Cook County Board Meeting January 21, 2015

The Zoning and Building Committee met at 10 am and lasted until past 11:30 am.  The most controversial item was the proposed rezoning of a planned unit development (PUD) to use 44 acres of its golf course to become another PUD.  The States Attorney had previously ruled that this was allowed, but there was great controversy as to the precedent this would set, since it would mean that all other PUDs in Illinois could be changed and amended as developers find opportunity.  Typically a PUD includes open land to offset denser housing development, and it had been thought that once a PUD was developed, it could not be changed. There were many public speakers. In the end the proposal was sent back to the Zoning Board of Appeals so that petitions could be validated and entered into the public record.

The consent calendar was finally approved at 1:55pm

The Finance Committee convened and a budget update was presented by Lawrence Wilson, Comptroller. Revenue is down from the Recorder of Deeds office due to fewer building transfers.  Cook County healthcare system contributions are up by $89 million. The Comptroller is still not receiving timely financial data from the Clerk of the Circuit Court.

Jay Shannon, CEO of CCHHS, did not yet have his Health and Hospital Systems Board report. Doug Elwell, VP of Finance and Strategy, talked about lower than expected ACA membership, and believed that people had not re-applied for healthcare from last year. They anticipated 125,000 enrolled in ACA and currently have only 100,000.  Collections are strong from fee-for-service Medicaid co-pays. More people are using outside services and clinics versus Cook County Hospital and its clinics. HHS is working on improving the patient experience to encourage users to choose County Healthcare clinics over neighborhood clinics.

An ordinance was passed to allow prosecution of METRA fare evaders to be tried in Cook County courts with the County collecting half of each $100 fine.

The Roads and Bridges Committee met.  A motion was passed to allow the county to bring up to standard and then turn over small, odd parcels of county land to local authorities who can better maintain that property. John Yonan, Transportation supervisor, described the current situation where the county is actually at times fined by local municipalities for failure to maintain these odd parcels.  He endorses turning over these parcels to the local governments.  Parcels include shoulders of certain highways and grass triangles between highway ramps, etc.

By the time the Board agenda was discussed, Commissioners Gainer and Goslin were absent, as was Garcia.  Two items were moved to the Legislative Committee: the Judicial Discretion in Juvenile Transfer resolution and the Inspector General review of Rabies and Animal Control department.  Most items were moved to various committees as the commissioners appeared to be weary of being in the meeting already most of the day.

The board had to reconsider a previously passed bill to increase the minimum wage because Commissioner Schneider had been absent and had therefor been noted as voting yes on the resolution. He and Commissioner Gorman voted no on increasing the minimum wage.  The resolution still passed.

Commissioner Suffredin’s proposed amendment to move the consent agenda to the end of the Board meetings was sent to the Rules Committee.

The Wage Theft ordinance was sent to the Finance Committee.

Cook County is taking advantage of Community Development Block Grants to bring more federal monies to Cook County, and audits were approved to assess and evaluate the administrators of those funds. 

A change in the Alcoholic Liquor Ordinance was sent to the Finance Committee.

The only item that was discussed thoroughly was the awarding of debt collection service contracts to four vendors.  These vendors had been reviewed and audited by the Chief Procurement Officer, Shannon Andrews, and Victoria Gomez, the Chief Auditor.  Systems are now in place to track the reliability of vendors’ use of minority and women owned businesses to perform services.  Cook County has recently spent considerable monies ($75 million) to upgrade the tracking system of its vendors so that records are now reliable. Commissioner Sims claimed that she had received a letter claiming that one of these vendors, Penn Credit, had used fewer than 12% MWBE sub-contractors and that Penn Credit should not have been chosen. Victoria Gomez said the Audit department had flagged the low % MWBE usage and sent a letter to Penn Credit, who have corrected their MWBE usage for the last 3 months now since the letter.

Commissioner Tobolski stated that every commissioner should receive the same letter, and that now there is faith in Cook County systems and it can track MWBE usage with reliable data, the board needs to back the system and approve the debt collection agencies.

Commissioner Suffredin was worried that one of the vendors, Alliance, had been sued over its aggressive debt collection tactics, and had to pay $1.4 million in damages to injured parties.  He suggested that the States Attorneys office perform the debt collection rather than paying vendors to do it.  The Northern District of IL States Attorney’s office had collected $100 million for its jurisdiction and he suggested that Cook County States Attorney office could do the same.

Shannon Andrews stated that each of the four vendors was MWBE compliant, as well as qualified in other aspects like ability to do the job efficiently and best previous contract compliance.

Commissioner Gainer asked that Shannon Andrews include the projected fiscal impact of using the debt collection agencies. Andrews said the impact would be $8 million to the positive.

Commissioner Schneider said that Cook County has good dedicated employees and systems in place now in procurement and contract audit, and that the County should support the process of awarding contracts. 

Commissioner Boykin requested that each vendor be voted on with a roll call vote. Commissioners Sims, Boykin, and Suffredin voted no on all four  vendors.  They were joined by Commissioners Murphy and Steele voting no on Penn Credit and Alliance.

A letter was received from the Attorney General saying Cook County needed to change its way of voting under the Open Meetings Act to make sure that the Board of Commissioners voted on resolutions and ordinances, not just the committees.

Submitted by Amy Little