Report: CTA staffer didn’t work full shift most days
Watchdog says he was likely hired for political ties
The state’s top ethics investigator wrote that “there is reasonable cause to believe” a former CTA staffer was hired because of his connections to a Democratic state senator, according to a report released Friday.
The report from Illinois acting Executive Inspector General Susan Haling says Eric McKennie mentioned he was married to state Sen. Kim Lightford, DMaywood, before his November 2016 hiring by the CTA to do diversity outreach work. And the report found that he didn’t report working a full shift on 51 of the 57 days he was employed.
The report says the particular diversity outreach position McKennie was hired for didn’t exist when he interviewed for a job.
When the former candidate for Chicago alderman was asked during the investigation who he reported to when he worked at the CTA, “he stated he could not recall the name of the ‘young lady,’ ” the report reads.
Messages left for both McKennie and Lightford weren’t returned.
“Clearly, Mr. McKennie did not try to conceal his relation to a state legislator,” the report reads.
“Together, all these circumstances establish reasonable cause to believe that the CTA’s hire of Mr. McKennie was not predicated on Mr. McKennie’s prior … experience or the desire to select the most qualified individual for the position; rather, Mr. McKennie’s distinguishing feature was his political connection,” the report says.
In its official response, CTA general counsel Karen Seimetz wrote that the agency “vehemently disagrees” with the inspector general’s finding that McKennie “was hired for his political affiliation.”
She criticized the watchdog report for not including an interview with Lightford, noting that the inspector general was unable to prove she and McKennie were married.
“They did not ask him about the nature of their relationship,” Seimetz writes. “They did not ask him if Senator Lightford played any role in his hire by CTA, if she had spoken to anyone at CTA on his behalf, or if she was even aware of his hiring by CTA.”
The inspector general report also criticizes McKennie for not working full shifts, saying “records showed that during the 57 days Mr. McKennie was supposed to be working, (he) did not report for a full eight and one half-hour period for 51 of those days.”
McKennie resigned from the CTA in March 2017, citing “personal and family issues.”
McKennie has come up in an inspector general report before, when he worked for the Illinois Department of Transportation.
That 2014 report said then-Gov. Pat Quinn failed to rein in patronage abuses at the state transportation agency after succeeding now-imprisoned Rod Blagojevich, and Quinn’s directors repeatedly hired politically connected workers in violation of the rules.
Hundreds of people were hired into a special “staff assistant” position without having to go through strict personnel procedures under rules designed to keep politics out of most state hiring, according to a confidential report by Executive Inspector General Ricardo Meza obtained by the Tribune at the time.
The 2014 inspector general’s report said dozens of the staff assistants had ties to Democrats including the top leaders of the legislature, House Speaker Michael Madigan and Senate President John Cullerton, both of Chicago.
McKennie also was listed among the “staff assistant” category, although the lawmaker said she’s always known him as a project manager.