Steele's appointments have a familiar feel

Daily Herald

August 2, 2006

By Rob Olmstead

As one of her first official acts as Cook County Board president, Bobbie L. Steele accepted Tuesday the resignations of two key loyalists to former board President John H. Stroger - and then immediately replaced them with current or former Stroger staff members.

Steele, who was sworn in Tuesday to replace the ailing Stroger, replaced Chief of Staff James Whigham with Al Pritchett, who once was Stroger's chief administrative officer. She also named J.W. Fairman to replace Jerry Robinson as head of the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center.

Pritchett's name surfaced in December when Shirley Glover, the fiscal manager of a county job training program, was indicted for embezzling funds. Cook County state's attorney documents at the time indicated Pritchett and Gerald Nichols may have ordered her hire despite a previous criminal record.

Pritchett unequivocally denied Tuesday he had anything to do with Glover's hire, and he criticized the state's attorney's office for not checking with him before they made those allegations.

"The claim was somebody didn't want her and I said, 'You must hire her.' That's just not true," Pritchett said,

Asked if officials had contacted him about the claims, Pritchett said he hasn't been interviewed by the state's attorney's office then or since.

"Nothing," Pritchett said. "I would appreciate the fact that he (State's Attorney Dick Devine) would even tell me that (accusation) was in there. Ask him that."

A state's attorney spokesman said Pritchett's name should not, in fact, have been linked to the case.

"Mr. Pritchett's name was inadvertently named when we announced charges against Shirley Glover. It is our general policy not to mention anyone's name if they are not charged, and we regret that Mr. Pritchett's name surfaced," said John Gorman, spokesman for the state's attorney's office.

"Mr. Pritchett was not and is not the target or subject of any investigation by our office."

But Pritchett has won kudos from Stroger critics, too. He stepped in as an interim head of the Cook County forest preserves for a few months in 2003 when commissioners ousted one of Stroger's appointments.

"Al started some change at the forest preserve," conceded Democrat Mike Quigley, a traditional Stroger critic.

"My concern with Fairman is it's not necessarily bold strokes, and she (Steele) runs the risks that she's just bringing in retreads. Having said that, I'll work with them and I'll take her at her word" that things will change, Quigley said.

Fairman, as county director of public safety, already supervised Robinson in his job. The center is under a federal court order to improve conditions after beatings of inmates were exposed.

While some questioned how Fairman, who already had some degree of control over the center, could be an agent of reform, some, like Republican Commissioner Tony Peraica of Riverside, have always said the problem was that Robinson did not have the power to fire patronage workers.

Fairman said Tuesday he's been told he'll have that power.

Copyright 2006, Paddock Publications, Inc.

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