Chicago resisting hiring reform, monitor says

The Chicago Tribune reports:

Despite progress in the wake of an ongoing federal corruption probe, Mayor Richard Daley's administration has continued to violate restrictions on political hiring, according to a report filed Monday in federal court.

The lawyer named by a federal judge to oversee changes in city hiring said City Hall no longer practices the kind of systematic, illegal patronage uncovered by prosecutors. But the court-appointed monitor also found that some city officials--from bureaucrats to aldermen--are not yet ready for reform.

"There are still significant problems," the monitor, Noelle Brennan, said in an interview Monday. "The overt criminal activity ... has ceased, but there are still pockets of resistance in the city, primarily from those individuals who benefited from the patronage system, who are reluctant to let go of that power."

More than a year after the federal investigation prompted her appointment, Brennan said she has found cases in which city officials changed the test scores of job applicants. She also discovered an instance in which the city allegedly rehired politically connected truck drivers who had been fired because of disciplinary problems.

How ironic, the biggest lawbreakers in the Chicago are Chicago government.