CC Finance Committee Meeting on Proposed 2010 Budget, October 28, 2009: Auditor

The Office of the Auditor proposed budget has a 5% reduction and a reduction of 1 FTE from 2009 to 12. Upon questioning, the Auditor stated that 22 positions would be optimal. While the office has focused primarily on County departments involved with fee collection, the Auditor said that there might be even more benefit if her office was authorized to look at payroll and grants, and she was asked to submit her recommendations for staffing and responsibilities.

Commissioner Peraica stated that he supported giving this office, along with the Office of the Independent Inspector General, more funds.

--Submitted by Observer Pris Mims

CC Finance Committee Meeting on Proposed 2010 Budget, October 28, 2009: Public Defender

While the proposed budget of the Law Office of the Public Defender contains a $5 million increase over 2009 (a 9.9% increase), the Public Defender, retired Judge Abishi Cunningham, is seeking an additional $2.7 million, mainly to hire additional attorneys. Judge Cunningham asserted in a letter to Commissioners that by hiring more attorneys, the office could move cases faster that would result in a $14 million cost savings by cutting down the amount of time defendants spend in jail awaiting trial. The attorneys in his office dealing with felonies handle an average of 222 cases each. The American Bar Association (ABA) standard is 150. The attorneys in his office dealing with misdemeanors handle an average of 2,719 cases. The ABA standard is 400. 

The office has sought some grants, but has not been successful. Judge Cunningham wants a full-time grant writer.

There is also an issue of parity between starting salaries and supervisor salaries of asst. public defenders vs asst. state’s attorneys. It was suggested that Human Resources should do a comparison of jobs which would be the appropriate way to determine if parity was appropriate.

Commissioner Gainer suggested that the Public Defender should look to see how his supervisors’ pay compares to national standards. And any increase in pay should be implemented with a robust performance evaluation system.

Commissioner Peraica raised the issue of the huge costs in the budgets of the Public Defender, State’s Attorney, Chief Judge, Sheriff, and Circuit Court Clerk due to the number of people in the criminal court system charged with drug abuse charges (non-violent, self-abusers). I expect Commissioner Peraica will raise this with these other officials.

--Submitted by Observer Pris Mims

CC Finance Committee Meeting on Proposed 2010 Budget, October 28, 2009: Cook County Clerk

The Cook County Clerk's Office budget is less than 2008 for elections due to consolidation of precincts in suburban Cook County. The corporate fund request is down due to the Clerk’s office taking over the handling of birth and death records from the City of Chicago, which results in additional fee revenues that more than cover the proposed increase in expenditures. The Clerk also touted that the “genealogy online” feature of the Clerk’s web site is very popular. And there is another new feature on the web site where property tax payers whose parcels are in a TIF (Tax Increment Financing) district will be able to type in their pin numbers and find out how much of their property taxes are going into the TIF district. The Clerk’s office keeps track of all 430/440 TIF districts since this office is responsible for determining the EAV (equalized assessed valuation) for each taxing district and then calculating the tax rate for each district. Out of 1.8 million parcels, about 200,000 are in TIF districts.

Upon being questioned, Cook County Clerk David Orr stated that he favored consolidating the election functions of his office and the Chicago Board of Elections (whether under his office or a separate board) because it would make things less confusing for voters and it would save money.

--Submitted by Observer Pris Mims

CC Finance Committee Meeting on Proposed 2010 Budget, October 28, 2009: Chicago Board of Elections

The Chicago Board of Elections proposed budget is a 5% increase over 2008, the last comparable year when there was a primary and general election as there will be in 2010. This Board oversees all elections within Chicago. Suburban Cook County elections are overseen by the County Clerk. In addition to the money for the Chicago Board of Elections that will be funded by the Cook County budget (and the proposal is for $18.3 million), the City of Chicago also funds elections (and the proposal in the City budget is $17 million).

Changes to the election process per new Illinois laws that impact costs include providing early voting on Sunday at 2 additional sites besides downtown, a longer grace period voter registration, and requiring that voters be notified when they fail to vote for any of the Illinois Constitutional offices (governor, liuetenant. governor, attorney general, secretary of state, comptroller, and treasurer). In the case of the scanners for paper ballots, the scanner will initially reject the ballot with the message that there was an undervote. The voter can then take back the ballot and vote for one of the people running for the office or can ask that the election judge hit the override button so the machine will accept the ballot with the undervote.

Another major change is that Illinois now allows absentee ballots to be requested without the need for a reason. The expectation is that more and more people will take advantage of this so that the amount included in the budget for postage (to mail out the absentee ballots) has been increased. Illinois law has also increased the amount to be paid to election judges.

Commissioner Schneider questioned why there was a huge increase in the amounts proposed to cover benefits for the 4 employees included in the County budget (the other 124 employees are covered by the Chicago budget). The Risk Manager under the Bureau of Finance was asked to check this. Commissioner Gainer questioned why the Board of Elections has not attempted to consolidate any of the 2500 precincts (which would reduce costs). The chair said the Board wanted to wait to do this until after the wards are redistricted following the 2010 census.

--Submitted by Observer Pris Mims