The Oregon Department of Transportation didn’t have a budget for an intern program last summer, but it did hire eight people for temporary jobs without making a general announcement that the positions were available — and without any competitive hiring process.

So how did the agency and the employees find each other? They had the ultimate insider information of family connections, according to a report in The Oregonian. Although the hiring may not have technically violated law or regulation, it most certainly violated the spirit of nepotism prohibitions.

The eight all had parents who worked at the agency, five of them managers. The temporary jobs were for two to six months, and paid between $11.33 and $15.27 per hour for work in the information and technology departments. The work required no particular qualifications.

The employees’ children worked on a Windows 7 upgrade project, the newspaper said, along with other employees from a temp agency who were more expensive to hire. The group was among 550 temporary employees hired by the agency during the spring and summer, and officials couldn’t say if any others in that larger group might also have relatives who were permanent ODOT employees.

Oregon statutes and rules say public employees can’t employ a relative or promote a relative’s job application. And they can’t use their positions to seek financial benefit for a relative. But they can recommend their children, according to The Oregonian. That’s a fuzzy distinction.

Several allegations of nepotism are under investigation by the state’s Ethics Commission, involving cases in the Department of Corrections and Employment Department.

In the ODOT case, the newspaper says the department’s own investigation determined no rules were broken but acknowledged it should review procedures.

Perception is indeed an issue, but the reality is that some employees’ children got an advantage as a result of their parents’ jobs. No doubt other equally qualified youngsters would have been thrilled to be paid $11-$15 per hour and have a resume line of working for ODOT’s technology department.

If the rules don’t prohibit this unfair advantage, they should.