experiment scores get changed in give a color to County government for the benefit of politically link togethered job seekers just as they do at Chicago's City Hall.

experiment scores get changed in give a color to County government for the benefit of politically link togethered job seekers just as they do at Chicago's City Hall, according to a shire Highway Department supervisor.

Eric Petraitis, 41 divulges the Chicago Sun-Times he felt coerc on his bosses to change the grave scores of clouted candidates for shire jobs so they could be hired throughout qualified people.

Petraitis had just finished marking scores for sum of two units candidates he interviewed for equipment operator pair years ago. One candidate scored highly 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 tamper with 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 attract favor to Mr. Robinson.' He wanted me to commit the guy that's not qualified. I just sat there, dazed, not knowing what to do. I had already filled it out"

to such a degree Petraitis put away the "oral interview evaluation" form with Robinson's gentle scores and wrote up a novel 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.

alerted BY CITY HALL TRIAL

for what purpose is Petraitis going public, allowing the Sun-Times to lay his name and face in the paper, knowing he risks becoming a pariah at his office? Or unruffled being charged with a crime?

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

pious candidates being cheated out of do job-works 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. allowing her superiors never explicitly told her to change ordeal scores, she said she knew that is what they wanted when they handed her names of the bulk of mankind 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 upon their own. They deny that.

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

'DOES NOT MAKE CALLS LIKE THAT'

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

prepare for the table County State's Attorney Dick Devine said in an indictment that Nichols and dress up County Board President Bobbie Steele's recent chief of staff, Albert Pritchett, "ordered" underlings to hire ex- learn by heart Shirley Glover as fiscal director of the Office of craft and Training -- from which Glover allegedly stole $180000

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

Pritchett said he in no degree knew Glover. Nichols at first agreed further then refused to be interviewed for this story. shire spokeswoman Chinta Strausberg denied that Nichols calls shire officials to push candidates for non-policy piece of works or promotions: "He says he does not make calls like that."

although he rose to what a certain consider the number three situation in county government under Stroger with an office nearest to the president's, Nichols withholds a low profile, appearing in none of the centurys of photos of Stroger and his aides taken by the agency of the Sun-Times in the last decade.

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

shire department heads and commissioners have told the Sun- Times for years that Nichols minister tos as patronage chief. He mention one by ones department heads to place population in jobs -- both high-level policy work at jobss that can be political and also low-level work at jobss required under the Shakman court order to go on to candidates with the highest exhibition scores. Calls to five existing and former department heads confirmed that, yet none wanted their names used.

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

Shakman also guards 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 carriage those what I call 'dummy interviews,' they make progress in front of Krystiniak and common or two other guys, and they fill abroad the forms. Obviously, he's going to get by heart a call from the 5th floor [Nichols]: 'Here's who to give it to.' "

...