OK, just what in the heck is going on over at DHS?
Carlos Estes claims Department of Human Services chief of staff Teyonda Wertz sexually harrassed him, threatening to fire him if he didn’t have sex with her. Wertz denies the charge but a judge ordered that the case continue against her last week.
Wertz is still the DHS chief of staff and has no intention of resigning, but Estes was fired about a month after the incident on what looks to be a trumped up charge of misusing a state vehicle. The governor’s office has completely backed up DHS Secretary Carol Adams’ decision to oust the accuser.
“The secretary did her job. When she learned an employee was misusing state resources, she dismissed him,” Blagojevich spokeswoman Abby Ottenhoff said.
According to the original Sun-Times article, Director Adams and chief of staff Wertz are “close friends” and chief of staff Wertz allegedly became upset about the same time Estes was fired because Estes was in a relationship with another woman.
Wertz has a history of misusing Estes…
Adams once disciplined her chief of staff for instructing Estes to pick up her dry cleaning on state time, court records show.
Estes was paid $70,000 a year to basically chauffeur the chief of staff around. His “official” duties were to act as a “liaison to DHS administrators, conducting site visits, research and as a policy-making advisor,” according to a DHS spokesman. But Estes didn’t even have a high school diploma when he was hired.
“Let’s put this in perspective,” Rep. Jack Franks told the Sun-Times of Estes. “He’s making more money than a member of the General Assembly for driving a staff person who has to report to the General Assembly.”
And even Sen. Carol Ronen, who is the governor’s floor leader and top Senate supporter, is having her doubts.
“The facts as they appear in the paper are very, very troubling. But I’d like to reserve judgment until I can learn a little more about them,” said Sen. Carol Ronen (D-Chicago). “It does raise a very troubling issue about the allocation of staff resources.”
When you lose Carol Ronen, you’ve lost all hope.
Director Adams needs to do a clean sweep over there. If she won’t, the governor should.