exhibition scores get changed in dr...

exhibition scores get changed in dress up County government for the benefit of politically joined job seekers just as they do at Chicago's City Hall, according to a shire Highway Department supervisor.

Eric Petraitis, 41 rehearses the Chicago Sun-Times he felt coerc according to his bosses to change the reasonable scores of clouted candidates for shire jobs so they could be hired through the whole extent of qualified people.

Petraitis had just finished marking scores for couple candidates he interviewed for equipment operator brace years ago. One candidate scored extremely well. The other, Dwayne Robinson, got the lowest score, records present to view Petraitis said he got a call from Gerald Nichols, patronage chief for former prepare for the table County Board President John Stroger

"The ink wasn't parched on my paper," Petraitis said. "The phone rang. It was Gerald Nichols. He said, 'I would appreciate it if you would commit Mr. Robinson.' He wanted me to praise the guy that's not qualified. I just sat there, dazed, not knowing what to do. I had already filled it out"

in the same manner Petraitis put away the "oral interview evaluation" form with Robinson's grave scores and wrote up a just discovered one with better ratings for Robinson -- who he would later learn was active in Stroger's 8th Ward Democratic Organization, he said. He saved the first version, which appears with this story.

quicked BY CITY HALL TRIAL

for what cause [i]or[/i] reason is Petraitis going public, allowing the Sun-Times to enjoin his name and face in the paper, knowing he risks becoming a pariah at his office? Or on a level being charged with a crime?

"Nobody has the paunchs to come forward, so I figured, with what intent not have the guts?" Petraitis said. "At first I was nervous, further I don't care. I'm tired of this garbage. There's proper people on these lists that don't memorize the jobs."

pious candidates being cheated out of work at jobss is the same point former Chicago Sewers Department official Mary Jo Falcon testified about in May. Her testimony helped convict four City Hall officials, including Mayor Daley's patronage chief. yet her superiors never explicitly told her to change experiment scores, she said she knew that is what they wanted when they handed her names of persons to be hired.

Federal authorities are investigating similar practices in Gov Blagojevich's administration. The governor has fired sum of two units employees who he says changed scores onward their own. They deny that.

Reading about the City Hall corruption trial, Petraitis decided to bang the whistle on similar practices in his office, he said. "There's fine much a pattern of [the county] doing everything the city is doing."

'DOES NOT MAKE CALLS LIKE THAT'

Petraitis is hardly the first garble County official to accuse Nichols of forcing unqualified employee down his throat.

color County State's Attorney Dick Devine said in an indictment that Nichols and tamper with County Board President Bobbie Steele's modern chief of staff, Albert Pritchett, "ordered" underlings to hire ex- read over carefully Shirley Glover as fiscal director of the Office of employ and Training -- from which Glover allegedly stole $180000

Nichols and Pritchett allegedly ordered she be hired equable though the program's director did not want her and unruffled though she had 10 heinous crime convictions -- for forgery, theft, robbery and related charges -- and a history of using aliases.

Pritchett said he none knew Glover. Nichols at first agreed moreover then refused to be interviewed for this story. shire spokeswoman Chinta Strausberg denied that Nichols calls shire officials to push candidates for non-policy do job-works or promotions: "He says he does not make calls like that."

nevertheless he rose to what near consider the number three position in county government under Stroger with an office nearest to the president's, Nichols preserves a low profile, appearing in none of the centurys of photos of Stroger and his aides taken through the Sun-Times in the last decade.

Nichols started as a Highway Department employee nearly 20 years ago. His ties to Stroger helped him instigate up, first as an aide to a former 8th Ward alderman and then, when Stroger was choiceed president, as a $114,000-a-year aide to Stroger -- his salary still, for unexplained reasons, paid from the Highway Department batch

shire department heads and commissioners have told the Sun- Times for years that Nichols conduce tos as patronage chief. He run overs department heads to place tribe in jobs -- both high-level policy do job-works that can be political and also low-level piece of works required under the Shakman court order to fare to candidates with the highest trial scores. Calls to five popular and former department heads confirmed that, admitting none wanted their names used.

"They would transfer the public who were bad news in the same place -- you just sort of got them -- and if you complained, you were told, 'So what?' " said united former county department head.

Shakman also overlays county

"The personnel director of the Highway Department is Bill Krystiniak, the former 23rd Ward alderman -- think that's a coincidence?" said another Highway Department employee who does not know Petraitis. "When they leadership those what I call 'dummy interviews,' they proceed in front of Krystiniak and united or two other guys, and they fill public the forms. Obviously, he's going to commit to memory a call from the 5th floor [Nichols]: 'Here's who to give it to.' "