A federal hiring monitor and her as...

A federal hiring monitor and her associates have billed Chicago taxpayers for more than $1 million from one side of to the other the last year -- and that's not counting absolute title [i]or[/i] posessions for attorneys representing Mayor Daley, the City Council and the Black Caucus in the long-running Shakman case.

Noelle Brennan's $1 million tab -- with the meter still running and no extremity in sight -- prompted the City Council's 78-year-old senior statesman to demand the federal arbitrator who appointed Brennan rein her in.

"I had a lady write to me regarding a summer piece of work for her kid who's not at home of school. I forwarded it to the federal monitor. That's what she's monitoring: persons who come to us for summer work at jobss It's ridiculous," said Ald. Bernard Stone (50th)

"If that's what the federal justice wants her to monitor, fine. I think the federal arbitrator should review what she's monitored to date. Isn't it time that he review what she's doing for the pay she's getting?"

Unles U District arbitrator Wayne Andersen takes a stand, taxpayers will win stuck with an endless tab, and "there's absolutely nothing we can do about it," Stone said.

Brennan said her recompenses have topped the $1 million mark simply because "we're doing a division of work. . . We're not doing anything beyond what the connoisseur has asked us to do."

She said her bills are submitted to Corporation admonition Mara Georges, who has an opportunity to review and compete for individual items. "We have had questions, and any questions have been answered satisfactorily," she said.

Brennan said she plans to file an annual report nearest month laying out the work she is doing to make secure hiring, promotions and other trade practices at City Hall are fair and untainted at politics.

liquidation SOUGHT

As for Stone's complaint about overkill, she said, "Ald. Stone is mistaken about what I'm monitoring. If any alderman wants to sit down and talk to me or my staff about what we're doing, we are always interpret to do that. But thus far, he has not contacted my office."

Brennan was appointed to superintend city hiring in August 2005 according to a federal judge furious with City Hall for making a scorn of the decree that was suppos to last political hiring but never did.

In late April, Brennan's remunerations stood at $732,193. Now, they're slightly more than $1 million.

Daley has been trying for years to Shakman. But the mayor's chief of staff, Ron Huberman, disclosed last month that the city was negotiating with plaintiff Michael Shakman in faiths of reaching an out-of-court arrangement that would make the effort to vacate the appoint a moot issue.

The mayor's efforts to undo the political hiring ban became an embarrassment after his former patronage chief and three others were convicted of rigging hiring and promotions to reward pro-Daley armies of political workers.

fspielman@suntimes.com

Copyright CHICAGO SUN-TIMES 2006

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