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Cook County Budget Hearings Continue

10/31/2019

Cook County Board of Commissioners - Finance Committee
Departmental Budget Hearing
October 30, 2019:

Commissioners Absent: Deer, Gainer, Tobolski, Sean Morrison

Clerk of the Circuit Court: Dorothy Brown

Clerk’s office is still working on transfer of court case system to digital with Tyler Technology. Veterans Day 3 day weekend will go live with Crimiinal Courts, MLK weekend 2020 will be Civil Courts, and Kasamir Pulaski weekend will be Traffic Courts. Electronic Court Order System will occur in Spring of 2020.
Shakman update includes the Clerk’s filing of an interim employment plan in July with an exempt employee list filed. All 1400 employees have been trained on Shakman. They are in the process of training management on how to interview based on the interim plan. Their remaining job is to agree on the final employment plan and hire a Director of Compliance.
Clerk’s budget request is $8 million more than the President’s budget at $100 million. Most of the increase is due to the need to hire more court recorders since they are an aging workforce and have an absentee rate of 20% every day! They can only promote from within and need to hire more people to fill the lower positions. Much of this absenteeism is due to leaves of absence. She also needs more floaters for Cannabis Expungement paperwork, since the Public Defender plans to expunge 150,000 cases in 2020. They must inform police departments and individuals by mail. Contractual services will cost $359,000 more mostly for postage. New case filings have slightly increased and the number of e-filings has increased from 750,000 in 2018 to 2.7 million this year since it is now mandatory,
The clerk is trying to get all Cook County police departments to become E-sophisticated and issue electronic traffic tickets, although there is resistance due to the need for printers in police cars. There are 28 departments doing e-tickets with 16, including Chicago, yet to switch to electronic. The Clerk’s office has invested nearly 37,000 hours of training on electronic systems.
Com. Britton, an attorney, complained that e-filing at his office experienced 3 outages in 6 weeks. The Clerk explained that as they migrate to the cloud (called Odyssey) there are still glitches in the bridge programming with Tyler Technologies. Com. Anaya asked the Clerk to keep them abreast of Shakman developments. Com. Miller asked about negative balances in the Special Purpose Funds and Tanya Anthony explained the County is working at eliminating all these funds in each department’s budget. Com. Degnen asked very detailed questions about why Expungement help had to be full time, not temporary, how going electronic was supposed to eliminate headcount, not expand it, and why are there more cashiers, not fewer, since the County is increasingly going to electronic filing and payment with credit cards. The Clerk responded that the process was so complex in going digital that they have been trying to reduce people but for so many reasons, have been unable to.
Electronic kiosks will be available in all courtroom areas to help people find cases and courtroom numbers. Information will be available in Spanish, Polish, and English.

Recorder of Deeds: Ed Moody

Recorder Moody believes that the office will soon have Shakman compliance. Employees have been trained, they have job descriptions, and they have annual performance reviews. There is an Employment manual in place. His new Director of HR was head of the County’s Compliance office previously, so has much needed experience.
He believes the Recorder of Deeds office is fully ready to be merged with the County Clerk’s area within 2 months. He is ready for “lights off” in December of 2020.
The Recorder’s office has increased revenue and reduced costs, with 108 FTEs in 2019 versus 120 in 2018. He is requesting a budget 3% lower than 2019 and will bring $1 million back to the county this year. He believes he is on track to bring his actuals in at 15% below 2019 budget.
Outside expenses incurred for Professional Services are for converting the old Deed books from 1871-1959 to digital format (scanning) and moving microfilm deeds from 1959-1971, likewise to digital. These were emergency expenditures but 2020 needs will go through RFP process.
Coms. Anaya, Britton, Miller, and Degnen complemented Recorder Moody on a good job.

County Clerk: Karen Yarborough

Now voter signatures for filing petitions can be viewed on-line at various offices rather than having to come downtown to check. Birth certificates can be obtained on-line. The new voting machines have been universally praised by everyone who has tested them. They come in an easy-to-handle carrier.
Com. Anaya asked why the $1.5 million increase in special purpose fund, to which the response was, the election in 2020. Com. Degnen told the Clerk that her office was there to help in whatever way she could to make the merger with the Recorder go smoothly. Coms. Britton and Kevin Morrison thanked the Clerk for helping to get passed the Voter Participation Ordinance in time for the November 2020 election. There will be 7 early voting sites in jails next year.
Deputy Clerk of Elections, Ed Mikalowski said that due to a much better relationship with Chicago Board of Elections, voting records and communication will be much easier. He praised the LWV Cook County for helping to bring certain awareness and insight to the choice of voting machines.

