1,443 victims of rigged hiring?
'RAMPANT' PATRONAGE | Claims seek share of $12 million fund October 2, 2007
BY FRAN SPIELMAN City Hall Reporter fspielman@suntimes.com
More than 1,400 people have staked claim to the $12 million fund created to compensate victims of City Hall's rigged hiring system, a federal monitor said Monday.

"It tells me what everyone has known all along: Political patronage continued to run rampant" in spite of the Shakman decree, said Ald. Joe Moore (49th).

Attorney Michael Shakman's landmark lawsuit was supposed to end political hiring and firing, but didn't.

Shakman suspects the number of victims is greater than 1,443. But some people are afraid of retribution, some chose to file their own lawsuits and others were unaware the reason they didn't get the job was the interviews were rigged, he said.

Referring to the 2006 trial that ended in the conviction of Mayor Daley's former patronage chief, Shakman said, "We know from the [Robert] Sorich trial that it was a wholesale process of rigged interviews and illegal hiring."

The $12 million fund is part of a settlement that allows the city to get out from under the Shakman decree on Dec. 31, 2008, if it can prove substantial compliance at that time.

Individual awards, capped at $100,000, will apply only to those who can prove they've been bypassed for jobs and promotions since Jan. 1, 2000.

On Monday, federal hiring monitor Noelle Brennan said 1,443 people filed claims by Friday's deadline and "hundreds" of those claims poured in at the end of last week.