Cook County Board Finance Committee - Departmental Budget Hearings
October 24, 2018

Cook County Assessor
​Cook County Treasurer
Chicago Board of Elections
Clerk of the Circuit Court
Office of the Secretary to the Board

There were 10 Cook County Commissioners present.

Cook County Assessor: Joseph Berrios                            
Budget Highlights:

• The department’s proposed budget of 25.4 million is within the county target
• Planned technological enhancements will allow this office to operate more efficiently. 
• Develop and implement Property Tax system with other county agencies for full launch expected in 2020.
• Fraud unit is working well to make sure people are not defrauding the system. Approximately $35 Million have been collected.
• Working to create new tools and policies that will aid in the development of more affordable housing countywide.

Comments:
The Commissioners thanked Assessor Berrios for his serve.

Cook County Treasurer: Maria Pappas
Budget Highlights:

• FY2019 will be the 18th consecutive year that the Treasurer’s Office has reduced its budget above and beyond the budgetary targets requested.
• Very proud of the fact that all of the IT services are done in house. 
• Technological improvements have reduced costs, and improved services
• Treasurers collect $14 billion each year in taxes from owners of more than 1.8 million parcels of property.

Comments:
Maria Pappas, commented that tax bills are being sent out in a timely matter and more and more people are accessing their bills and paying their bills online. March Bills will be online in December. This has saved the county money. Commissioners pointed out that all of the IT work is done in house and this has saved the County money. They also noted that the Cook County Treasurer’s Website is very user friendly.

Chicago Board of Election: Lance Gough, Executive Director
Budget Highlights:

• In 2019, key operations of the Board of elections will involve managing the municipal elections and runoffs in February and April.
• The City of Chicago will bear the full costs of the 2019 Municipal Elections

Comments:
Board of Elections is continuing to grow online registrations. There has been an increase of early voting in the city and a growing participation in Vote by Mail. Commissioners asked whether new voting machines would be ready for the February and April elections. Mr. Gough responded that they will not be ready and the City of Chicago will be using the same equipment that is being used for the November 2018 Election. New equipment will be ready for the 2020 Presidential Election. He is confident that the new equipment will be secure. There was also discussion concerning the lack of polling places and judges in the City. Chicago is moving towards Voting Centers. Condominiums and schools do not want to open their spaces for voting. He said that the Super Site on West Washington is working well.

Clerk of the Circuit Court -  Dorothy Brown
Budget Highlights:

• Removal of furlough days
• There has been a reduction in staff
• Implementation of the required eFilelL system, has caused significant difficulties for the Clerks’ office. This is due to the complexity of the system along with the volume of cases filed in Cook County.
• Case Management System (CMS) will serve all areas of law to advance technology and improve efficiency while reducing costs, improve efficiency of court operations, improve customer service, and enhance information access offered to the public.  Criminal division will go live by March 2019, and all other areas of law will go live by November 2019.

Comments:
Dorothy Brown commented that as of July 2018, e-Filing has become mandatory for all civil areas of law. This system has caused difficulties for the Clerk’s office as the staff has had to provide extra-specialized customer service assistants to both self-represented litigants and attorneys, in order for them to e-File successfully. The challenge is not having enough employees to help. The Commissioners suggested that perhaps they might need to charge for providing help. They also suggested that a printed quick reference card or TV presentation with directions as to how to use the system could be implemented. It was noted that this system was created first for smaller counties, and then implemented for use in Cook County. Dorothy Brown would like to hire more people but cannot until they meet the budget requirement concerning the furlough days. 

Office of the Secretary to the Board - Matthew De Leon
Budget Highlights:

• Full time employees will remain the same for FY2019

Matthew De Leon reported on the Highlights of last year some of which are as follows:

• Redesigned Secretary to the Board website to improve access to information.
• Completed media inventory of 35-year collection of audio and video recordings transferred from Department of Facilities Management.
• Replaced the 50 year old sound system
• Created virtual record of paper documents for all 2016 and 2017 County and Forest Preserve Board meetings.
• Goal for the Archives Advisory Committee
• Began process for County 2031: Cook County’s: Bicentennial Celebration.

