The 2007 Budget

For years Cook County government has been notorious for waste, bloat, corruption, and fiscal mismanagement. Facing a $503 million dollar budget deficit for FY 2007, questions have been raised as to how the county got into this mess in the first place. Each year the President has a fiduciary responsibility to present a balanced budget.

Once the negotiations between the Board of Commissioners and the President are complete, the final budget is voted on and passed and the presumption is that the budget is balanced, as required by law. It is clear, with a $503 million deficit, that previous budgets were not in fact balanced! Administrators responsible for the county budget apparently engaged in deception.

What is the reason for the deficit? Subsequent news stories have revealed that the Cook County Bureau of Health has failed for years to bill patients and collect Medicaid reimbursements for medical services provided to patients. It was also revealed recently that hundreds of boxes of uncollected bills that could have been processed for payment were “found” by administrators.

According to a Bureau of Health Services report dated 3/28/07 one contractor, ESI was given "approximately 550,000 Accounts that total $124 Million of Gross Patient Revenue." One outside contractor was given 550,000 accounts because county staff failed to bill patients receiving care at Stroger Hospital. So, it safe to conclude that years of gross mismanagement at the Bureau of Health resulted in the budget deficit that appeared out of nowhere in 2007.

The FY 2007 budget debate offered two distinctly different plans dealing with the county’s $503 million dollar deficit. President Stroger presented an initial budget that cut many frontline personnel like doctors, nurses, police, prosecutors and public defenders on top of destroying the healthcare safety net by closing many of the community health care clinics that provide care for the poor.

Commissioner Claypool along with eleven other commissioners presented an alternative omnibus budget amendment that sought to balance the budget by cutting over 300 highly paid politically connected “paper pushers” (many of whom were responsible for the budget deficit in the first place), and retaining doctors, nurses, prosecutors, and public defenders. Twelve Commissioners, including Forrest, stood up at a press conference with frontline employees in jeopardy of losing their jobs, and endorsed the alternative omnibus budget amendment over President Stroger’s irresponsible budget.

On February 10, Commissioners Quigley, Gorman, Goslin and Silvestri switched sides and voted for President Stroger’s budget, which protected politically connected upper management personnel and sacrificed frontline personnel. These same commissioners then proceeded to vote against the very amendment they publicly supported a week prior, resulting in the defeat of our omnibus budget amendment 10 to 7.

The budget cuts will have the biggest impact on the poor residents of Cook County who can not afford health insurance. County hospitals and clinics are their only alternative. Prior to the 2007 budget debates, the previous Stroger administration claimed that there was a nursing shortage and that overcrowding at Stroger was an acute problem. Now, the new administration is laying-off over 100 nurses and closing clinics, which will only increase already unacceptable wait times and cause more overcrowding at Stroger hospital.

Law enforcement services also will suffer. Nearly a hundred sheriff’s deputies were laid off and four dozen prosecutors were fired, meaning fewer people to catch the criminals and fewer to put them behind bars.