Tuning out Todd

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Chicago Tribune Editorial
February 14, 2007

During his inaugural address on Dec. 4, Cook County Board President Todd Stroger made some worthwhile promises. He said he would slay the "sacred cows in Cook County government" and balance its 2007 budget without a tax increase: "[T]oday we are brought together by a shared goal--and for me, a solemn oath--to reshape our county government, and to have the courage and resolve to make bold changes. ..."

Since that noble verbiage, though, Stroger and his top lieutenants have behaved as if they're frantic to demolish the image of a reformer that he initially tried to project. And those sacred cows--many of them Democratic precinct captains--are still feeding on county hay (and pay).

Stroger's proposed budget, rather than slaughtering needless herds of political hacks in the county bureaucracy, instead tilts toward cutting frontline service workers. And his Stroger Friends and Family Plan, with top jobs awarded to his cronies, has betrayed voters who had trusted his campaign lip service to reform.

Then, as if spoiling to offend citizens who care about green spaces, Stroger staged an arguably illegal raid on $13 million of Forest Preserve District money to help balance the county's budget. In that fiasco, County Board members--wearing their other hats as forest preserve overseers--essentially robbed the district in order to benefit their other government. Gross conflict of self-interests? Breach of fiduciary duty to the forest district? Note that county finance chair John Daley and forest preserves finance chair Michael Quigley stayed on the legal side of their oaths to protect the preserves by voting against Stroger's raid.

What's increasingly obvious is that Stroger lacks the maturity and skill to lead the reform agenda his inaugural speechwriters promised.

As a result, board members are stepping forward to reshape his budget. Late Tuesday, 10 of the 17 commissioners completed an omnibus budget amendment that would cut administrative jobs from the county's budget while restoring money for health professionals, prosecutors, public defenders, sheriff's police officers and other service providers. The 10 co-sponsors are Forrest Claypool, Earlean Collins, Liz Gorman, Gregg Goslin, Joan Patricia Murphy, Tony Peraica, Quigley, Timothy Schneider, Robert Steele and Larry Suffredin.

The board members' initiative is partly a matter of tuning out an increasingly clumsy Todd Stroger, partly an acknowledgment that there aren't enough votes on the board for a tax increase. If those votes ever existed--we doubt it--Stroger's hiring and promotion of so many high-paid pals and relatives has made the mere notion of tax hikes that much more toxic. Are taxpayers supposed to give more money to an institution where nepotism and patronage are arrogantly celebrated as the boss' favorite sport?

County Board members are required to adopt a budget by the end of this month. The instant they do, they face a much more bracing requirement: to streamline county government so the same budget debacle doesn't play out for 2008.