Sleeping Worker Brings County Audit

It's the picture that raised your blood pressure... A Cook County highway department administrator making 88-thousand bucks sleeping on the job. His explanation?

 "Overworked.

"Overworked?"

Alex Moreno was just one of several highway department employees we found killing time on the county's dime, as part of a joint investigation with the Better Government Association.

Today Cook County commissioners responded to our story by asking for an audit of the highway department.

 "Given that we have to cut employees, we must certainly have to look at those who are engaged in administrative functions for brick and mortar type projects."

We found 40 percent of the highway department's employees sit behind a desk at its downtown office.... clerks, special assistants, engineering assistants, and dozens of administrative assistants.
That's far more desk jobs than the number of people actually out in the field filling potholes and plowing snow.

"i think what we're trying to do in this proposal is make sure that everyone who has to do a function is doing it to the full capacity and expectation of the taxpayers."

Commissioner Liz Gorman says she saw the problems herself when she recently dropped in unannounced on a highway district office...

 "I walked through to see what was going on, i used the bathroom and then knocked on every door, there wasn't one person found."

" I commend the commissioners who want an investigation. They should go desk by desk through 69 West Washington and when people aren't working and they aren't doing enough and they're making 80-thousand a year they should be out, so people in the highway department can do what we're paying them to do."

But here's the twist.

Commissioners sent the audit proposal to the Roads and Bridges committee, which is chaired by commissioner Joseph Mario Moreno whose brother is the county worker we caught sleeping on the job.
One commissioner says that's a clear conflict of interest...

 "How can he possibly pass judgement on his brother sleeping on the job that he got for him? It's just outrageous."

But commissioner Moreno says he'll step aside when the highway audit is discussed...

 "He's my brother. If he did do that it was a wakeup call. I know he works very hard. He's always here. If he was ill, at least he showed up to work."

 "Moreno says our pictures did land his brother in some hot water. He's been called into a disciplinary hearing tomorrow. At the County Building, Dane Placko, Fox Chicago News."