Chicago Daily Observer

Tony Peraica proposed rolling back the Cook County sales tax in a July 22 meeting. The vote came to a roll-call and the Cook County board voted 10–7 to maintain the current sales tax, which is the highest sales tax in the United States.

The results are here:

Claypool (D-12th)
Quigley (D-10th)
Peraica (R-16th)
Gorman (R-17th)
Silvestri(R-9th)
Goslin, (R-14th)
Schneider (R-15th)

Collins, (D-1st)
Steele, (D-2nd)
Butler, (D-3rd)
Beavers, (D-4th)
Sims, (D-5th)
Murphy, (D-6th)
Moreno, (D-7th)
Maldonado, (D-8th)
Daley, (D-11th)
Suffredin, (D-13th)

The audit comes in response to a Chicago Sun-Times report on highway Supt. Rupert Graham’s order requiring road repair crews to observe “no-drive” days twice a month to save fuel.

The policy calls for road repairers, who make about $62,000 a year, to spend every other Wednesday doing odd jobs at district garages.

Opening a Thursday news conference, Cook County Board President Todd Stroger boasted that after just 18 months on the job, he had successfully fulfilled his three main campaign promises:

• Turning over control of the juvenile center to the chief judge;

• Giving the hospital system to an independent board;

• And creating an independent inspector general’s office.

Trouble is, Stroger didn’t make most of the promises.

Cook County voters could be forgiven for not remembering they’re supposed to elect a new top prosecutor this fall.

Since her solid win in the nasty, expensive Democratic primary for state’s attorney, career prosecutor Anita Alvarez has kept a pretty low public profile. That’s because she’s been playing it safe and smart, traveling the county to meet with party committeemen and raise money. After all, if she gets the Democratic organization behind her she’ll win handily, especially with Barack Obama at the top of the ticket.

I heard Tony Peraica’s presentation at the City Club of Chicago earlier this week. Inured to campaign speeches since I first started covering them in 1953, fifty-five years ago, I thought I’d load up on good Italian food and meet some old friends while Tony would recite a list of campaign truisms.

But what I heard was jaw-droppingly good. After years of watching this county shrug off misfeasance, malfeasance, nonfeasance and incompetence with widespread waste of taxpayers’ money, for the first time in many years I heard one who knows the ins and outs of county government, is articulate, forthright and energetic. He is far better than the most recent Republicans to run for state’s attorney. Ben Adamowski was determined to get even with Richard J. Daley for a feud they had when both were in the legislature. In fact if there was any vote-fraud of consequence in the 1960 ... Read More...

Why do so many in the party insist that millions of votes in two key states be counted only if they don’t matter — that is, if the result is a fait accompli — and not be counted if they do?

If they were counted now — even if some of them were counted now — things might be quite different. According to the Real Clear Politics total, when one includes estimated vote totals in caucus states (a factor which favors Obama) plus results from Florida (which favor Clinton), but nothing from Michigan, where Obama’s name was not on the ballot, Obama’s lead in the national popular vote is 411,915. That figure is less than Obama’s margin of victory in his home of Cook County, Illinois, where, according to the Illinois Board of Elections, Obama won by 429,052 votes. By other counts, Obama’s lead is far less than his winning ... Read More...

For decades, the Cook County hospital system has been crippled by politics—doctors, administrators, funding and programs have long needed the approval of political overseers before becoming part of the structure.

But in a matter of weeks, the troubled health care operation will be taken over by a group of nine outsiders, described by many as independent and non-political.

Campaign finance records show that the 20 candidates to fill those nine slots have contributed more than $200,000 to various Illinois politicians in the last nine years. Of that, they’ve delivered more than $25,000 to Cook County officials—half donated to campaign committees supporting County Board President Todd Stroger and various members of the County Board.

Cook County Board President Todd Stroger has two weeks to name directors to a new, independent board to oversee the county’s vast Bureau of Health Services, which critics contend is a patronage-laden fiefdom controlled by 8th Ward Democrats….....Here’s the list:

*Dr. David Ansell, vice president and chief medical officer at Rush University Medical Center

*Fernando Grillo, former secretary of the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation

*Warren Batts, retired Premark International CEO

*Dr. Carl Bell, president and CEO of Community Mental Health Council & Foundation Inc.

*Norman Bobins, chairman emeritus of LaSalle Bank Corp.

*Daniel Cantrell, who is on the staff of U.S. Rep. Danny Davis (D-Ill.)

*David Carvalho, deputy director of the Illinois Dept. of Public Health

*Margaret Davis, executive director of the Healthcare Consortium of Illinois

*Dr. Joseph Flaherty, dean of the College of Medicine at University of Illinois-Chicago

*Quin Golden, former chief of staff ... Read More...

Why didn’t someone tell us sooner that we could free ourselves from the clutches of Cook County?

Yes, it’s legally possible, but practically impossible, for suburban townships to secede from the county and its oppressive taxes, bloated payrolls, insider dealings and pathetic leadership. Still, it might be worth the effort. After all, if you can’t beat them, leave them.

Several Palatine government officials, pushed to the limit by the county’s recent sales tax increase, which may send shoppers scooting across the county line into adjacent Lake County, are discussing secession as something more than a stunt. Lost business and lost sales tax revenues are the price that the village and its businesses may pay for Cook County’s budgetary dereliction and other mischief.

On March 5 GOP county committeemen elected a political neophyte, Lee Roupas, the chairman of the Cook county Republican party. With the backing of former chair Liz Gorman and ally Maureen Murphy, among others. he received roughly 102,000 votes to defeat long-time GOP loyalist and Northfield township committeewoman June O’Donoghue, who received 74,000 votes.