Office of Inspector General: Patrick Blanchard

This office has 16 employees, with 2 at Metropolitan Water Reclamation District (MWRD) and 1 at Stroger. It handled 551 complaints in 2018 vs. 554 complaints so far in 2019. A 9% increase in salaries for 3 positions with a long standing salary disparity are included in this budget. MWRD services are billed on an hourly basis. They have done outreach and 70 trainings on filing internal complaints for MWRD employees (4 times more headcount than the Forest Preserve District). Quarterly reports of billing and complaints can be found online on the MWRD site and Cook County. This office also looks at employment plans on behalf of the Shakman rules to make sure departments are within compliance.

Observer - Amy Little

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Cook County Public Defender and State’s Attorney Present Program Evaluation Data at Budget Hearing

10/31/2019

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Cook County Board of Commissioners - Finance Committee
Departmental Budget Hearing
October 29, 2019

Commissioners Absent: Tobolski, Arroyo, Gainer

Public Defender Office
Public Defender Amy Campanelli spoke for almost an hour describing her philosophy, goals and results. This office has 22 divisions with 693 total staff comprised of 5 in Mental Health, 5 in Mitigation, 109 support staff, 58 in management, 59 investigators and 457 attorneys. Three of these positions are grant-funded; 60% of staff are women and 40% are minorities. In 2018 this office handled about 10,000 felony cases and 90,000 misdemeanor cases.

A McArthur grant, Loyola University, and Appleseed aid are helping with data analysis of programs and methods.
Campanelli is a big advocate of going to trial rather than plea bargaining. She said about 50% of defendants at trial are found not guilty. This holds for both bench trials and jury trials.
Police Station Representation Unit (PSRU): This fairly new program provides for 9 on-call attorneys who can be called to represent arrestees at every police station in Cook County 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. The intent is to provide immediate defense for arrestees at the police station, where it was found that 20% of the cases were “dismissed.” So far in 2019, there have been 767 station visits; the target goal for 2020 is 1350 which is dependent on how many are arrested and on arrestees making the call. The Public Defender has visited most police stations to put up posters that inform arrestees and ensure that police understand this new requirement.
Mental Health Unit: This new program is only getting started with one psychologist hired in September and 5 social workers needing to be hired. They will work with defendants with mental health issues. The Mental Health Courts are currently available only for felony cases; Campanelli would like this expanded to misdemeanor cases as well. She would like to expand to helping those with educational, housing and other needs as well as keeping students in school.

State’s Attorney Office
Kim Foxx heads this office and gave a brief overview and answered several questions from the commissioners. This office has hired a new Chief Data Officer to assemble and analyze felony case data on the “dashboard” system. It is to improve performance since you “can’t fix what you can’t measure” and to provide transparency.

The majority of cases this office deals with are related to mental illness or addiction of the defendant. There is a “revolving door” of these defendants involved with the criminal justice system. Domestic violence cases are down, which Foxx attributes to illegal immigrants not reporting for fear of being deported. The most referred crime to the State’s Attorney office is Guns and the associated violence.
The Gun Crime Strategies Unit concentrates mostly in Chicago and the south suburbs. It identifies those driving the gun violence. Since 2017, more attorneys have been moved from misdemeanor prosecution to this felony unit.
The Felony Review Unit is available 24 hours a day to review cases of those newly arrested for a felony. This must be done before the case can move forward.
The Expungement Unit reviews dismissed, overturned, etc. cases for record expungement. This will increase with the new marijuana law taking effect January 1, 2020. The office will proactively move to expunge or vacate cases and the records of those affected cases of low level drug possession. This process used to take 18 months but now is down to 10 months. Of the 770,000 affected records in Illinois, 72% are in Cook County. Also because of the new State law, more attorneys have been moved from Narcotics (now zero) to Felony and special prosecution.
Retail theft: Many police chiefs are concerned that felony retail theft is prosecuted down to misdemeanors or not prosecuted at all. Informally, the State’s Attorney has raised the level of prosecution to $1000. This is not a hard/fast rule. Local police can still request serial theft or other defendants be prosecuted. About 50% of retail theft cases are dismissed because the retailer and loss prevention officer do not show in court. They do not see the value of time and money spent going to court as long as they got the merchandise returned and they can prevent the thief from entering the store again. A suggestion brought up was to have municipalities issue a retail theft citation similar to a traffic citation and deal with it locally.

Observed by: Karin Hribar

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Public Airs Concerns with Healthcare And Mental Healthcare Access at Cook County Budget Hearing in Skokie

10/30/2019

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Cook County Public Hearing On The Proposed 2020 Executive Budget
Second District Courthouse, Skokie, Il
Monday, October 28,2019

Commissioners present: Britton, Silvestri, Daley, Suffredin, Sims, Deer and Miller.

There were nine public speakers.

Summary of the public’s concerns.

