A Cook County Board Story With Legs Up To Here

The Daily Southtown's Chris Hack has written a story that has better legs than Cyd Charisse - as a baby-boomer with a shallow man's appreciation for feminine puchritude Ms Charisse had some gams.

Chris Hack presents the facts of the case being brought against the appointed head of Cook County Presidents's Office of Employment Training ( P.O.E.T.), Shirley Glover. Story follows:

Pilfering for party money?
Jobs-training manager took federal grants: prosecutors
Friday, December 16, 2005
By Chris HackStaff writer
A 10-time convicted criminal from Country Club Hills appointed to hold the purse strings of Cook County's south suburban jobs-training program was charged Thursday with pilfering $180,000 in federal grant money — allegedly spending much of it on fancy parties and fun outings for fellow county employees.
Shirley J. Glover, 50, of the 3700 block of West 168th Place, faces a slew of charges, including a Class X felony that carries mandatory prison time if she's convicted. She's being held at Cook County Jail in lieu of $100,000 bond.
From 1998 to earlier this year, Glover was fiscal manager of Cook County Board President John Stroger's President's Office for Employment Training, known as POET. The program — which has two offices in Chicago Heights and one each in Harvey, Cicero and Maywood — uses federal money to administer jobs training in south and southwest Cook County.
"Such brazen misuse of taxpayer money is unconscionable," State's Attorney Dick Devine said at a news conference. "A person who was entrusted to manage funds earmarked for important public services has abused that trust."
According to court papers filed by prosecutors, Glover was inserted into her job by high-ranking county officials over the objection of the program's own director. Prosecutors also noted Glover on her job application lied about her criminal background as well as her status as a one-semester college flunk-out.
The charges allege that when new federal regulations for the program took effect in 2000, POET changed banks. But Glover secretly kept one of the bank accounts open; when asked by her bosses if the account had been closed, Glover repeatedly said she was working on it.
"No supervisory official took any steps to ensure that the account had been closed, all of them simply assuming that (Glover) had closed out" the account, prosecutors wrote.
Over the next five years, Glover was allegedly able to dump into the account federal grant money flowing through the Cook County comptroller's office. She apparently had free rein to move money in and out of the secret account at Seaway Bank on the city's South Side.
According to prosecutors, Glover "initially used the stolen funds to gain popularity with her superiors and gain favor with certain Cook County officials." She allegedly used the money to pay for two expensive 2002 parties for POET workers, outings to Great America and a Galena resort, and a $20,000 donation to the United Negro College Fund.
Glover also spent $1,200 of taxpayer money to print up shirts promoting an unnamed local politician, prosecutors said. The shirts were worn by POET employees at the 2003 Bud Billiken Parade. Additionally, she spent several hundred dollars to hang signs promoting Stroger, according to court papers.
Eventually, Glover started raiding her private slush fund for walking-around money for herself, prosecutors said, at first taking out hundreds at a time and then thousands. And over the past two years she allegedly took in another $23,000 by making so-called split deposits into the account: In one instance, she deposited a $16,000 county check into the account and simultaneously withdrew $2,000 cash.
In 2004, a state audit of the jobs program pointed out a "general lack of attention to its fiscal responsibilities," according to prosecutors. A follow-up county audit revealed the secret bank account and concluded the alleged theft "resulted from the lack of proper supervision and control over the activities of the fiscal manager."
In June, Stroger acknowledged the suspected looting on the same day POET financial records were to be turned over to a Chicago newspaper. Glover at that point was suspended without pay and has since resigned, according to Stroger's office.
The fiscal manager position at the program had been vacant for two years before Glover was installed in 1998. According to prosecutors, POET's director had recommended promoting a current employee to the job, but was "ordered" to hire Glover for a "Shakman-exempt" job — meaning she wouldn't be subject to a federal-court order banning hiring on political allegiance.
Once on the job, Glover sometimes failed to show up for work days on end, and also allegedly blew off — once for six months in a row — filing state reports on how the program's money was being spent. In fact, state officials have said there's inadequate accounting of some $9 million that's run through the jobs program during Glover's tenure.
Records show Glover has 10 prior convictions for crimes — all in the 1970s and '80s — ranging from forgery to armed robbery. Although Glover's job application states she received a bachelor's degree after spending nine years at Roosevelt University and Northern Illinois University, prosecutors contend she was booted from NIU after a single straight-F semester and similarly kicked out of Roosevelt after one semester for "poor scholarship."
Devine stressed the investigation will continue and indicated prosecutors still are probing how it was that Glover landed her job.
"It's certainly an area of concern," Devine said. "We are looking at how someone with this background could reach this level of employment.
"If this defendant has information she wants us to be aware of, we'd be happy to hear it."
Devine said the alleged pilfering is also the subject of a U.S. Labor Department investigation, and that he has forwarded evidence to the U.S. attorney's office in Chicago. A spokesman for that office declined to comment Thursday.
A spokeswoman for Stroger refused to comment on who appointed Glover to the post and instead issued a statement that recounted the facts of the alleged looting and commended a number of agencies — including the county's own inspector general — for Glover's arrest.
"Moreover, I urge the state's attorney's office to do everything possible to reclaim the funds to help underscore the fact that corruption and impropriety will not be tolerated within Cook County government," Stroger said in the statement.
Chris Hack may be reached at chack@dailysouthtown.com or (708) 633-5984.