BGA Public Eye: State official advising Rauner used private email for state job requests

While working as a top state government official, a member of Gov. Bruce Rauner’s transition team used her private email account to field requests for state jobs under the new governor, newly obtained records show.

Nancy Kimme — a top official in the Illinois comptroller’s office who was a key member of Rauner’s transition team — says she and the Rauner administration weren’t trying to shield the emails from public scrutiny or skirt public records laws.

“It wasn’t an effort to get around anything,” Kimme, who left state government last February, says of using her private email account to handle requests from political figures regarding jobs for people with Rauner’s administration.

She says people routinely contacted her for work reasons through her Yahoo.com email account because that’s what she most often uses.

“My private emails go to my phone that I have with me all the time,” says Kimme, who The Associated Press recently reported was one of three state government administrators who were filling political jobs for Rauner while on the comptroller’s payroll.

Shortly after Rauner’s inauguration, the Better Government Association sought copies of emails among Kimme, other members of his transition team, state lawmakers and Rauner that dealt with personnel matters.

The comptroller’s office refused to release them. It maintained that the Illinois Freedom of Information Act exempts such communications from disclosure.

The BGA then sued for the release of the records.

The comptroller’s office continues to resist releasing the records.

But Kimme, subpoenaed as part of the lawsuit, recently turned over emails from her private accounts that include inquiries about state jobs as well as communications about state board appointments and jobs for Rauner campaign staffers.

The messages show Kimme used her private email account to communicate with key government and political figures about jobs under Rauner.

Among them was one sent to Kimme Jan. 6 — less than a week before Rauner was sworn in to succeed Pat Quinn. It came from Dave Gross, chief of staff to Illinois Senate President John Cullerton, D-Chicago. Gross asked Kimme to help save the jobs of two state bureaucrats who were slated to be fired and to be replaced with Rauner political hires.

Though the law bans political considerations in much hiring in state government, that ban doesn’t cover many key policy jobs.

It’s unclear how Gross’s requests were handled. One of the state workers Gross asked Kimme about left state government later that month, records show, and the other left in February.

Asked about requests that came from political figures, Kimme says that, because of her role on Rauner’s transition team, “I got a lot of calls. A lot of people asked for jobs to be spared. Sometimes they were, and sometimes they weren’t. Whoever wanted to be kept had to re-interview.”

Kimme went to Michael Drake, the comptroller’s independent inspector general, and he found no fault with her performing transition committee tasks while on state time, according to a Nov. 24 letter he sent Kimme.

Rauner spokesman Lance Trover had no comment.

Written by Andrew Schroedter, an investigator for the Better Government Association.