Marathon Pundit: Blago hires still hanging on in Illinois

Shortly after being sworn in to office, Governor Pat Quinn vowed to "fumigate state government." The Chicago Sun-Times reports that the fumigation isn't going so well.

To legislators, part of that scrub-down seemed obvious: Quinn would clean house of state appointees and other workers whose clout had won them top posts in the Blagojevich administration.

The new governor's actions backed that up; Quinn fired several high-level Blagojevich aides in his first few weeks on the job and followed up by replacing most of the University of Illinois Board of Trustees amid the school's clout-admissions scandal.

Since then, the purge appears to have slowed.

Today, despite a failed effort by House Speaker Michael Madigan to force Quinn "to accelerate the pace" of the housecleaning, dozens of high-ranking, top-paid hires from the Blagojevich era are managing to hold onto their state jobs.