Matthew De Leon presented a power point presentation of some of the old archive materials for the Bicentennial Celebration in 2031. You can go to Legistar to see this presentation.

​Commissioners had suggestions for the Board meetings and the boardroom

• During the meetings, the President or person leading the meeting should announce not only the item number but the page it is on, for example when referring to an item, such as item 18-111, you include that this item is on page 10 of the agenda. This will be helpful for commissioners that leave the room or  for an audience member that arrives after the Board meeting has started.   
• ADA compliance needs to be done
• Railing on stairs down to where the Commissioners sit
• Clock with a timer

Matthew De Leon stated that some of these request would be handled at the Capital Budget Hearing on Friday October 26.

Observer: Nancy Marcus (11:00-2:00 with an hour break for lunch)

Cook County Board Finance Committee - Departmental Budget Review
October 24, 2018

Board of Review

Commissioners absent: Butler, Fritchey, Goslin, Gainer and Garcia.

Board of Review Commissioners Rogers, Patlak and Cabonargi, presented the following:.

• There were 228,000 assessment appeals filed this year which is a 10% increase over last year.
• They asked to hire 11 new employees. 
• They presented charts showing 3 years of the digital appeals process which clearly demonstrated geographic areas that have never filed appeals. The goal is to reach out to those communities. Homes with no WiFi are less likely to appeal. 
• A problem is when homeowners appeal and get relief, the neighboring homeowners pick up the extra tax to meet the overall tax levy. 

Com Suffredin stated that a fairer system is needed.  When asked if the department was all right with the CC Board President’s budget, the response was yes.

When asked what areas they would like to grow/improve, the review board stated that they would like to have a separate PTELL unit (I believe it is currently 6 people). The PTELL unit defends challenges. If the Board of Review could have a larger PTELL unit, it could more effectively defend challenges, and that would recover more money for the county which would fund local schools and municipalities.  The Board of review asked for $90,000 for its appraisal budget.  It also suggested that an additional $750,000 to fund the PTELL defense budget would generate about $1 million for the county. In other words, it would pay for itself.   One of the commissioners said that as the county is doing well with revenue (sounded like it was due to increased revenue from sales tax), that it made sense to fund extra money for the Board of Review which would ultimately pay for itself. 

Observer - Laura Davis

Cook County Board Finance Committee - July 24, 2018 
Midyear Budget Hearing - Day 2 - Morning Session

 I arrived right at 9AM for the hearings and there were 2 commissioners present (Suffredin and Morrison) other than Chariman Daley. Seven more arrived by 9:30AM and 3 more by 11AM. Absent for the entire morning session were Commissioners Goslin, Gainer, Butler, and Fritchey.  Commissioner Sims asked everyone the core mission of his or her department and if there was any waste to cut. She did this even when both questions were answered in the original presentation. Commissioner Morrison asked everyone what new taxes they would propose, if any. Most took no stand on this issue.

Board of Review (BoR): I came in just as their presentation was wrapping up, but  I heard all of the questions.

• Their budget is only 1% of the whole county’s budget so any increase in personnel should be considered, according to the 3 BoR Commissioners present (Patlak, Rogers, and Cabonargi).
• Their biggest problem was losing experienced analysts in the past year. They would like 11 new ones.
• Their staff picked up 16,00 extra overtime hours in the past year and were not given more money for this. This was equal to 13 FTE’s.
• Most of the hearing was about community events called workshops in which the tax appeals  process was explained to the public. Many commissioners participated in these events. Also the B of R said it was a good way for staff to see the properties that were being discussed. More appeals are to be expected this year.

The Assessor: This presentation and Q and A session was extremely short. It lasted maybe 15 minutes.

• Assessor Berrios said he would have no trouble keeping within his budget this year due to new technology. This has helped to eliminate positions that became unnecessary.
• Commissioners seemed focused on Senior exemptions and the process that it entails. Ways of simplifying the process were mentioned.

Cook County Health and Hospitals System (CCHHS): A short report was given to each commissioner.

