A new report details the improper political hiring of hundreds of government employees at an Illinois state agency.
A watchdog of state government says it found more than 250 people over 10 years who have been hired to work as a “staff assistant” at the Illinois Department of Transportation.
Executive Inspector General Ricardo Meza says the problem with that is, those positions were filled with political hires, but should’ve been open to the public to apply.
"These are real people who were denied positions as a result of that expediency and what we found was over an extended period of time, that continued over and over and over."
Meza says there are rules in place to prevent such hires, but I-DOT ignored them. He says the chiefs of staff of Governor Pat Quinn, who’s in the middle of a contentious re-election campaign, said they didn’t know the practice was happening.
The new director of I-DOT said yesterday that 58 staff assistants are being laid off.