Questionable hiring practices that got two state workers fired by Gov. Rod Blagojevich still were going on months after the workers had been removed, the governor's own inspector general found.
The special treatment of politically connected job applicants continued even after Dawn DeFraties and Michael Casey were transferred out of the Department of Central Management Services in the spring of 2005, according to an investigative report obtained Friday by The Associated Press.
"As of Sept. 22, 2005, at least some of these practices still were being followed," Inspector General James Wright wrote in his confidential March 2006 report.
The report came to light on a day when Blagojevich found himself on the defense against questions arising from his administration's charges against DeFraties and Casey.
Seeking to justify the decision to fire the pair, the Blagojevich administration has filed documents with the Civil Service Commission accusing them of keeping files on more than 2,000 job seekers with political connections and giving some of them special treatment.
But the administration also acknowledged that some of those favored applicants were recommended by the governor's office and his agencies.
While Blagojevich took credit Friday for cracking down on misconduct by firing the employees, he claimed to know little about how his office handles hiring or whether any of his top aides pulled strings for people with clout--a question federal prosecutors are investigating.
"Do you think I get up every single day wasting my time doing that?" the Democratic governor snapped. "I get up trying to get health care done for people, education funding, create jobs--the stuff people care about."
DeFraties, former CMS personnel director, and her one-time deputy Casey allegedly fixed hiring procedures in favor of 28 clout-connected job candidates, bypassing the objective process by which applicants' training and experience are evaluated, without regard to politics.
The inspector general's investigation found evidence to uphold the charges and recommend firing DeFraties and Casey and disciplining another employee. He found that CMS deviated from standard procedure in several ways in handling applications from politically favored candidates, known as "specials."
Among other things, they were allowed to fax in applications, getting them into the system quicker; if evaluations found their experience to be deficient, they were returned to the applicant's sponsor; some specials' applications were evaluated "out of order" to put them ahead of others; and jobs for which there were no vacancies were opened if a special was deemed qualified.
DeFraties and Casey were transferred out of their CMS jobs in March 2005 and formally fired in March 2006.
But six months after the transfers, some of those practices continued, the inspector found. The report cited an e-mail saying an application had arrived by fax and gotten an "A" after being graded out of order.
In response to the report, the administration hired an outside law firm to investigate other potential wrongdoing, Blagojevich spokeswoman Abby Ottenhoff said. That investigation is ongoing, she said.
DeFraties' and Casey's lawyer, Carl Draper of Springfield, did not refer directly to the report, but agreed with its conclusion.
"The practices continued," Draper said. "The director of CMS and the governor would have received the report and yet there was no discipline for those responsible after DeFraties and Casey sought transfers to get away from this mess."
Draper has argued his clients are scapegoats to divert attention from larger questions about hiring practices.
Special applications make up the crux of the government's arguments against DeFraties and Casey.
The Civil Service Commission document alleges that one CMS employee, at DeFraties' instruction, kept a database of 2,103 "special applications" from April 2003 to March 2005. Information in the database included the applicant's name, the grade issued based on training and experience, and any reasons the applicant received a grade other than "A."
The document talks at length about DeFraties and Casey helping favored applicants. It says little, however, about how the pair knew the applicants merited special attention.
But both the filing and the inspector general's report quote several witnesses who said "specials" came from the governor's office, state legislators, agency directors, or political party county chairman.
Blagojevich's hiring practices are the subject of a federal investigation. U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald has reported finding credible witnesses related to hiring fraud at multiple state agencies.
Blagojevich has consistently blamed any problems on "a few bad apples" and said his inspector general will root them out. He said his role in establishing a strong, independent inspector shows his commitment to fighting corruption.
"The truth is going to come out, and the truth is there were some employees violating the rules," Blagojevich said as he toured the state fairgrounds, his crying 3-year-old daughter in his arms. "In the old days, people would look the other way, maybe even laugh about it."
Associated Press writer Christopher Wills contributed to this report.
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