From the Sun-Times

 Toll director resigns, takes new job
September 26, 2008
BY MARY WISNIEWSKI Staff Reporter
The head of the Illinois Tollway is quitting for a job with a politically connected engineering consulting firm that has received $39 million in tollway contracts since 2002.
Brian McPartlin, 42, who earns $189,000 a year with the tollway, will become vice president at Chicago's McDonough Associates, after two years as tollway executive director.
The tollway awarded McDonough $13.7 million in contracts in 2007 and 2008, but McPartlin has no role in selecting or approving them, according to spokeswoman Joelle McGinnis. The state comptroller's office reported that McDonough contracted for $21.3 million in tollway work this year and received $32.9 million between 2004 and 2007. McGinnis said she did not know how the state calculated this.
McDonough has done extensive work for other government entities, including the City of Chicago.
The tollway is in the midst of a $6.3 billion construction program, which includes rebuilding and widening toll roads from Rockford to Indiana.
McPartlin said he can't do work involving the tollway for one year. He has a waiver from the state ethics commission that allows him to take the McDonough job.
"I don't see a problem with it," said McPartlin, who has spent 25 years in government. "The reality of it is I'm moving on with my career."
Jay Stewart of the Better Government Association suggested that standards for receiving waivers could be tightened.
A former aide to President Bill Clinton, McPartlin joined the tollway in 2003 as chief of administration.
McPartlin's chief of staff, Dawn Catuara, will become acting executive director Oct. 25 while the tollway board, with the governor's office, finds a replacement.
McPartlin has won credit for tollway construction successes, including the 121⁄2-mile south expansion of I-355. Under McPartlin, the agency also suffered a snafu that kept toll-violation notices from being sent out for about a year.