Results tagged “noellebrennan”

During yesterday's City Council budget hearing with the Law Department, department head Mara Georges said the City plans to ask for an end to the Shakman decree early next year. Georges claimed the city is in "substantial compliance" in regards to laws forbidding political hirings and firings and that the city is no longer involved in such corrupt practices. It would also mean the end of the road for the city's hiring monitor, Noelle Brennan, with whom the city has long feuded. As recently as this summer, Brennan suggested that there could still be as many as 50 city employees that need to be disciplined or counseled for political hiring abuses. According to the Trib:

A federal judge appointed Noelle Brennan to act as a monitor to address the Daley administration’s unwillingness to discipline employees who ignore rules banning political hiring. Brennan estimates that today there could still be as many as 50 city employees that need to be disciplined or counseled for political hiring abuses.

• Sen. Burris' explanation for that phone call with Rob Blagojevich? It was all a ruse.
• President Obama has nominated retired Chicago investment banker Louis Susman to be ambassador to Britain.
• As if the City Council didn't have enough to worry about today, aldermen are now complaining about fees to Noelle Brennan, the federal hiring monitor who has come down hard on City Hall's hiring abuses.

That Noelle Brennan. It's like she thought of everything!

Corruption in Chicago has evolved, according to federal hiring monitor Noelle Brennan. According to the annual report Brennan released yesterday, blatant abuses and manipulation of the hiring system in the city is no longer a problem. But patronage has moved to "more subtle types of manipulations of the hiring process." Brennan has been the hiring monitor since August of 2005, when federal prosecutors uncovered a fraudulent hiring scheme that led to Daley's former patronage chief Robert Sorich in prison being sentenced to 46 months in prison.

If you had just arrived in Chicago yesterday, with no knowledge of the political history of this town for the last 100 years or so, you might think that the mayor here was some kind of forward-thinking good-government type. With the Tribune's headline announcing that the city had agreed to ban patronage, it would seem that Daley was taking corruption by the horns and stamping it out, once and for all. Not likely. In fact,...

We all know that patronage in Chicago city government is alive and kicking, even though that is not supposed to be the case. But what can we do about it when we see it in action?

In May of 2005 Mayor Daley announced a partial hiring freeze when officials found that (brace yourself!) patronage was in full effect for certain positions within City Hall.

Way back in August we mentioned that U.S. District Judge Wayne R. Andersen appointed a "special master", lawyer Noelle Brennan, to investigate hiring practices at City Hall. The Master's report was due today. We wish we were there when Brennan handed the report over to Andersen. A person that bears the title "Special Master" must give quite the presentation. We imagine that as the judge sat down to his first cup of office coffee this...