Court ends oversight of hiring in Cook County Clerk Karen Yarbrough’s office, closing historic anti-patronage case

In a historic decision, a federal judge Thursday ended the half-century-old anti-patronage case launched to fight the stubborn and unfair use of politics to decide most hiring, firing, and promotion in state and local government.

Judge Edmond Chang’s move came as he granted the request of Democratic Cook County Clerk Karen Yarbrough to eliminate federal oversight of her office even though she’d been routinely criticized for politicizing hiring. The clerk’s office is the last of multiple public offices to be relieved of the supervision in the long-running case.

Chang approved a joint motion brought by Yarbrough and attorney Michael Shakman, who first filed a lawsuit challenging the widespread use of patronage in 1969 during the era of Mayor Richard J. Daley, who perfected the Chicago machine.

“This case has served its purpose and it is closed,” Chang said.

Yarbrough’s office met substantial — though “not perfect” — compliance in how it conducts hiring in the office, Chang said, and had put in place durable remedies to protect against backsliding.

Chang acknowledged Yarbrough’s office took a “less cooperative approach with the compliance administrator” than other offices, ranging from the sprawling governments of the city of Chicago to Cook County and state government.

But Chang noted Yarbrough did adopt a personnel manual, the product of “repeated revisions” with the “extensive assistance” of Shakman’s lawyers, the compliance administrator and her staff. Yarbrough is expected to follow the policies that “improve the openness” of employment actions and decision making to avoid “systemic potential violations in the future,” Chang said.

Referring to today’s heightened times of “political polarization,” Chang maintained the last place for political influence should be in public employment.

Shakman launched the crusade to ensure hiring for city, county and state jobs is fair and gives those who don’t have connections or clout a chance to get hired and thrive in their public jobs. Shakman’s efforts came years into a winner-take-all system that favored applicants with political pedigrees, helping establish the era of machine politics.

“We are pleased that the court has recognized our commitment to fair and equitable hiring and employment policies,” Yarbrough said in a statement. “The termination of this consent decree is going to save taxpayers millions of dollars in legal fees and enable us to focus fully on ensuring effective hiring standards, building continued efficiencies across our office, and providing the best possible service to the residents of Cook County.”

Yarbrough attended the hearing with several top staffers but did not comment after the court victory.

In recent years, the city of Chicago, the Chicago Park District, Cook County offices under the president, and other county offices such as sheriff, clerk of the circuit court and assessor have been freed by the courts from Shakman hiring oversight.

Most helpful for Yarbrough’s case: a U.S. appeals court ruling last year that released the governor’s office from oversight also lowered the bar for Shakman compliance. Concerned federal supervision had spanned the administrations of eight Illinois governors, the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals determined a government body needed simply to show it had “substantially complied” with Shakman benchmarks and had implemented a “durable” remedy to prevent backsliding.

Given the appeals court standards set in Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s case, Chang agreed it was “time to return to the ordinary course” for battling political discrimination through individual cases.

“The clerk has every incentive at this point to ensure compliance with the manual,” or risk former or current employees bringing such lawsuits, Chang said.

Shakman was not present in the courtroom, but said later that filing the case decades ago “has been well worth the effort.”

“It’s a politically different world,” said Shakman, who first filed the case when he was 27 and is now 80. Noting how the first Mayor Daley controlled 48 of 50 City Council members when the case was filed, Shakman said Daley and his machine Democrats operated under a system of “one-party rule, basically.”

“It was like Stalin’s Russia,” Shakman said. “You didn’t do anything without the boss’ approval.”

Shakman’s longtime attorney Brian Hays said it was “not the ideal situation” with Yarbrough’s office because of the long, hard fight with her to reach the finish line because she didn’t embrace the reforms like other officials.

But Hays said the “bigger picture” is the state of patronage hiring is much better now than it was when Shakman filed the case nearly 54 years ago.

“It’s a night and day difference between how things were back in the old Daley machine and what it is today,” Hays said. “Are there still instances of violations that pop up here and there? Absolutely, and there always will be.

“There will still be violations,” Hays continued. But he said he does not see the “systemic violations” that occurred when the case began.

“It’s come a long way, and we’ve achieved great results in terms of opening up government positions for the general public … to have a fair shake,” Hays said.

Other than some housekeeping matters, “this does end the case overall,” Chang said, noting Shakman’s legal fight was even older than he is.