Roupas says he’ll work to strengthen the county GOP, but initial signs aren’t encouraging. I sincerely hope I’m proven wrong, as I want to see a revitalized county GOP to counterbalance Democratic corruption.

So I’m puzzled and disheartened by what county Republicans apparently consider to be qualified leadership. Roupas was head of the Young Republicans at George Washington University in 2004. That same year he lost a race for president of the student association in a 32–68 per cent landslide. In 2006 Roupas fresh out of college was elected committeeman for Palos ... Read More...

Larry Suffredin reminds us once again that there is no such thing as an effective and pure reformer in Chicago. And anyone who claims to be one is going to end up a liar.

True, in certain parts of the Chicago area, it’s helpful to campaign as a reformer. Voters think they want someone who will talk about standing up to machine Democrats, fighting for fairness and openness, and trying to cut waste out of government.

Cook County Board President Todd Stroger appears to have enough votes to pass a series of tax increases today.

But it remains unclear whether he is willing to make the concessions needed to close the deal.

County budget deal ready if Stroger agrees

Commissioners and labor union leaders say Stroger will get the votes if he:

• • Scales back his plan to increase spending 7 percent and add 1,100 new employees to the payroll.

Two days after the wreckage of Alan Keyes’ 2004 senate candidacy Michael Sneed posed a question in her Sun-Times column, asking, “Is a new Republican Party in Illinois looming?”

Republican fundraiser Thomas Grusecki told Sneed at the time, “the unfunny joke is over. It’s time to rebuild, but without (Keyes). We need fresh blood and new leadership and to get this back to a two-party system.”

Unfortunately, well over three years later, the answer to Sneed’s question is still “no.” New leadership, yes. Rebuilding, no. And certainly no two-party system. That may finally be changing. Under party rules Republican county chairman Liz Gorman must convene the 50 Chicago ward committeemen and 30 suburban township committeemen by March 5 to elect a county chairman.

Though only 80 people will cast ballots, a political contest to be held within days will have a major
effect on Cook County politics, for better ... Read More...

The returns from Florida last night caused me to contemplate the significance of the upcoming Illinois primary February 5. . Although there seem to be some spirited primary fights on the Democratic ballot, other than force of habit what would possess many conservative voters to request Republican ballots when they arrive at their precinct polling places? For many voters, the primary has been reduced to nothing more than a beauty contest.

In the race for the presidential nomination, Senator John McCain (R-Az) has seized the momentum and may be nearly unstoppable. Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney remain in the field, but they are trailing McCain. Both men may be campaigning for the silver medal, the vice president nomination at this point.

Unless you reside in an outlying suburban legislative district, there may not be a candidate for the Illinois ... Read More...

Larry Suffredin wants to be the next Cook County state’s attorney and says he’d fight corruption. But as a lobbyist, he’s been working for a man implicated in a mob bombing

Larry Suffredin—a self-styled reformer running for Cook County state’s attorney—lobbied for a landfill controlled by Fred Bruno Barbara, a businessman once charged with extortion and implicated in the mob bombing of a restaurant, the Sun-Times has learned.

The race for commissioner of the Cook County Board of Review is getting a little ridiculous, as each day seems to bring a new flyer from the candidates raising issues that bear no relevance to the office.

Over the weekend, for instance, I got a mailing from incumbent commissioner Joseph Berrios telling me that Berrios favors “clean air and water” and “better schools.”

That came on the heels of a mailing from Berrios calling for a property tax freeze.

Cook County’s hospitals and clinics would be turned over to a seven-member board of health professionals who would have taxing authority but whose budgets would still be ultimately approved by the Cook County board, under a proposal made public this week.

Well, it may be a new year, but Cook County government has some nagging old business left to settle. There’s the not so trivial matter of passing a budget for the fiscal year that began on December 1, 2007. Being over a month into the new fiscal year without a budget is problematic, even more worrisome is the fact that negotiations appear to be at a standstill. The holdup is over how to fill a $288 million deficit—almost 10 percent of the County’s $2.9 billion operating budget.

Some critics will say so what, deriding Cook County as nothing more than a retirement home for precinct captains. Now, there’s certainly more than a little truth in that accusation. That said, the media fixation with the “friends and family” approach to patronage at the County completely obfuscates the essential services County delivers, including such basics as the criminal justice system. Then there’s ... Read More...

The term “ecumenical,” defined as “tending to support and encourage unity between the various types of the Christian religion,” has often been applied to governance. After all, government tends to work best when ecumenical principles at least season its processes.

Cook County Republican Party Chairman Elizabeth “Liz” Gorman appears more than willing to routinely accommodate Democrats. If only she would spare some of that ecumenical fervor for her own political party. It certainly could use more unity.

With the debacle in the Democratic controlled state house and Governor’s mansion, the exposure of gross mismanagement of the CTA and other agencies under Mayor Richard Daley, and Todd Stroger exhibiting a stunning amalgam of ineptness and arrogance as he shafts taxpayers for the benefit of his inner circle at the Cook County building, you’d think that county Republicans would see a chance to finally begin breaking the hammerlock Democrats have developed ... Read More...

One month and counting. The mail has been delivered and I am still waiting for a promised government document to reach me. Tomorrow. Maybe tomorrow.

Feeling like a character out of the fictional works of Franz Kafka, I am obliged to interact and interface with various and sundry bureaucrats and clerks. One can spend hours trying to get necessary papers from the bloated county government. Lawyers derisively refer to the “Circus Court of Cook County” and dread having to retrieve files from the office of the Circuit Court Clerk, Dorothy Brown. One of my friends is a circuit court judge. He’s described the clerks as the bane of a judge’s existence I have decided to keep him anonymous, so he won’t be subjected to retaliatory conduct in the form of slower clerical responses and more mislaid files.

Abandon all hope ye who have to read the handwritten tract book entries ... Read More...