the law, admits it may be overturned. “That doesn’t mean the problem goes away, that means we’ll have to try to find different approaches to tackling it,” Biss says.
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Brendan Bond is a staff writer at Reboot Illinois. He is a graduate of Loyola University, where he majored in journalism. Brendan takes a look each day at the Land of Lincoln Lowdown and it’s often pretty low. He examines the property tax rates that drive Illinoisans insane. You can find Reboot on Facebook and on Twitter @rebootillinois.