A federal appeals court in Chicago ended five decades of oversight of Illinois government employment practices, citing the state’s progress in addressing its “embarrassing history” of political patronage and corruption.
The decision Friday closes out one of the so-called Shakman consent decrees dating back to 1972, which placed Illinois under court oversight to curb the practice of tying state jobs to political loyalty. But Governor J.B. Pritzker had sought to ditch the oversight, arguing the state had adopted robust reforms to prevent abuse.
While a state inspector general report in 2014 identified violations of the decree between 2003 and 2013, Illinois has since “moved in a new direction,” making meaningful progress in identifying and preventing political patronage, the 7th US Circuit Court of Appeals said. The state hasn’t had any major violations for years, and the oversight has lasted long enough, the panel concluded.
“In no way are we saying that the risk of unlawful political patronage no longer exists within Illinois,” Circuit Judge Michael Scudder wrote in the court’s opinion. “Of course it does: nobody is naïve to the state’s embarrassing history.” He added, “But allowing risk-driven reasoning to carry the day creates a most-concerning risk of its own -- that the decree remains in place indefinitely.”
Illinois has a long track record of corruption. Four of the past 11 governors went to prison, including Rod Blagojevich, who was convicted in 2011, five years...
Attorneys for three friends of Nolan Xavier Wells filed six more defamation lawsuits Tuesday in federal and state court, accusing social media users of making false claims about the young men in co...