Hiring practices in the Cook County Clerk’s office will come under renewed federal scrutiny, after a federal judge said the administration of County Clerk Karen Yarbrough violated decades-old court orders prohibiting politically motivated employment decisions.
Further, the judge said the scrutiny is especially needed to monitor the forthcoming absorption of the Cook County Recorder’s Office into the Clerk’s office, as the judge noted complaints over patronage hiring have only followed Yarbrough from her years as County Recorder to her new post as County Clerk.
On April 17, U.S. Magistrate Judge Sidney Schenkier largely sided with those suing Yarbrough over allegations the clerk has deployed strategies since she was elected in 2018 to hire friends and political allies, while instituting policies intended to hound out others, including long-time clerk’s office employees.
Magistrate Judge Sidney Schenkier
Yarbrough’s office had been targeted in a legal action filed last September by Chicago lawyer and noted political reform advocate Michael Shakman, along with political organization the Independent Voters of Illinois-Independent Precinct Organization (IVI-IPO).
Shakman has used the federal courts to press for political hiring reform within governmental offices in Cook County and throughout Illinois, mostly run by Democrats, since 1969. In the decades since, Shakman’s continued actions have secured a series of court orders, known as the Shakman Decrees, which bar Illinois government agencies from letting politics improperly control who is hired for most government jobs. The decrees give the federal courts oversight of hiring practices in Cook County and Springfield.
In the latest complaint against Yarbrough, Shakman and the IVI-IPO alleged Yarbrough has routinely given jobs to people identified as Yarbrough’s friends and political associates.
Further, the plaintiffs asserted Yarbrough never advertised for certain job openings, as the clerk’s office was explicitly required to do under a 1991 court order, while also messaging clerk’s office employees on their mobile devices to solicit political donations.
And they complained Yarbrough instituted a questionable policy to “rotate” certain office supervisors among the clerk’s various offices in Chicago and the suburbs. They asserted this policy was tailored to specifically exempt certain politically connected supervisors, while setting other long-term supervisors up for “constructive discharge,” to force open their positions.
In response, Yarbrough’s office argued the accusations were overblown. But Yarbrough went further, arguing the court decrees, known as “consent orders,” should no longer apply to her at all, because enough time had elapsed and enough reform had been achieved to compel the courts to lift federal hiring oversight.
Judge Schenkier, however, disagreed with Yarbrough’s assertions.
“The hearing evidence of this conduct does not show that there has been the kind of compliance with the Consent Orders that, as a factual matter, weighs in favor of their termination,” the judge wrote.
In his opinion, Schenkier noted he did not agree with the plaintiffs’ assertion of “rampant” violations by Yarbrough since becoming County Clerk.
The judge, for instance, brushed aside concerns over the solicitation of political donations, saying the decrees don’t prohibit asking for “political donations or other political activity.” Rather, he said, they bar “coerced political support … as the price for getting or maintaining a job.”
However, the judge said there were violations.
He noted, particularly, Yarbrough violated the decrees by refusing to post certain job openings to the public before they were filled.
“The evidence shows without question that the County Clerk violated this unequivocal mandate,” Schenkier wrote.
The judge also found problems with Yarbrough’s supervisor rotation policy. He acknowledged it was a “close call,” but said the County Clerk’s contention the policy was put in place for purely policy reasons, “to bring the suburban offices to the same standard of operation as the downtown office.”
“To the contrary, the evidence is that this program was structured in a way to impact great hardship on the supervisors to whom it applied, suggesting an intent to drive them to quit,” Schenkier wrote.
The judge noted testimony and evidence suggested “the downtown office was the problem office, not the suburban offices.”
Further, the supervisors’ union, the Service Employees International Union, had filed a grievance over the program.
And he noted two supervisors, in particular, were shielded from the rotation program entirely because of their “political pedigree.” One is related to Chicago Alderman Ricardo Munoz. The other had a professional relationship with the clerk’s director of Vital Records, the judge said.
“… There are significant indications to lead to the conclusion that … political pedigree is why the County Clerk excluded them from an onerous program that the other supervisors were forced to endure,” Schenkier wrote.
Ultimately, Schenkier granted the request to appoint a so-called “special master” to oversee hiring practices in Yarbrough’s office, and to work with the County Clerk’s office on crafting new hiring plans and policies. He said the appointment was needed to ultimately establish the framework to allow the clerk’s office to be removed from court supervision at some point in the future.
The judge also said the appointment was particularly needed to supervise the merger of the Cook County Recorder’s Office with the County Clerk’s Office.
In 2016, Cook County voters approved a referendum to essentially eliminate the County Recorder’s Office, and transfer its functions to the County Clerk. That merger is scheduled to be completed later this year.
Schenkier noted Yarbrough had served as Recorder from 2012-2018 and, during that time, the Recorder’s Office “also came under fire on a number of occasions” over accusations of “unlawful political discrimination” in violation of the Shakman Decrees.
“What is significant is that under her (Yarbrough’s) tenure as Recorder the office did not approach substantial compliance,” the judge wrote.
“We have concern about an office that is under active monitoring because of a failure to achieve substantial compliance for many years (the Recorder’s Office) being subsumed by an office (the County Clerk) that has recently engaged in violations of the Consent Orders and other conduct raising concerns about compliance with those orders,” the judge wrote.
He appointed attorney Cardelle Spangler, of the firm of Winston & Strawn, of Chicago, to serve as special master overseeing the County Clerk’s office, through Aug. 31, 2021. She is scheduled to file a report to the judge by June 30, 2021.
Yarbrough is represented by attorneys with the firm of Hinshaw & Culbertson, of Chicago.
Shakman and the other plaintiffs are represented by the Chicago firm of Locke Lord, and by Shakman's firm of Miller, Shakman, Levine & Feldman.