Cook County Board of Commissioners Finance Committee - Departmental Budget Hearings
October 26, 2017 

Public Defender
Clerk of the Court

Commissioners absent for all or most of the meetings:  Butler, Fritchey, Goslin, Moore (arrived 2:10), and Schneider (Gainer also absent for Clerk of the Court)
Commissioners present:  Arroyo, Boykin, Daley, Deer, Gainer, Garcia, Moody, Morrison, Silvestri, Sims, Suffredin, Tobolski

Items of Interest in Meeting with Public Defender:

• Public Defender Amy Campanelli was passionate as she argued that nothing should be cut from that office’s budget.  Obligated to provide effective representation.  Her public defenders (“pds”) already carry a case load far higher than American Bar Association guidelines:  no more than 15 homicide cases vs. 19 carried by her pds; no more than 150 felony cases vs. 255 carried by her pds; and no more than 400 misdemeanor cases vs. 780 carried by her pds.
• 95% of Public Defender’s budget is personnel.  Would have to eliminate 60 currently vacant positions plus 50 layoffs to reach 10% reduction ($7.6 million).  But then County would have to hire outside attorneys at higher costs than those spent on pds.  Comm. Silvestri asked that she quantify the costs to the County if did reduce her pds.
• Comm. Boykin pressed on claim that couldn’t cut budget by even $1, zeroing in on some supervisory personnel and the vacancies.  Public Defender and Budget Director explained that Public Defender not allowed to hire for vacancies due to budget constraints in 2017, such as the turnover adjustment which lowers amount of the total salaries that had been budgeted.  Public Defender said that covering for vacant positions currently, but need them as cannot continue to do and provide effective representation.
• Comm. Morrison asked whether savings if close branch courts and/or some of suburban courthouses.  Public Defender said yes, but have to weigh the savings against burden on defendants and witnesses getting to court, especially where no public transportation available.  Maywood and Markham courthouses already very busy and may not be able to pick up more cases.
• Concurred with State’s Attorney that video conferencing for status calls, as suggested by Sheriff to save money, would not be allowed under Constitution.  But said would like ability for the public defenders to video conference with clients in jail so could save the time taken to physically go to jail.  Have equipment on her end.  Need Sheriff to agree and provide a private room with equipment for the clients in jail.  Comm. Gainer said she and Comm. Garcia would follow up with Sheriff.

Items of interest at Meeting with Clerk of the Court:

• As of January 1, 2018, all filings will need to be electronic. Clerk of the Court Dorothy Brown said that eventually this will enable further cuts to staff, but not now as older cases still have paper and all those have to be electronically imaged.
• Said would meet request to cut budget by 10%, but some of savings would be by furlough days, which would require union agreement.  Also, part of potential savings is collecting $13.1 million from Chicago, which, upon questioning from Commissioners, appears unlikely to be collected.
• Comm. Morrison stated that his intention is to have each Elected Official determine where the cuts will be made, but the Board will be determining the total amount of the cuts.  He suggested that the Clerk look to the ratio of managers to employees, which he calculates at 1/8.5 when best practices suggest 1/15-20.  The Clerk of the Court questioned his calculation.  
• Comm. Morrison also questioned why an Inspector General Office within the Clerk’s area when the County already has such an office.  The Clerk said that her office does more than handle complaints, such as working with State’s Attorney on chain of custody for evidence.  Clerk Brown also stated that she needs to have control over her people, and that also explains why she needs to have her own human resources group, rather than utilize the County’s.  Comm. Suffredin, Silvestri, and Tobolski also questioned need for these functions, plus purchasing and information technology, in the Clerk’s office vs. consolidating with the County’s.  Clerk Brown, unlike the State’s Attorney, Sheriff, and Public Defender, said that closing branch or suburban courts would not reduce costs in her area, but was not asked to explain why.
• Information that she will provide: ratio of supervisors to employees; number of employees by location; number of employees absent on average each day.

