On his first full day in office, Gov. Rod Blagojevich fired 35 state workers and hired Springfield labor attorney Mary Lee Leahy to find “unnecessary and unqualified personnel.”
“Our state is facing an unprecedented budget crisis,” he said in a printed statement. “The days of taking care of insiders first and taxpayers last are over.”
Those fired were among last-minute appointments made by the new governor’s predecessor George Ryan. They were meant to be protected for a term of four years. But Blagojevich said he was advised the jobs can be terminated because the rules under which they were made were changed improperly. The legislature’s Joint Committee on Administrative Rules approved a reduction in the probation period to 30 days.
Among the workers fired:
• Former state Sen. Judith Myers, hired at the Department of Agriculture at $75,000 a year;
• Ryan’s former communications chief David Urbanek, hired to head the Illinois Building Commission at $99,000 a year;
• Judith Pardonnet, who got a term appointment for her job as spokeswoman for Central Management Services at the same $88,000 a year salary;
• Michael Murphy, who got a term appointment for his job at the Department of Commerce and Community Affairs at the same $109,000 a year salary.
Leahy, who won the anti-patronage Rutan case before the U.S. Supreme Court, specializes in ethics and personnel issues.