The stakes were high no matter which way Chang ruled as he positioned himself as the last of at least six federal judges to oversee the anti-patronage orders known as Shakman decrees.

Chang’s hearing Thursday came less than four years after Shakman accused Yarbrough of “running an illegal patronage employment system” in the clerk’s office, which handles suburban elections and keeps a variety of real estate and vital records, including birth, death and marriage certificates. At the time Shakman made his claims against Yarbrough she’d been clerk less than a year.

In March 2020, a federal judge greenlighted placing a monitor over Yarbrough’s office, marking the second time her county activities fell under a court-approved watchdog.

Yarbrough had failed to shake the federal monitor she inherited during her previous six years as Cook County recorder of deeds, the countywide office she first won in 2012 following her long career as an Illinois House Democratic lawmaker from Maywood. The two offices have since merged.

Across the two offices, Yarbrough’s track record included hiring her niece, a congressman’s nephew, a former Illinois House colleague, a state representative’s son, a state senator’s sister and campaign workers tied to her political orbit in Maywood and Proviso Township.

Yarbrough also has not been shy about installing a variety of employees with ties to former House Speaker Michael Madigan, the former chair of the Illinois Democratic Party who now faces federal racketeering charges.

She’s been accused of giving county jobs to people with political ties when no influence was allowed, giving breaks to workers with partisan allies despite them making false statements, firing employees with lesser clout and promoting employees without following proper guidelines.

As clerk, Yarbrough gets as many as three dozen positions exempt from anti-patronage restrictions, mostly for jobs designed for top managers, policymakers and workers with confidential duties.

But court monitors and inspector general reports outlined hiring and employee maneuvers under Yarbrough offices that watchdogs have deemed problematic and, at times, illegal, including unlawful political factors in hiring workers and violating the county ethics code.

Over the years, though, Yarbrough has repeatedly disputed allegations against her offices, including a time she called them “outrageous,” “preposterous” and “simply not true.”

She’s also said the legal costs have been significant.

County records show the Shakman cases, which started two years before Yarbrough became recorder of deeds in 2010, have cost taxpayers upward of $7 million in legal costs on all sides of the issue for both the clerk and recorder of deeds oversight.

Before Thursday’s hearing, Shakman told the Tribune he had “very reluctantly” joined Yarbrough in their motion to end the oversight, acknowledging Yarbrough had met the bar set by the appellate court in the Pritzker ruling.

On Thursday, Chang reviewed the joint Yarbrough-Shakman motion that agreed she had met those standards, saying she revised her personnel manual, implemented policies banning unlawful political discrimination and increased transparency in decision making.

The motion noted the county’s inspector general has not found evidence of unlawful political discrimination in the clerk’s office over the last two years, allowing Yarbrough to check off one more box needed to reach the substantial compliance standard.

Eliminating oversight would leave it up to the county inspector general and the clerk’s chief ethics officer to investigate future complaints and violations. Employees and job applicants still would be able to file their own lawsuits to challenge political hiring.

Before Thursday’s hearing, Hays, Shakman’s attorney, said he and Shakman disagreed with the Pritzker decision but they felt bound by it even though Yarbrough “chose to do the absolute minimum required.”

“Unlike the other defendants in the case, the clerk’s office has not embraced the principles of the Shakman decrees or the need to reform employment practices to prevent unlawful political patronage,” Hays said in an email to the Tribune.

Cardelle Spangler, who has served as the federal court monitor of Yarbrough in both the clerk and recorder of deeds offices, reported 11 months ago that unresolved personnel issues in the clerk’s office made it necessary to keep monitoring in place.

Spangler’s brief in August 2022 cited times the “clerk repeatedly and materially violated its hiring policies” and rejected recommendations from both the monitor and the inspector general.

She had no comment following the court order on Thursday.

Since the case began in 1969, more than 10,000 entries have been marked into the federal docket.

“What may have started with a federal court’s well-grounded injunction came to look more like indefinite federal judicial supervision of state employment practices,” the 7th Circuit justices noted in the Pritzker decision.

Even before the Pritzker order, though, the same court had taken note of the “seemingly never-ending nature of the Shakman decrees” during Yarbrough’s own separate bid to avoid a monitor in the clerk’s office.

rlong@chicagotribune.com

aquig@chicagotribune.com