Capital Budget Reviewed at Cook County Board Budget Hearings

Cook County Board Finance Committee - Departmental Budget Hearings - October 29 
 
Public Hearing
Capital Budget
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Commissioners Present - Suffredin, Daley, Boykin, Gainer, Schneider, Morrison, Moddy, Arroyo, Silvestri, Moore for the majority of the meeting.  Sims arrived at 10:15, Deere arrived at 11:10.  Most of the relevant probing questions came from Boykin, Suffredin, Gainer, and Daley.

Public Hearing:   Comments from the Public:

• Aleisha Hill, a patient from Woodlawn Health and Hospitals talked about her wonderful, supportive care.
• Dr. Maurice Lemon, from Access to Care board, testified that Cook County Health does a heroic job giving care to uninsured folks.  There are 500,000 uninsured folks still in Cook County, and increasingly high deductible but insured patients make up a substantial portion of clients. Suffredin asked what ACESS is doing to raise other funds. $750M comes from private donors, and about $3M from Loyola.
• Lawrence Msall from Civic Federation spoke in favor of the 2019 budget.  He complimented the county on no increase in taxes, and their responsibly paying supplemental pension contributions even though it was not mandated by law.  The Civic Federation recommends pension payments be mandated by law so that future administrations could not cut it, they support County Care, suggested that the Oak Forest Health property be shut down, and suggested that more data was needed from the criminal justice system to be able to understand how the jail population had decreased by 40% but that expenses were not commensurate.  Suffredin asked if it might make sense to break up the county budget into thirds:  Cook County Health, criminal justice, and the rest of Cook County?  Msall thought it might shed more light on things.  Boykin asked if there was an ability to correlate criminal violence with public health.  Msall did not know of a measurement that currently exists.  Gainer asked the Budget Director why there are no ratios for inmates at the jail versus employees.  She responded that closing three divisions within the jail will reduce employment and redeploy manpower.  Cook County is doing a study on the entire jail campus, including assets and operations, which should be finished in the next couple of months.  2018 overtime has been reduced by $70M, due to reduction in managing home checks by staff, according to the sheriff.  Msall offered that Washington DC and Winnebago county have greatly reduced criminal justice costs and recidivism, and would make sense to study these examples.
• Esther Corpus, the CEO of Alivio Medical Center, which handles 85,000 visits per year at six offices spoke.  7,000 of their patients have insurance or County Care but the rest have no insurance.  Suffredin asked how County Care worked with Alivio compared to BlueCross/BlueShield (BCBS).  Corpus said that County Care was involved with every step of the illness and treatment while BCBS was distant, uninvolved, except at the end for billing.
• Craig Rosenbaum, attorney who represents Court Interpreters, asked for an increase in the budget to hire more full time interpreters.  He said Polish interpreters are particularly unavailable.  There are only 27 FT interpreters and his bargaining unit is asking for 39 FT within this 2019 budget.
• Ruby Pinto, from the Chicago Community Bond Fund, spoke about how reforms in bond court are having a positive effect.  But she complained that the Sheriff’s budget has increased per capita per inmate from $24 K to $59 K.  Chicago Community Bond Fund is funded by donations while the organization is sustainable because the bonds that are fronted are repaid.  Suffredin asked what reforms the group would recommend.  Ms. Pinto suggested a more proactive Pre-Trial services group could greatly reduce recitivism.  She also suggested the County look at Washington DC court system reforms.  Gainer asked if the group could provide specific proposals for reform, and Ms. Pinto agreed to do that.
• Donny Anderson representing the blind vendors complained that they were being cut out of contracts.  Jessica Caffrey of Capital Budget Department agreed to work with them on inclusion.

Capital Budget  

• Ammar Rizki, CFO, discussed the accomplishments in 2018:  CC has reduced its debt by $400M,  CC has stopped funding what always should have been operating expenses (assets with less than a five  year life, like computers) with long term debt.  As a result the County has a much better bond rating and lower interest rates for AAA ratings have significantly reduced Cook County’s costs for debt.  Debt has been reduced 11% from 2011 to 2018.
• The Asset Manager described 210 unique properties of which 50 are leased.  2018 saw the demolition of Jail divisions 1 and 1A. The department assessed all 210 properties to determine priorities for maintenance and replacement.  45% of capital improvements will be for public safety (including jails), 38% will be for health systems, and 17% for corporate investments. In the past 2 years, the county has constructed a new 9 story healthcare facility, renovated bond courts using in-house trades to save money, relocated clerk and elections to a high efficiency space to Cicero, among its cost-saving projects.  The budget for 2019 is $2,041M.
• The Transportation and Highways Department has a budget of $183M.  Cook County decided several years ago to stop diverting the Motor Fuel Tax to other programs to direct it back to highways and transportation.  This means that the county has been able to secure federal and state matching grants of $53M, and has also worked with townships and local authorities to plan better for projects that enhance Cook County’s role as North America’s freight capital.  The Cook County Transportation and Highway dept has become the coordinating lead agency to work with state, federal and local groups on projects, apparently a greatly-improved position from previous years, according to all the accolades from commissioners for John Yonan, the superintendent.  Boykin asked about correlation of transportation dollars to jobs created.  Yonan said the rule of thumb is 13 jobs created for every $1M spent. 
• The Chief Information Officer Tom Lynch, echoed the better accounting practice of financing computers and cell phones with operating funds rather than long term debt.  Major IT systems like the Clerk of the Circuit Court system, were financed by debt.  Suffredin said that according to Clerk Brown, the new system was a disaster, and Suffredin agreed that it was awful for attorneys to e-file.  Lynch said it was the learning curve, and that it was particularly cumbersome for pro se filers (individuals) because the language is many times obscure Latin, and not presented in layman’s terms.  Suffredin worried that attorneys could choose to file in other counties like DuPage and Lake, rather than having to deal with Cook County’s back-up.  Apparently self-filers are slowing the system down and attorneys can’t file quickly.  Suffredin worried if suits were filed in other counties it would adversely affect county finances.

Observer - Amy Little                                             Meeting Length - 3 hours