October 4th Cook County Bd & Pres. Saving Money

Much of this meeting involved financial issues of the county--deficits in the budget and lower than expected revenues. A presentation by the Civic Consulting Alliance ( a pro bono civic task force which includes Commissioner Fritchey) was well received by the Board. Twenty working groups are investigating and recommending ways that city-county collaboration can save both governments money. Eleven million in savings has been identified already--combined purchasing, janitorial services, health care clinics are examples. Savings will be reflected in the upcoming budget. This group plans a 3-4 year process.

The 3rd quarter revenue report showed that the county was not meeting budget revenues, being $73 million down in revenue collection. Much of this amount is due to the Health and Hospital System not collecting from patients and from the state Medicaid program. This has been an on-going problem in the system. The Department of Revenue is pursuing businesses that aren't registered and paying appropriate taxes to the county. They will be given a pass on back penalties and interest if they now register and pay back taxes due. Cigarette tax enforcement has been stepped up with the addition of five sheriff's police going with county officials to investigate and collect the taxes. It appears that weapons and threats by some cigarette sellers were of concern to the tax inspectors.

Redeploy Illinois is a program which would promote alternatives to jail for non-violent offenders. This would involve house arrest, more community services for offenders, etc. The county is waiting for Judge Evans to complete the grant application so this program can get started to save the county money and be more effective for offenders.

Again, it was difficult for this observer and other audience members to follow all that was discussed and voted on during this meeting. The finance agenda was not available until the meeting had already begun and the last minute amendments were not available to the audience. This observer did notice that several commissioners made the effort to name and summarize agenda items that were voted on, rather than just state meaningless item numbers.

All commissioners were present at this meeting except Commissioners Silvestri and Tobolski.