Raoul commends bipartisan efforts to bring “Truth in Hiring”

CHICAGO – IL Attorney General Candidate Sen. Kwame Raoul issued the following statement in response to a new bipartisan effort shepherded by Comptroller Mendoza to bring “Truth in Hiring”:

“The Blagojevich-Quinn-Rauner years have eroded public trust in Illinois government. I commend my colleagues who are stepping up on a bipartisan basis to show there isn’t room for them or their corrupt antics in state government.“

Raoul intends to cosponsor the legislation.

Background:

Quinn’s administration was caught routinely giving cushy, high-paying jobs in the state Department of Transportation to friends and family members of influential Democratic politicians. Many of those hired had little to no experience in their job fields, but that didn’t stop them from pushing resumes for hundreds of people in “staff assistant” positions, wasting precious taxpayer dollars and undermining the integrity of the governor’s office. Quinn’s staff created an entirely separate employment database for people with political connections, cryptically pressured transportation department staff to hire their patrons, and “bypassed strict personnel rules aimed at preventing politics from influencing state hiring.” The scandal was so egregious that the Chicago Tribune asked “was Pat Quinn running the state of Illinois — or a job fair?” And the Daily Chronicle noted that the program was “seemingly nothing more than a political slush fund to help shore up city votes ahead of an election that Quinn won by a slim margin.”

And taxpayers still don’t even know the full extent of the scandal. Last May, a federal judge signed an order expanding the investigation to cover all possible departments where Quinn could have rigged the hiring system, meaning that we still don’t know how far Quinn’s corruption reached.