2015 Cook County Budget Department Review: Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management
October 29, 2015
On Oct. 29th, the Department of Homeland Security and
Emergency Management met with the Finance Committee to discuss its budget. Commissioners Boykin, Tobolski, Morrison, Arroyo,
Suffredin, Steele, and Schneider were present. All but Commissioner Schneider asked questions.
All welcomed the new Director, Ernest Brown, who has only been on the job for
2 weeks. All stated that they looked forward to working with him in the
future. To answer many of his questions, Mr. Brown deferred to his Chief of
Staff and his Finance Director. The purpose of this department is to
respond to both natural and man-made disasters.
Three STAR goals were stated for this department in
the budget book. They include more training courses for first responders,
sharing notifications for federal grants with other county departments, and
improving the arrival time for emergency personnel. Commissioner Suffredin was
the only one to quote STAR goals in his questions, although Commissioner
Steele did refer to including more types of personnel in the training courses.
Commissioner Steele asked if funeral directors, religious leaders, and
hospital workers could be included with the other first responders (police and
fire fighters, for example) because they, too, should be trained in keeping
communities calm and cared for in an emergency. Mr. Brown seemed to agree that
including the community leaders in training was a good idea. Comm. Steele also asked if
Mr. Brown had met with Dr. King, the director of the Illinois Medical
District, since she works with bio-tech issues and wants to be part of this
department’s work. Mr. Brown agreed to meet with her.
Commissioner Suffredin spent a good deal of time
asking about specific federal grants, since most of this department’s budget
is from such grants. He asked about the STAR goal of sharing grants. The
Finance Director said that he would share notification for the application for
such grants with other CC Departments such as the jail, forest preserves, and
the state’s attorneys’ office. He also asked about the STAR goal of improving
deployment times for emergency personnel. The budget showed a target
last year of 14 minutes, yet the current goal was 60 minutes. The
director said that he wanted the target to be “realistic” and that last year’s
target was not.
Commissioner Tobolski praised the former Director,
Michael Masters, for his work in uniting the 134 communities of Cook County in
writing preparedness plans for evacuations and emergency planning. He said
that without such plans, emergency aid does not come through from the federal
government. He asked if we were currently prepared enough for such emergencies. Mr. Brown assured him that we were and said he appreciated the
need for all communities to work together on this.
A good deal of time was spent discussing what this
department CANNOT do. Grant money from the federal government comes with some
very specific stipulations, said the director. So when Commissioner Boykin
asked if some money could be spent combating “narco-terrorism” (pipeline of
hard drugs coming right into Chicago), the director said that he shares the
concern over this problem, but his department cannot use grant money for it.
The director did note that he works with the Sheriff’s department on
communications and technical projects. Commissioner Suffredin also asked if
some money could be used to combat the recent heroin epidemic (especially the
overdosing on “bad” heroin). Again the director said that grant money could
not be used for this purpose.
There was some discussion of the high salaries of some of
the employees in this department, especially those who were paid with grant
money. The director said that some personnel are highly technical computer
experts who are trained to combat cyberterrorism, a real threat. He said that
he was competing with the private sector for some of these experts.
Director Brown thanked the committee for the opportunity to
explain his department’s budget and promised to be much more prepared next
year, when he had more than 2 weeks on the job.
Submitted by Jan Goldberg
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