Press Release - I’ve Filed a Lawsuit Against Illinois Over Ethics Tests
For background, see this.
Federal Lawsuit Filed Against Illinois Inspector General Over Civil Rights Violations
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Press Contact:
John Bambenek
jcb.blog@gmail.com
(217)493-0760
http://www.parttimepundit.com
Champaign, IL, Jan. 26, 2007 – on Friday, John Bambenek, an academic professional at the University of Illinois, has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the Office of the Executive Inspector General alleging 15 different civil rights infringements.
Late last month and early this month about 16,000 state employees received notification that they were in violation of state law because they took the annual ethics training too fast. These notifications summarily declared them guilty of violating the law, asked them to read an ethics packet, and included a form that indicates that they read the material and admit they were non-compliant.
According to Bambenek, “the state cannot summarily declare you guilty of a legal offense without the benefit of a hearing, providing the evidence, allowing challenges, or the ability to appeal. The Inspector General’s office, in a rush to railroad the smartest employees of the state, completely tried to do away with due process and tried to coerce those employees into signing confessions.”
The Inspector General has apparently come up with some guideline which has not been released to determine who took the test too fast. This ended up snaring ten percent of state employees including professors, graduate students, and other highly intelligent staff. One such person who got a letter has 32 years of legal experience and teaches ethics law at SIU.
The letters that were sent out to the accused also stated that if they did not sign the letter they were subject to other disciplinary action “up to including termination.” The Illinois Ethics Act provides only for fines up to $5,000 for violations relating to ethics training, termination is applied to cases that are usually also Class A misdemeanors.
An emergency hearing for a preliminary injunction preventing the Inspector General from carrying out his threat to fire those employees is pending.
The suit was filed in the United States District Court for the Central District of Illinois. The case number is 07-2012. Documents relating to the case can be seen at https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/bambenek/www/ig online.
Know Your Rights
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Go get em John!
This crap is happening all over the country and they’re becoming more blatant about it.
Where can one find this Illinois law that you are accused of violating?
Comment by loboinok | January 27, 2007
This is a prime example of how exceptions to a rule are forced to conform (or not in your case!). Whoever designed that test must have been using dialup.
Odd, that the brightest of the group are the ones to be questioned. When I passed nursing board exams I had a similar experience. I finished in less time “than normal” by answering the least amount of questions spit out by the computer program. When I finished the proctor said I had to have failed, based on her “experience”. I didn’t. So you go, John.
Comment by Kathy | January 27, 2007
Can we see how long it took the Inspector General and Rod Blagojevich to take their tests? I’ll bet your score and those of all accused of violating this law were a lot higher than our elected representatives…
As loboinok said, go get ‘em.
Comment by Andrea E. | January 30, 2007
That sounds like something straight out of fiction. (Snow Crash to be precise)
Next step, they’ll hook you up to a polygraph while you read it and possibly an EEG to insure that you are utilizing the proper areas of your brain to digest the information and not just day dreaming as you skim through the pages within the parameters of the standard deviation of appropriate reading time.
Comment by Brett Bumeter | February 2, 2007