• Dr. Shannon said that no new revenues would be requested this year or for FY 2019. They will live within their budget mainly due to the fact that they now have 330,000 new patients enrolled in County Care (up from 270,000). Most new patients come with Medicaid funds which includes federal reimbursement for now.
• They have been able to solve any deficit spending by renegotiating contracts with vendors.
• Some of their proudest achievements other than the above include getting Cermak hospital out from under its consent decree (this is the jail hospital at Cook County Jail), a technology award for having all patient records electronically filed, and for expanding its charity care (care to those with no insurance at all). 
• In addition, the future looks to be one of 5-6% growth for a number of reasons. They expect more community centered clinics, especially those that deal with dialysis and dental care, and they have taken on the mental health services for kids in the JTDC (juvenile detention).
• They also hope to get to the underlying causes of bad health such as poor diet, housing and lack of job opportunity. He did not say exactly how a health care system would manage those issues, but he is working to obtain grants to study these issues.
• He is working on a better system of bill collection to alleviate previous problems.
• Comm. Boykin asked about the issue of gun violence as a health epidemic and what CCHHS was doing about it. Dr. Shannon listed many solutions. He said that he agreed with the commissioner and cited last weekend’s shooting statistics: 20 of 35 shooting victims were taken to Stroger.
• He said that in the case of a juvenile detainee, CCHHS was linking services he was getting while incarcerated with those out in the community once he was released.
• CCHHS is expanding its care under Mental and Behavioral issues in order to treat the whole person. This would include linking that patient with substance abuse programs and programs for depression or anxiety.
• CCHHS is working with Westside United and Rush Hospital in order to improve health in several west side neighborhoods.

At one point the hearing got a bit controversial as Commissioner Moore asked about a lawsuit against a doctor in a malpractice case. States Attorney Kim Foxx, who was on deck to speak next, answered that this matter was in litigation and could not be discussed in open hearing. Chairman Daley stifled any more conversation on this issue.

State’s Attorney:  Presentation was given by Cook County States Attorney Kim Foxx.

• Ms. Foxx said that this past year has been tough because last summer she missed an entire hiring cycle. Most of her new hires come in the summer after new grads finish law school and the bar exam. She was down in staff since her office did not have enough money to hire last summer. This summer is better and she is trying to live within her current budget.
• In FY 2019 she would like $1.97M more to hire 20 FTE’s.
• On civil cases she needs more experienced lawyers since she represents every county employee who needs defending. The conviction integrity unit has only 5 attorneys and 268 new cases came in this year. Her attorneys have 2-4x the amount of cases recommended by the American Bar Association.
• The SA Office also has attorneys working with the Chicago Police Department (CPD)  on intelligence gathering in the Englewood and Harrison districts in order to solve gun crimes. Training CPD and suburban police chiefs in how to gather evidence can save money if there are less faulty convictions.
• Comm. Suffredin commended her for doing a good job. 
• Ms. Foxx appealed to simple math often. Hiring outside counsel, she said would cost anywhere from $300 to $500 per hour on civil cases. Her attorneys cost about $90 per hour.

The Public Defender (PD): Presentation given by Cook County Public Defender Amy Campanell. She put up a big poster board with her core mission and with a list of some of the duties performed by her office.

• Ms. Campanelli  said that in FY2018 positions that were vacant for a long time were slowly being filled and that she was on target to live within her current budget.
• She wanted more staff in FY 2019  especially to start a mental health unit, but did not give a specific price tag unless asked.  She said that she had asked for this several years in a row . She now had a business plan worked up in which she would use student interns who were psychology or social work majors at local universities to help. Their assistance would be at no cost to the county. Early psych evaluations can also speed up the disposition of many cases. Comm. Deer asked her how much a mental health unit would cost the county. She said that she could do it for a mere $225,000. This would save money at trial since many psych professionals testify at a cost of $500 per hour.
• She also noted that now the PD is on call for arrestees in every police district in Chicago. She even gave out the PD phone number several times. A recent survey of 120 arrestees showed that 22 were released because the arrests should never have happened. This saves the county money. PD’s helped this to happen.
• She has also asked for more grant money to employ social workers and more lawyers to work with detainees awaiting trial who might be in danger of losing custody of their children.

Observer - Jan Goldberg