Chicago's political leaders have an enormous capacity forexpressing chagrin, outrage or shock whenever a new study comes out"exposing" conditions most of them have known about for years, if notdecades.
Certainly, it can come as no revelation that the large majorityof Cook County employees are classified as "temporary" - even somewho have held the same job for 20 years - as a device mainly tocircumvent civil service rules.
The Illinois Commission on the Future of Public Service foundthat 77 percent of 12,809 county employees surveyed are carried onthe rolls as "temporary," setting the stage for County BoardPresident Richard J. Phelan's proposal to hire a consultant for$113,000 to recommend reforms. "This will begin the end ofpatronage," Phelan intoned.
Well, maybe so. We'd even hope so. But we've heard that songbefore. The one thing it will do is set up yet another consultingcontract, courtesy of the taxpayers, to take yet another look at asituation that is a mystery to no one. And that is a song we've alsoheard before, all too often.
A few years ago it was the Water Reclamation District's(formerly the Sanitary District) turn; then it was the Chicago ParkDistrict's. This year seems to be the County Board's.
Somewhere in all this are the City of Chicago's personnelpolicies, periodically exhumed to show misuse of "temps" andsystematically being revamped.
This is not to make light of a serious problem. The "temp"dodge does hamper recruitment of talented employees and results inwhite males occupying more than two-thirds of top managerialpositions, a racial and gender disproportion that no one tries todefend.
But let us not pretend the findings are a surprise. If somepermanent, non-cosmetic remedy actually winds up being adopted andput into practice, now THAT would be a surprise.
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