Tom Dart made Rahm Emanuel’s campaign easier by not running for mayor. Now Mr. Dart, the Cook County sheriff, might have simplified Mr. Emanuel’s governing by giving him a road map — and an amateur video — to solve a 42-year-old city mess.
The untidiness is the anti-patronage Shakman case, the suit filed against the City of Chicago and other local government bodies in 1969. The case prompted federal court decrees barring hiring, promoting and firing based on political factors for most public jobs and prohibited political work during office hours.
It drones on after decades of resistance — until now. Last week, Mr. Dart’s office became the first defendant found in compliance. That, inevitably, raised questions as to what Mayor Richard M. Daley’s problem has been in doing likewise.
“Dart just did a bang-up job,” said Clifford Meacham, a former Cook County judge who in 2008 was appointed by a federal judge to oversee compliance at the then-wildly disorganized 7,000-employee sheriff’s office.
Twenty-nine months later, a federal magistrate just dismissed the sheriff from the Shakman case because he has dealt ably with illegal and other dubious practices. The legal tab is $5.3 million, including $2.4 million for Mr. Meacham and his staff, $1.3 million for outside lawyers at Hinshaw & Culbertson, $918,000 for the lawyer Michael Shakman and aides and $762,000 to claimants.
Mr. Shakman, who brought the suit the year Neil Armstrong walked on the Moon and Jimi Hendrix played at Woodstock, concurred with the magistrate’s decision “because we think the sheriff has done a good job,” he said. “He’s sent the message that patronage practices are not tolerated.”
That meant personally telling managers that there would be consequences if they didn’t comply. The sheriff’s office developed comprehensive employment rules and hired both a former prosecutor to head a Compliance Office and a former F.B.I. agent to oversee an existing Office of Professional Review to deal with claims of political discrimination.
“It’s just a question of will, to want to see it resolved” Mr. Dart said. “I’d be lying if I said it was easy. But we decided it was something we wanted to put behind us. How can you expect a work force to operate well if they think everything is rigged?”
I watched a training video for employees that Mr. Meacham had produced. Its production values suit public-access cable TV — and that’s being charitable. But Mr. Emanuel should view it.
Mr. Meacham beckoned lawyer, judge and even receptionist chums to act out six miniscenes. After introductory remarks by Mr. Meacham and Mr. Dart, his not-quite-ready-for-prime-time players haltingly portrayed a job interviewer soliciting political support for a boss from an applicant; a supervisor turning a deaf ear to a worker’s claim that a secretary colleague with clout does scant work; and a jail guard flaunting political ties to get a promotion, among others.
The sixth scene is a small, rough gem: Judge Jesse Reyes of Cook County Circuit Court plays a boss firing a jail guard — Rod, played by Matthew Lakoma, a lawyer — for incompetence. But a door swings opens for an alderman right out of “The Front Page,” with fat cigar and fedora, played by Ricardo Meza, Gov. Pat Quinn’s real-life inspector general.
“You know who I am?” thunders the alderman. “Rod’s one of us! And you want to bounce him? Can’t we work this out?”
After each scene, Mr. Meacham appears. “This is completely wrong, completely unlawful,” he says after the scene with the guard trying to get a promotion and the willing supervisor.
Mr. Meacham works for a private dispute-resolution firm, JAMS, where his colleagues include Wayne Andersen, the newly retired federal judge who had jurisdiction over the entire Shakman case for a decade. Mr. Andersen told me that, three years ago, he had an “extended meeting” with Mr. Daley, held at the office of a friend of Mr. Andersen to avoid rampant speculation at the courthouse.
Mr. Daley’s relationship to illegal personnel practices has long been debated. Is it really possible that 49 administration aides and others could be convicted of criminal fraud over the past seven years, starting with the Hired Truck scandal, and he had not known of the illegalities?
“I don’t doubt his sincerity,” Mr. Andersen said, noting that “there has never been evidence Daley knew.” He conceded Mr. Daley probably did not give the subject “the attention it deserved.”
Of course, Mr. Daley, a master of detail, might well have known about kinky doings.
As for Mr. Emanuel, he has bigger fish to fry with budget and schools ills. But when it comes to the Shakman cesspool, he has to let everybody know he means business. And there may be low-hanging fruit among 80 current workers “directly implicated” in illegal practices, according to federal records.
As Mr. Meacham put it, he has to take some people on and take them out.
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