Chicago, politics, the Teamsters Union and violence, this story really has it all. Here’s a question, would a student be allowed to remain at the university if they were convicted of a violent crime?

Chris Fusco of The Chicago Sun Times reports.

Violent felon back on the job at the University of Illinois at Chicago

A questionable decision seven years ago by a politically connected University of Illinois at Chicago administrator has led to the reinstatement of a violent felon to a $73,985-a-year on-campus job.

Besides having to put Thomas J. Morano back on the payroll, the state university is on the hook for legal fees and back pay amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Fired six years ago, Morano, 59, went back to work June 3 as an auto mechanic foreman at a UIC garage.

He got his job back despite having been convicted of attempted murder for shooting a man in the chest, leaving him paralyzed. Records show he also lied about his criminal record on university job applications and claimed to be off work sick when he actually was locked up on felony gun charges for which he was later convicted.

Morano’s reinstatement followed an Illinois Appellate Court ruling last year that the university had to take him back because a UIC facilities executive made a “last-chance” deal with him in 2006 to let him keep his job, even after Morano’s second felony conviction.

If UIC’s Mark Donovan, who has since been promoted to a $236,134-a-year post as vice chancellor of administrative services, hadn’t made that deal, Morano’s 2007 firing in the wake of a Chicago Sun-Times report about his past “may very well” have been upheld, the justices wrote.

UIC has spent $123,751 on its losing court battle to boot Morano, who is represented by his union, Teamsters Local 726. He is also due back pay — an additional 7 percent above what he would have made had he been working — of at least $395,000. The exact amount is still being calculated.