Cook County Board Meeting June 1--Two Big Issues

First on the agenda was deciding whether to make the Health and Hospital System (HHS) independent board a permanent one. Although the nurses and SEICU unions spoke against making the board permanently independent, and many commissioners had concerns about the large raises given to administrators of the HHS, this was passed. The vote was 13 in favor, 3 against (Commissioners Beavers, Murphy and Sims) and 1 absent (Comm. Steele).

The next hour of the meeting was taken up by memorials, recognitions, etc. After 12:00 pm, the business portion of the meeting was addressed again.

A resolution to boycott Arizona and its businesses was proposed by Comms. Reyes, Moreno, and Murphy. This was intended as a protest to the new immigration law in Arizona to go into effect later this summer. The discussion among the commissioners was quite heated, with some mentioning that Arizona businesses who employ minorities would be hurt; others mentioned racial profiling; and some that the federal government should be addressing this issue. The boycott resolution passed 10 to 6 with Commissioners Daley, Gorman, Goslin, Peraica, Schneider and Silvestri voting against. Comm. Steele was absent.It should be noted that the resolution as stated in the agenda was not the resolution voted on. A last-minute set of major changes was made and this observer and the others in the audience did not have access to the new wording.

Sometime after this vote, the Board voted to award a red-light camera contract to Arizona-based American Traffic Solutions.

Although the Board meeting continued for a very long time, this observer left at 1:15.