Dr. Dan Engle, Director of Access to Care, was concerned with the continuation of funds for this program, a nonprofit primary healthcare service for low income uninsured, and under insured individuals living in suburban Cook County and Northwest Chicago. He wanted to emphasis that all who need care whether primary care, laboratory needs, or radiology, have access to these services. The Commissioners said that Access to Care will be funded as it has been in past years. The Commissioners also said they have received many emails in support of this program. The Commissioners requested that Access to Care provide them with the number of uninsured patients.
There were four speakers who spoke in appreciation of the care they received at the Cook County Health Clinic in Arlington Heights, IL.
A Pastor from the south suburbs spoke of the importance of funding Cook County Health and Hospital services for mental health care especially psychiatric online services such as Telepsychiatry. Online access serves those who cannot or chose not to come into a healthcare facility.
Three speakers from The People’s Lobby, a member-driven organization of people across the Chicago region who believe that the well-being of people, the needs of the communities and the health of our planet should be the top priorities of our elected representatives. They are asking that programs that help the incarcerated population with mental health and other issues will continue to be funded. The Commissioners stated that they are committed to funding these programs.

Observer Nancy Marcus The Public Hearing lasted 45 minutes.

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Cook County Board Begins Budget Hearings on Proposed 2020 $6.18 Billion Budget

10/28/2019

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Cook County Board of Commissioners - Finance Committee
Departmental Budget Hearings
2020 Cook County Executive Budget Recommendation
October 28, 2019

Departments heard from: Chief Financial Officer and Budget Director for Budget Overview, Offices under the President, Treasurer, Cook County Land Bank Authority, Board of Review, and Office of the County Assessor

This is the first of several days during which the Finance Committee (composed of all 17 County Commissioners) is meeting with all County elected officials and their department heads to consider the Proposed Budget. Last week the League of Women Voters of Cook County submitted questions for some of the departments which Committee Chairman John Daley provided to the applicable department and has requested responses. For information on the questions click here.

Overview of President’s Proposed Budget

$6.18 Billion, composed of $2.84 Billion for Healthcare, $1.31 Billion for Public Safety, $527.9 Million for Annuity and Benefits, $491.6 Million for Capital Projects, $374.9 Million for Finance & Administration, $297,6 Million for Debt Repayment, $144.4 Million for Fixed Charges (expenses that are not attributable to any one department, such as utility costs) $113.9 Million for Property & Taxation, and $82.3 Million for Economic Development.
Healthcare and Public Safety make up 67% of the Total Budget
Position counts (“Full Time Equivalents” or “FTEs”) are proposed to decrease by 401 from 2019, for a total of 22,037 FTEs. These are all positions that are currently not filled.
There are no layoffs proposed and no proposed tax or fee increases

Board of Review (BoR) presents its case for $2.8 million more than President recommending

BoR reviews appeals from the property assessments of the Assessor
Commissioners Dan Patlak, Larry Rogers and Michael Cabonargi stated that BoR needs 35 more FTEs than the 142 budgeted for in order to (1) be able to deal with the expected increase in assessment appeals in time so that the 2nd installment tax bills can go out on time, and (2) reduce the amount of overtime and the corresponding wear and tear and loss of existing employees. Cost would be an additional $2.8 million above the proposed $13.5 million budget.
Number of appeals has almost doubled over last 10 years but FTE count has remained essentially flat. Technology has enabled BoR to handle the work increase, but BoR argues that at the end of efficiencies gained from technology and now need more FTEs.
Budget does have 16 more FTEs than 2019, but BoR asking for 35 more
County Commissioners were sympathetic because want to avoid delaying the 2nd installment property tax bill which would hurt all government bodies in Cook County (schools, municipal governments, libraries, park districts, etc.)
However, the question is where will extra money come from? Chairman Daley asked BoR for ideas that would not be a one-time revenue fix (such as TIF surplus) for a cost that will be ongoing

Assessor sees correlation between number of appeals and accuracy of initial assessments

Accordingly, his goal is to hire and train employees and provide better data tools and technology to improve the accuracy and fairness of assessments
Expects that this will take at least 3 years or more as each area of County is reassessed and trust in the assessments improves
Budget of $30 million is $1.6 million more than 2019 and has 17 additional FTEs
Cites new law which he championed that eliminates need for yearly senior exemption requests

Treasurer Pappas touts technology as allowing better services with continued reduction in FTEs

Celebrating 1 million visits to web site that provides information and allows public to do many things that used to require a phone call and/or visit to the Treasurer’s office. Among other tasks the public can do online: see and print out property tax bill; apply for refunds of overpayments; request name and address changes; view the web site in many different languages; see local government bodies financial statements; and make payments
More people now paying online than those making payments at Chase banks
Has 24 Deputy Treasurers from different ethnic backgrounds to help with the outreach being done to communities around the County

Observer: Priscilla Mims

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Cook County Budget Hearings Continue

Cook County Public Defender and State’s Attorney Present Program Evaluation Data at Budget Hearing

Public Airs Concerns with Healthcare And Mental Healthcare Access at Cook County Budget Hearing in Skokie

Cook County Board Begins Budget Hearings on Proposed 2020 $6.18 Billion Budget

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