Federal prosecutors on Tuesday expanded their investigation into the hiring practices of Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s administration, delivering a subpoena to the job-rich Illinois Department of Transportation that demanded employment records for the last three years.
At the same time, a top-level hiring administrator at the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services who has been named in the federal probe was placed on administrative leave, state government sources said. One of those sources also said the DCFS external affairs unit, which had been run by a handpicked Blagojevich appointee who is under federal scrutiny, was disbanded.
The developments overshadowed the governor’s speech Tuesday in Springfield to a rare joint session of the legislature in which he implored lawmakers to approve his child health-insurance program. Republican critics immediately labeled it a shallow effort by the governor to deflect attention from a burgeoning scandal only weeks before his expected re-election announcement.
The IDOT subpoena, along with one delivered a day earlier to Blagojevich’s office and one served two weeks ago on DCFS, are part of a federal grand jury probe first disclosed by the Tribune that alleges potential wrongdoing by two top hiring officials in Blagojevich’s office and the DCFS hiring administrator.
Blagojevich has not been accused of any wrongdoing and has repeatedly denied that his administration has engaged in any illegality.
All three federal subpoenas seek employment records from March 2002 until the present, officials said. In March 2002, Blagojevich won a contentious primary and became the Democratic nominee for governor. He won election the following November in a campaign dominated by his vows of reform following the scandal-tarred tenure of George Ryan.
Blagojevich would not answer reporters’ questions about the federal probe into his administration’s hiring. He said that he was concentrating on advancing his All Kids health insurance proposal, which was endorsed later in the day by fellow Democrats who control a key state Senate committee.
`A million questions’
“I’ll have time to answer a million questions,” Blagojevich told reporters before his address to lawmakers. “Right now we’re going to focus on kids. This is as important an issue as you can get your arms [around], and if we can help all the kids in Illinois … it’s something I’m focusing on today.”
But aides to the governor were clearly irritated that questions about the federal investigation were threatening to trump the administration’s massive public relations push for All Kids, a program aimed at providing affordable health-insurance for the children of working-class families.
“If we could take one day to focus on an actual substantive problem and a solution to deal with it, instead of just constantly talking about scandal, I think that would be a productive thing to do,” Blagojevich’s deputy governor, Bradley Tusk, told reporters at the Statehouse.
Tusk said the administration would comply with federal requests and sought to blame the investigation on allegations first raised, and later recanted, by the governor’s father-in-law, Chicago Ald. Richard Mell (33rd). Earlier this year, Mell alleged that appointments to state boards and commissions were exchanged for campaign contributions to Blagojevich. He recanted those statements when threatened with a lawsuit from a top Blagojevich fundraiser, Christopher Kelly.
Since at least March, federal prosecutors have been conducting an investigation into allegations of criminal wrongdoing involving two officials in Blagojevich’s hiring office, the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, and a top personnel official at DCFS, according to documents reviewed by the Tribune.
Yet another subpoena
More Top Picks Best Blue Light Blocking Screen Protectors For Laptops
As part of that investigation, IDOT, which employs more than 5,000 people, received a federal subpoena on Tuesday, an agency spokesman said.
In their investigation, federal prosecutors wrote a letter to encourage the cooperation of a potential government witness. The letter noted that “the government is conducting a grand jury investigation regarding allegations of criminal wrongdoing of Victor Roberson, Robin Staggers and Joe Cini in relation to public corruption.”
Cini is the director of the governor’s hiring office, and Roberson is a deputy in the office.
Staggers, the deputy director of human resources at DCFS, and two of her aides were placed on paid administrative leave on Tuesday, government sources said. Staggers, who was an employee relations representative for the Chicago Transit Authority before joining the administration in May 2003, earns $89,004 a year at DCFS.
Efforts to reach Staggers were unsuccessful. Cini and Roberson have declined to comment.
While those personnel moves were going on, a government source said DCFS officials also disbanded its external affairs office, which had come under federal scrutiny after an internal investigation alleged more than $220,000 in agency funds landed in a bank account controlled by its former director, Bamani Obadele.
The office oversaw minority outreach programs and also directed efforts related to foster care and adoption.
Obadele has denied any illegalities but resigned in August after DCFS Inspector General Denise Kane recommended that he be suspended without pay from his $65,004-a-year job.
Blagojevich gave Obadele a job in the state’s child-welfare agency. Obadele was a minister who also worked on the governor’s successful 2002 campaign.
In Springfield, Republicans looking to recapture a governor’s office the GOP held for 26 years prior to Blagojevich questioned the governor’s motives in making a heavy push for the child health-care initiative during the two-week-long veto session of the Democratic-controlled legislature.
“You can’t help but wonder if this isn’t a series of media ploys to divert attention from the problems they’re having,” said state Sen. Bill Brady of Bloomington, one of four announced GOP candidates for governor. “As quickly as they’re moving, you can’t help but be suspicious.”
———-