CHICAGO — A federal judge has sanctioned Cook County Clerk Karen Yarbrough, ordering her office to pay more than $930,000 in fees to the attorneys who led federal oversight of corrupt hiring practices in state and local governments offices, after a federal judge found Yarbrough was wrong to fight efforts to tighten scrutiny of her hiring moves.
Judge Edmond Chang issued an opinion Nov. 4 approving a request for $593,507 in fees and $11,733 in costs from the Chicago firms of Miller Shakman Levine & Feldman LLP and Locke Lord, LLP. Chang explained Judge Gabriel Fuentes was assigned to the case in September 2019 when the firms said Yarbough’s office was violating a 1972 consent decree and 1991 consent judgment and requested the appointment of a compliance administrator.
On April 17, 2020, Fuentes issued an opinion finding the clerk’s office had failed to comply “by making at least 17 unilateral revisions — without the required court pre-approval — to the list of exempt positions that are permitted to be hired based on political affiliation,” Chang wrote, adding the office also didn’t publicly advertise certain job openings and improperly exempted two workers from a policy of rotating job duties.
Michael Shakman
| Miller Shakman Levine & Feldman
The Nov. 4 order covered the work up to Fuentes’ order and met opposition from the clerk’s office. On Nov. 22, the firms submitted invoices for costs incurred following the April 2020 opinion, which after negotiations with Yarbrough’s office resulted in $877,633 to Locke Lord and $53,065 to Miller Shakman Levine & Feldman. Chang approved that request Nov. 23 without comment.
The request to the court to increase oversight on Yarbrough's past and current hiring practices was made by lawyers Michael Shakman and Paul Lurie, as well as by Independent Voters of Illinois-Independent Precinct Organization.
Shakman has acted as a reformer since 1969, when he and others sued the Cook County Democratic Party in Chicago federal court to fight patronage. That suit led to court orders, which bar Illinois government agencies from letting politics improperly control government jobs and allows for federal oversight of hiring in Cook County and Springfield. Those orders have come to be known as Shakman decrees.
Attorneys from Locke Lord represent Shakman and Lurie in reform oversight related proceedings under those court decrees.
Yarbrough, a 71-year-old Democrat, has been county clerk since 2018 and served as Cook County Recorder of Deeds from 2012 to 2018. She was a state representative from 2001 to 2013. On Dec. 7, 2020, the office of the Cook County Recorder was abolished, with its responsibilities transferred to the clerk's office.
According to Chang’s Nov. 4 order, Yarbrough’s office argued Shakman, as well as a class of candidates and voters, had no standing to enforce the 1991 judgement and 1972 decree. Chang said the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals had repeatedly upheld the first decision in which Shakman established voters have the right to challenge patronage hiring and rejected the argument there were no violations of the 1972 decree.
“The court premised the compliance administrator’s appointment, at least in part, on the rotation policy that was ‘calculated to maximize’ the ‘adverse impact’ on supervisors,” Chang wrote, quoting Fuentes, “and found that there were ‘significant indications to lead to the conclusion’ that the political pedigree of two supervisors relieved them of the ‘onerous program that the other supervisors were forced to endure.’ ”
Ultimately, Chang wrote, the fees are appropriate because the firms successfully argued to have a compliance administrator installed, which alters the relationship between the clerk and plaintiffs, including by authorizing plaintiffs to provide input on updating the list of which jobs can be subject to politically-influenced hiring.
“More generally — and more importantly,” Chang wrote, “the Appointment Order set forth new obligations on the County Clerk, including cooperating with the compliance administrator as she carries out her duties and providing ‘reasonable access to all relevant non-privileged documents and reasonable access to employees at all levels’ in connection with the assigned duties.”
Chang further said Yarbrough’s office didn’t raise sufficient objections to the initial fee requests, instead offering generalities, but even so he concluded the requests were reasonable.