​Observer - Pris Mims

Cook County Board of Commissioners Finance Committee - Departmental Budget Hearings
October 27, 2017 

Office of the Chief Judge 

Commissioners absent for all or most of meeting:  Morrison, Butler, Goslin, Fritchey, Gainer
Commissioners present:  Suffredin, Boykin, Moody, Silvestri, Schneider, Garcia, Sims, Moore, Deer, Daley, Arroyo, Tobolski

Items of Interest: 
Chief Judge Tim Evans stated that he has complied with the request to cut 10% of his budget, which would be about $26.4 million.  He noted that he had already cut 4% of his budget prior to this request which made the cuts $37 million.  The Budget Director, Tanya Anthony, disagrees with his budget cut figures.

• Chief Judge Evans has proposed the following cuts/savings:

                          1. eliminate almost all 148 open (vacant) positions
                          2. 20 furlough days per employee to be staggered (so no one would lose their job)
                          3. close one branch court (at Belmont and Western)

• Although Evans states that $9 million can be saved by closing a branch court, the Budget Director disputes this since $5 million—for needed repair and upkeep— of this comes from the Capital Budget, not the Operating Budget.  She also  claimed that closing 4 of the 5 branch courts would only save $3.5 million.
• The furlough days would have to be negotiated with the Unions representing these employees.  This may be a difficult task.  If all 20 furlough days are agreed to, this would save $13 million.

Evans explained how his office has changed Bond Court procedures:

• By selecting 7 all new Bond Court judges, 
• By using the new risk assessment (PSA) to determine who gets released on bond or held in jail, 
• By instructing judges to eliminate cash bond if defendants can not afford the amount and are not deemed a risk.

After one month of this procedural change, there were 844 fewer defendants in jail, I-Bonds (individuals released without bail) were up from 24.6% to 49.4%; cash bonds lowered from 46% to 22%; Electronic Monitoring down 27% to 14%.  Also only 2% of those released had new criminal activity and only 3% did not appear in court as instructed.  However this only measured two week’s time.  Evans will collect data on this over the next year to see the effect of the new Bond system.

Questioning by commissioners resulted in the following discussions:

• The mortgage foreclosure program is cut in this budget, so how will it be “wound down? (Comm. Suffredin)
• Will the unified psychiatric program for juveniles continue? (Yes, with a bridge RFP to be requested at  November’s Board meeting) (Comm. Suffredin)
• Judge Evans needs to provide the mental health information from the Juvenile Temporary Detention Center (JTDC) as requested a while ago (Comm. Garcia)
• There was a request for a copy of Evans’ productivity study (efficiency, judicial use of time, use of resources, etc) which is on-going using the CORE tool system—no date set to finish this study (Comm. Schneider)
• It was noted that there are 320 supervisors each earning over $100,000 and the ratio of supervisor to staff is 1 to 7.  Best practice is 1 to 12.    (Comm. Schneider)
• A suggestion was made to Judge Evans to stagger court start times for more efficiency and convenience of attorneys and defendants (start times of 9, 11, 1, 3 instead of all cases starting only at 9:00 and 1:00) (Comm. Schneider)
• Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) use is extremely high at the JTDC—28% are on intermittent leave, which makes staffing difficult.  No good solution was offered by Evans or JTDC Director Dixon. (Comm. Schneider)
• Judge Evans stated that Human Resources, IT, and Procurement within his office could not be combined with the County as these must be judicial employees who do this work. (Comm. Silvestri)
• There is no Inspector General for this office.  Judge Evans stated he has people to investigate misconduct (Comm. Silvestri)
• Judge Evans expressed opposition to a suggestion for video status hearings so that transportation and guard costs could be decreased. (Comm. Boykin)

Observer - Karin Hribar

Cook County Board of Commissioners Finance Committee - Departmental Budget Hearings
October 25, 2017

Office of the Sheriff of Cook County

Commissioners absent for all or most of the meetings:  Butler, Goslin,  & Schneider. 
Commissioners present:  Arroyo, Boykin, Daley, Deer, Fritchey, Gainer, Garcia, Moody, Moore, Morrison, Schneider, Silvestri, & Tobolski.  Suffredin and Sims arrived at about 11:35am.

