It looks as if the child care communities in Miami and Chicago each will get their wish.
George Sheldon, the battered director of Illinois' Department of Children and Family Services has resigned and is returning home to Florida to take on virtually the same job at the private adoption and foster care agency, Our Kids Miami-Dade/Monroe.
That gives Republican Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner -- once Democrat Sheldon's biggest fan -- a chance to clean house at DCFS and offer the agency another new start.
And it gives Sheldon, in the middle of an ethics probe and an inquest over a series of recent child deaths -- plus almost daily scandalous Chicago Tribune headlines -- a chance to make a breathless and welcome escape.
Neither the governor nor his office would comment for the record on Sheldon's letter of resignation.
But a spokesman in the Illinois state Capitol who asked not to be identified told Sunshine State News Sheldon's resignation letter "says he's leaving behind a system 'that can be returned to a position of leadership in the nation.' I don't know where he gets that. Part of a delusion we've had for a long time in Illinois, I suppose. It's not Sheldon's fault, but he's, like, the eighth (DCFS) director in five years. Does that sound to you like we've got a system that was ever in a position of national leadership?"
In a Wednesday story of Sheldon's departure, the Tribune gives Sheldon credit for his two years of tapping federal funds and bringing into Illinois tens of millions of new dollars "by clearing away bureaucratic tangles." Tribune reporters said he created opportunities for former wards who had grown up in state custody.
But, said the investigative reporting team, "Sheldon's departure is clouded by an ongoing ethics probe into contracts that benefited some of his Florida associates, as well as several high-profile child fatalities that highlighted investigative shortfalls at the troubled agency." (See Sunshine State News' story on Sheldon's "Florida associates.")
DCFS was weeks behind in filing reports when 17-month-old Semaj Crosby disappeared, records show. Before the girl's body was found in her Joliet Township home in April, the agency had opened 10 investigations into allegations that she and several other youths were mistreated there.
Last Friday, Sheldon released a 22-page Quality Assurance Review of DCFS shortfalls in protecting Semaj and the other children in the home. He insists his report demonstrates his commitment to transparency and to improving on deficiencies.
But the report omits the weeks-late filing of investigative reports, "or that supervisors repeatedly approved files that were missing basic reports regarding Semaj, and that administrators also signed off on the flurry of belated reports," wrote the Tribune.
Asked why the DCFS investigators' late report filing was not mentioned in the Quality Assurance Review, DCFS Senior Deputy Director Neil Skene, once the Tallahassee bureau chief for the St. Petersburg Times, told the Tribune: "It feels to me like we just missed it."
"Within 30 hours of her being reported missing, on April 27, Semaj's body was found by police under a soiled living room couch," says the report. "And still, DCFS investigators continued to file reports on their interactions from days and weeks before."
Said state Sen. Julie Morrison, who plans to hold joint House-Senate hearings on DCFS during the summer to examine issues raised in the Tribune's reporting, "I am furious, just disgusted, with the poor quality of investigations that the agency has gotten away with. I just wonder how many other children are being put at risk."
Will Sheldon employ at Our Kids his entourage of Florida friends and contacts? The same cronies that landed him in the DCFS ethics investigation? Unfortunately Sheldon was unavailable Wednesday afternoon.
(I was going to ask his opinion: Is it possible to be too corrupt and incompetent for Illinois ... but impossible to be too corrupt and incompetent for Miami? It's a question I'd also like to ask Our Kids board members. )
Sheldon's resignation becomes effective June 15.
Reach Nancy Smith at nsmith@sunshinestatenews.com or at 228-282-2423. Twitter: @NancyLBSmith
