Two more Cook County offices could soon escape decades-long federal court oversight of their hiring and promotion actions and practices.
On Oct. 24 and 25, attorneys for both the Cook County Treasurer and the Cook County Circuit Clerk’s offices filed motions in Chicago federal court, asserting the time had arrived to give back unsupervised hiring, promotion and firing authority to government offices that at one time had stood as examples of politically motivated patronage hiring.
The two county offices join the Cook County Assessor’s office in seeking to shrug off the federal oversight regime that has reigned in Chicago and Springfield for four decades, and which has led to substantial reforms in government hiring practices in Illinois in that time.
Michael Shakman
| Miller Shakman Levine & Feldman
The motions from Treasurer Maria Pappas and Circuit Clerk Iris Martinez were joined by attorneys for reform advocates whose names are synonymous with the court orders that created the system of oversight and monitoring.
In the motions, the offices and reform advocates Michael Shakman and Paul Lurie agree the two offices have achieved “substantial compliance” with federal court decrees requiring them to enact policies and procedures to guide their hiring and promotion decisions.
Beginning in the early 1970s, federal judges imposed court decrees on many Cook County and Illinois state government offices, demanding hiring reforms.
Known collectively as the Shakman Decrees, the orders forbid governments in Illinois from basing most hiring and promotion decisions on workers’ political beliefs and preferences. Under those orders, the courts appointed so-called “special masters” and administrators to monitor government hiring decisions and policies and to ensure compliance with the decrees.
Courts and reformers said the decrees were needed to force reforms on politicians and government offices in Chicago and Springfield which would use government hiring to build political patronage fiefdoms, to then exert leverage over state and local government and increase their own power, prestige and personal wealth. The strategy has a long history in Illinois, seen most recently in the cases of former Illinois House Speaker and Democratic Party Chairman Michael Madigan and Chicago Alderman Ed Burke, who have both been indicted on federal political corruption charges.
Cook County offices have been particularly notorious for such patronage.
However, according to the new motions in federal court, the reformers joined the Treasurer and Circuit Clerk in declaring they believed new policies and rules set in place in those offices mean the time had come to lift the decrees from those offices.
The Treasurer’s motion also specifically references recent court wins by Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul, who fought for two years decrees in court to end the anti-patronage oversight and return full power over hiring, firing and promotion in a host of state agencies to the governor and his appointees.
Motions to vacate the court decrees have come since from the Assessor, Treasurer and Circuit Clerk, asserting, in part, reformers can’t provide any documented evidence of continued “unlawful political patronage hiring.”
While Shakman and his fellow reform advocates have joined with the other office holders in not opposing their requests to lift the decrees, they have to this point resisted efforts to lift a similar decree in place on the Cook County Clerk’s office.
The Circuit Clerk’s office is represented by attorney Thomas S. Bradley and others with the firm of Laner Muchin, of Chicago.
The Treasurer’s office is represented by the Cook County State’s Attorney’s office.
Shakman and Lurie are represented by attorney Brian I. Hays, of the firm of Locke Lord, of Chicago.