Comm. Daley, Finance Committee Chairman, presided over meeting.​
Items of Interest:  

• Sheriff Dart talked about how the role of sheriff has expanded:  The Sheriff’s police force found a drowning victim in the forest preserve that had eluded the Forest Preserve Police.  The Sheriff’s police force now does policing for Ford Heights, Robbins, and Dalton.   While the Sheriff’s office overlaps responsibility with CPS and Cermak Mental Health Clinic, they do not control the programs and must work in tandem with other entities.  The Cook County Sheriff’s police force is also patrolling as supplementary to the CPD in certain areas like Englewood.
• Sheriff Dart said that FMLA (Family and Medical Leave Act) and IOD (Injury on Duty) were the number one reasons for overtime and overstaffing .

The Sheriff’s big ideas for reducing the budget were:  

• Possible consolidation of the Forest Preserve police with the Sheriff’s police.
• Potentially shutting down one or more of the satellite branch courthouses that exist in Skokie, Bridgeview, Schaumburg,  155 West 51st Street, and other locations, depending on the age and usage.  Morrison pointed out that many of the courtrooms are underutilized in these locations.  It would cost far less to transport families to another courtroom than transport the inmate to these locations.
• Allowing videoconferencing for status hearings  to reduce bus rides of inmates for 20 seconds of courtroom time.  This is allowed in many other criminal systems.
• Shutting down more divisions that house inmates at the jail due to reduced population.

A few discussions:

• Commissioner Morrison brought up supervisor to hourly employee ratios and produced stats that said Dart’s staffing was top heavy.  Dart said he wanted to see the source because he had been searching for benchmarks.
• Commissioner Silvestri was interested in Dart’s sharing some IT or HR costs with the president’s office to save money.
• Commissioner Gainer asked pointed questions about the recent contract negotiations and who was exactly present and how there had occurred a misunderstanding.  Dart had wanted changes in hours required work, vacation and holiday pay, and several other things.  These were considered “Work Rules” while the President’s HR lead was responsible for “economic” issues.  Dart was grateful to have been included in the union negotiations but unhappy they had not been there at the final agreement signing.  
• Commissioner Gainer said that since 80% of the County’s costs are based on labor costs, and this was the first negotiated contract (still not presented to the Board for approval yet, so not final), they had to get a better handle on costs going forward and include the elected departments through the end of the contract.

Observer - Amy Little (left shortly before end of meeting)

​Cook County Board of Commissioners Finance Committee - Departmental Budget Hearings
October 23, 2017

Bureau of Finance
Auditor
Director of Administrative Hearings
Public Administrator

Commissioners absent for all or most of the meetings:  Butler and Goslin
Commissioners present:  Arroyo, Boykin, Daley, Deer, Fritchey, Gainer, Garcia, Moody, Moore, Morrison, Schneider, Silvestri, Sims, Suffredin, Tobolski 

Items of Interest: 
This was the first budget meeting with departments since the Executive (proposed) budget was presented to the Board.  Accordingly, the Bureau of Finance gave an overview of the budget before presenting the individual department budgets within the Bureau.

• This budget (and all the numbers listed in this report) does not reflect the repeal of the Sweetened Beverage Tax, which occurred after the President presented this budget.  A number of Commissioners complained that they wished the budget had been redone to reflect this change.  The Budget Director committed to working with them to craft amendments to balance the final budget.
• The gap resulting from the repeal is $173.4 million for the General Fund plus $27.2 million from the Health Fund for a total of $200.6 million that has to be made up in the Operating Budget.
• The total proposed budget of $5.36 Billion (up from $4.8 Billion in 2017) is composed of
  • Operating Budget of $ 4.914 Billion
  • Capital Budget of $476.5 million
• The Operating Budget, in turn, broken down by control officer, is 

