Monitor Calls for Review of City's Political Hiring Practices

By Camela Furry in News on Jun 4, 2009 3:40PM

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.

She told the Tribune she will propose organizing a panel that will “include representatives from her office, the office of Inspector General David Hoffman and from City Hall’s Office of Compliance headed by Anthony Boswell.” The panel would then make recommendations to the mayor’s office.

According to the Tribune, Boswell stated the following in a progress report to the federal court this week:

Human Resources’ “leadership has shown that it lacks a basic understanding of the fundamental requirements of the new hiring plan”, and “This continues to result in numerous incidents of noncompliance and questionable decision-making.”

Brennan summed it all up by saying “The biggest resistance is the resistance to do discipline."