Sep 7, 2006 8:45 am US/Central
Former County Patronage Chief Suspended
Allegations: Gerald Nichols Told Staffers To Change Job Test Scores
CHICAGO (AP) ―
The patronage chief for former
Cook County Board President
John Stroger has been suspended pending an investigation into allegations that he encouraged staffers to change test scores for politically connected job applicants, officials said.
Gerald Nichols, 55, will continue to collect his annual salary of $114,000 while he is on administrative leave, said Interim Cook County Board President
Bobbie Steele.
"We are using the authority of our office to do what's right," Steele told the Chicago Sun-Times Wednesday.
A message left at a number listed for Gerald Nichols in Chicago was not immediately returned to The Associated Press Thursday morning.
Last month, a county Highway Department supervisor told the Sun-Times that his bosses coerced him into changing test scores for politically connected applicants so they could get jobs over more qualified job seekers.
In one case,
Eric Petraitis, 41, said he had just finished marking the scores of two candidates for an equipment operator job when Nichols called him, asking that he recommend the man who received the lower score for the job.
"He wanted me to recommend the guy that's not qualified," Petraitis said last month.
He said he decided to come forward after reading about the recent City Hall corruption trial in which four city workers were convicted of loading the payroll with campaign workers.
"I'm tired of this garbage," Petraitis said. "There's good people on these lists that don't get the jobs."
Chinta Strausberg, director of communications for Steele, has said that Nichols "flatly denies" Petraitis' allegations.
Nichols told Strausberg that he and Petraitis have never gotten along. "This is just another case of a disgruntled employee," she said last month.
Before Steele reassigned him, Nichols was a special assistant to the president.
(© 2006 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
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