Daniel Katalinic, 54, former deputy commissioner of streets and sanitation, said in pleading guilty that he knew court orders requiring merit hiring of city employees were being violated.

At a hearing before U.S. District Judge David H. Coar, he agreed to help prosecutors in their investigation of hiring fraud in Mayor Richard M. Daley's get-out-the-vote operation.

Federal law calls for a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, but Katalinic could end up serving less than a year under his plea agreement with federal prosecutors.

Coar set Jan. 19 for sentencing.

The federal investigation began by focusing on bribes paid by truckers in exchange for city hauling jobs but has since expanded to include patronage hiring fraud by city officials.

Armies of patronage workers with city payroll jobs were the backbone of the vaunted Chicago Machine in its heyday. Court orders have sought to curb the use of patronage in recent years.

Critics of City Hall say, however, that those orders have often been ignored. In a pending civil lawsuit, a federal monitor has been appointed to make sure patronage abuses are minimized.

Katalinic told Coar that he would meet with Daley's former patronage chief, Robert Sorich, three times a year to recommend political workers for city jobs. He said he knew that violated a decree entered in the civil lawsuit filed by attorney Michael Shakman, a City Hall critic.

Katalinic said in his signed plea agreement that in 1999 Sorich asked him to set up his own political organization because Daley's political operation needed help in getting out the vote. He said he began recruiting city workers and by 2004 his group had more than 200 members.

The organization took orders from Sorich concerning which candidates to support, he said.

Sorich and three other Katalinic co-defendants have pleaded not guilty to the indictment.

Katalinic attorney Jeffrey Steinback said his client's reason for leading such an organization was not a matter of "enthusiasm for a particular individual or candidate."

He said Katalinic "grew up in politics" and accepted political work as a matter of course. But he said his client realizes that in this case the political work he did was wrong.

Steinback also said that the information Katalinic is supplying to prosecutors as part of his agreement to cooperate in the investigation "is certainly going to be meaningful."

Daley brushed off the development Tuesday, saying he had not read Katalinic's plea.

"It's unfortunate it happened in the past," Daley said at a news conference downtown after a groundbreaking ceremony for a new retail and entertainment project. "Things have been corrected and that's how we look at it. We move forward."