               Health & Hospitals System (“HHS”) restricted expenditures
                                             (which cannot be reduced by the Board):                                  $1,205.1 million
               HHS non-restricted operating:                                                                                   $  848.0 million
               Sheriff:                                                                                                                           $  625.4 million
               Fixed Charges (includes pension costs, reserves legal settlements,
                                      and other costs not directly assigned to departments)                    $   541.6 million
              Offices under the President:                                                                                         $  306.1 million
              Chief Judge:                                                                                                                     $   264.2 million
              State’s Attorney:                                                                                                             $    123.3 million
              Clerk of the Circuit Court:                                                                                              $   105.6 million
              Assessor:                                                                                                                          $     27.5 million
              Board of Review:                                                                                                             $      11.5 million
              County Clerk:                                                                                                                   $      11.2 million
              Board of Commissioners:                                                                                               $      8.3 million
              Recorder of Deeds:                                                                                                          $      7.1 million
              Treasurer:                                                                                                                           $      1.1 million

• While the Fixed Charges category has been reduced from that of past years to assign individual departments health and other benefit costs, Comm. Gainer hopes that next year pension costs will also be assigned so the true costs of employees will be known.
• The Bureau of Finance is composed of the Chief Financial Officer and departments of Revenue, Risk Management, Budget & Management Services, Comptroller, Contract Compliance, and Procurement.
• Comm. Schneider and Morrison, among others, questioned the Dept. of Revenue’s proposal to add 3 FTE’s (Full Time Equivalents) which were originally to administer the Sweetened Beverage Tax, and now are to be used to assist in collecting the other Home Rule taxes.  The Dept. estimates that these additional FTE’s would result in an additional $3 million in revenues to the County.  Comm. Morrison thinks that far more could be collected by investigating businesses who should no longer have the 212 Tax Incentive.  However, this is administered by the Assessor.  The Dept. of Revenue’s budget is $9 million, but it brings in $485 million in taxes owed to the County through its collection and audit activities.
• Comm. Fritchey commented that several years ago the Board had passed an ordinance requiring that zero-based budgeting be used.  Under that, rather than each department starting from the prior year’s budget and adjusting upward or downward, each department would have started from $0 and then justify each proposed expenditure.  The ordinance was radically changed in 2015, and Comm. Fritchey argued that the County would be better off if the original ordinance has been fully enacted.
• Comm. Fritchey also wanted to know when the County last had a serious conversation with Chicago about partnering to reduce costs.  Some of the easy efficiencies have been accomplished.
• Comm. Boykin and Silvestri questioned whether significant cost savings could be achieved by consolidating functions, such as Human Resources and Technology.  For example, Procurement handles all, except for HHS, which has its own.  
• Comm. Schneider questioned what had happened to the $386 million in savings to the County as a result of the County reducing its support of HHS over the past 7 years (from $486 million to $110 million proposed for 2018).  The CFO said he would be glad to explain it to him outside of this meeting.
• Chairman Daley requested, prior to the start of these budget meetings, that each Elected Official and the HHS submit a proposal for reducing their budgets by 10% as a result of the repeal of the Sweetened Beverage Tax.  The President’s Chief of Staff appeared to explain how all the Offices under the President would do so by cutting some areas under the President, and not others, and by increasing some revenues, such as by increased enforcement activities in the Dept. of Revenue.  He also identified potential risks and consequences of making the cuts, such as putting at risk the Medical Examiner’s accreditation that was recently received.
• The separate Department of Administrative Hearings, which adjudicates county-issued tickets for infractions of ordinances, continues to be a low-cost way of bringing in revenues to the County, saving all entities the costs of going to court.  For 2018, it will also be adjudicating tickets written by Amtrak and the BNSF Railway Police, which should result in $100,000 to $150,000 in additional revenues.  In addition, as a result of a change in Illinois law in 2017, this Department can also hear cases arising out of municipal code violations, and it will be reaching out to municipalities in Cook County to see if they would like the Department to take this function over for them.

The slide presentations at each of these meetings are available under “Meeting Details” for each meeting listed by date. In addition, there you can find any applicable responses to Chairman Daley’s letter requesting a 10% reduction in the budget.

Observer - Priscilla Mims