Victims of clout get word of their awards

The panel had just one question for the applicant for the Cook County job.

"Do you know anyone who works for the county?"

When the woman answered no, the "interview" was over.

That was just one of the stories of political hiring revealed Thursday by the office of Julia Nowicki, the compliance administrator in charge of policing Cook County government hiring on behalf of a federal judge.

Nowicki has finished notifying more than 108 victims of patronage hiring and promotion of their cash awards in letters sent out Tuesday.

Unfortunately for the applicant for the 2000 job, her discrimination happened prior to the period covered by the settlement. She got nothing.

But others, discriminated against between Aug. 28, 2004, and Feb. 2, 2007, fared better. The largest award was $323,000, the smallest $250.

Margaret Bageanis, an administrative assistant in the department of animal control, got $130,000 after she was forced to take up the slack of two other clout-heavy employees hired in the department but not required to do the corresponding work.

"Part of the reason I did it was (because it was an) injustice and so it will help current employees," said Bageanis. "You do have good hardworking people that take pride in their jobs (in Cook County government)."

Bageanis, who is currently on disability, wouldn't name who the clout-heavy hitters in her department were. But she said one of the hires she had to cover for wasn't even present in the department, but drew a salary nonetheless. Additionally, a $90,000 position was created in the department for another clout-heavy patronage hire "just this last budget."

That claim flies directly in the face of a news release the county put out Thursday, insisting that clout is dead in Cook County, and that the vast majority of claims came from the previous administration before President Todd Stroger.

In other hiring horror stories, Nowicki reported that one employee reported that both she and a clout-heavy employee were laid off in budget cuts instituted in 2007. But while she remained unemployed, her counterpart sauntered back into county employment within a month.

In another instance, an employee who scored the highest on a merit-based test for a promotion was denied the job when a call from "downtown" ordered the department head to give it to a politically connected worker. The clout worker's records were altered to falsely show a higher test score.

County administrators said they have just hired a permanent replacement for the head human resources position that will go a long way toward continuing to solve the problem. They did not name the person picked.