Chicago Tribune Editorial A question that ought to concern voters is now on the table. As Cook County Board member Forrest Claypool phrased it at a board meeting Wednesday: "We don't know, essentially, who's running this government. ... It's the elephant in the room. Right now it might appear, and may in fact be, that unelected bureaucrats are making critical, important decisions that should be made by elected officials as a matter of public policy." Politics aside--as if politics ever can be pushed aside in county government--Cook County faces multiple moments of reckoning. A local government whose budget dwarfs that of many states is now leaderless. Board President John Stroger, felled by a stroke March 14, has not been seen publicly since. His son, Chicago Ald. Todd Stroger (8th), unambiguously told the Tribune in an interview last week that his father was not running county government. Todd Stroger said he expects his father to decide in July whether he will remain on November's general election ballot. There's irony in Claypool being the board member to ask the obvious question: So who's in charge here? In the March 21 primary contest to choose the Democratic nominee for County Board president, Claypool narrowly lost to the incapacitated John Stroger. How incapacitated, and for how long, nobody is saying. As we've said repeatedly, we wish President Stroger a fast and full recovery. He's a good man caught up in a health crisis. At the same time, problems are piling up at the county's chronically mismanaged government. Among them: The county faces the real prospect of a nurses' strike in its public-health system. First-quarter numbers suggest that the county may not be able to meet its budget. And with investigators now probing county government corruption, someone should be cleaning house aggressively--particularly at the county's dangerous and neglectful Juvenile Detention Center. Many of the county's problems stem from a lingering failure to execute long-term restructuring and streamlining of this flabby government. Earlier this year, a foolhardy majority of the County Board passed a dishonest budget so board incumbents could limp through the primary election looking competent. Since real revenue projections wouldn't allow them to balance the 2006 budget, they essentially invented higher projections. Now it looks as though those phony revenue estimates are coming home to roost. Taxpayers, don't try that clumsy stunt at home unless you want to learn all about words like "insolvency," "bankrupt" and "your honor." Cook County has to deal promptly with its financial failures now and for the long haul. Instead, this government festers in wasteful bloat because it has no real leader who is right-sizing its workforce. How long will it be before some members of the board start whining about the need for, yes, more tax revenues? Stroger's chief of staff, James Whigham, told reporters after Wednesday's meeting that John Stroger is in charge of county government. He said he had recently met with Stroger, although he wouldn't say what the two men had discussed--or even if it pertained to county government. A story in Thursday's Tribune included this priceless paragraph: "Asked if he could name one county-related decision Stroger has made in the last seven weeks, Whigham said he could, but he refused to say what that decision was." Whatever you say, Mr. Whigham. Just remember that nobody elected you to anything. And while Forrest Claypool is asking who's in charge, voters might want to ask a couple of companion questions: How long is too long for that leadership query to go unanswered?
And how big a crisis must occur before the void at Cook County
gets filled? |
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