SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) — The Illinois Department of Transportation circumvented rules devised to keep politics out of state jobs and improperly hired more than 250 people in the last decade, accelerating the practice under Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn, the state’s top investigator decreed in a report released Friday.

Executive Inspector General Ricardo Meza reported that IDOT’s use of “staff assistants” to skirt anti-patronage guidelines began in 2003 under former Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who’s serving a federal prison term for political corruption. But it noted that the number of hires jumped from 52 in 2008 to 104 in 2011, the first two years after Quinn, now locked in a tight battle for re-election in November, took over for the ousted Blagojevich.