Category: State's Attorney Office

Midyear Budget Hearings Continue with Cook County State's Attorney Presentation

8/2/2020

Cook County Board of Commissioners Finance Committee
Mid-Year Budget Hearings - July 28, 2020

State’s Attorney

General Information
Revenues - Revenue was $238,000; that is down $178,667 which is a 42.3% variance.
Expenses - Actual expenses were $59,343,256 which is variance of 4.3% ($2.7 Million)
Holdback Target - Holdback target achieved

Other information of interest:

State’s Attorney’s Office (SAO) fees consist entirely of certain fees for felony and misdemeanor convictions in the Circuit Court and imposed by judges. Revenue has historically begun to decrease. The trend points to a continued decline; court closures due to Covid19 has exacerbated the decline.
Most hiring for attorneys occurs after the July bar exam so vacancies are carried in the first half of a fiscal year which represent the variance. Prior to mandated FY2020 appropriation reduction due to Covid19, the office rescinded 43 attorney offers that were tentatively planned to occur between Aug-Sept., and negotiated 75 delayed hiring of vacant positions to meet target reductions due to Covid19. Less expenditure payment requests associated with case activity, supplies, operations and delayed maintenance has resulted in decreased expenses until normal operations resume.
The SAO Case Management System is in the review stage; expectation is that the proposal will come before the Board in FY2020.
Holdback target was met by delayed hiring on open positions, non-personnel reductions, and estimated savings from furloughs.
SAO piloted Paperless Digital First project during the office closures; Its success has resulted in rolling out the approach to the entire criminal and special protection bureaus so that information can move throughout the supply and information chain without paper and those underlying costs.

Observer - Carolyn Cosentino

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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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No Expected New Taxes or Fees Projected for 2020 Cook County Budget

7/26/2019

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Mid-Year Budget Hearings of the Finance Committee of the Cook County Board
July 17 and 24, 2019

Over these 2 days, the Finance Committee (composed of all 17 members of the Board and chaired by John Daley) met with each elected official, bureau chief and major department head to go over the expected revenues and expenses at the end of the 2019 budget year (Nov. 30, 2019), and what was expected for 2020.

Highlights from these meetings:

Overall: It is expected that the County will end this fiscal year in the black, and no new taxes or fees will be needed to balance the budget for the upcoming 2020 fiscal year.

Projections are that the General Fund will have a $14.9 million net favorable. Currently, there is a projected deficit of $103 million in the Health Fund; however, Cook County Health has a plan to eliminate that deficit by the end of this fiscal year.
Looking to the 2020 fiscal year, the current projections of revenues and expenses would result in a gap of $11.9 million for the General Fund and $6.8 million for the Health Fund, or a $18.7 million deficit. Very small compared to past years.
Over the next several months, the Budget Department will be working with all areas to eliminate that deficit and produce a balanced budget from the President, as required by law.

Cook County Health (CCH):

Commissioners had many questions for CCH representatives. Message was that CCH needs to do a much better job of providing information to Commissioners, who stated that they want to help CCH, but cannot do so without accurate information. A separate hearing is being held on July 25 with CCH representatives, and they were told to provide clear and accurate information.
Plan to eliminate 2019 projected deficit of $103 million involves receiving funds from Medicaid to provide graduate training ($77.3 million in revenues) and not filling some positions ($26 million in reduced expenses).
CCH providing health services for more uninsured patients than in past several years; about 45% of the patients; Medicaid enrollment down across Cook County; State has been slow to process applications, but seeing an uptick.
Long-standing issue of CCH not getting full reimbursements from insurance companies for those patients who are insured continues; continuing issue of not coding properly. More and better information wanted by Commissioners.
Commissioner Moore had questions about providers of County Care (the Medicaid HMO run by CCH) not being paid because those providers not coding properly according to CCH.

Chief Judge: Asked to respond to Chicago Supt. of Police’s claim that too many people are being arrested for violent crimes and being released on electronic monitoring, Chief Judge Timothy Evans provided these statistics:

In the 15 months since judges began using the new assessment tool:
37,233 people have come before the court
30,466 have been released
only 70 have been subsequently accused of violating the order of release (less than .2%)

Sheriff: Questions raised as to why, with significant reduction in daily jail population (from 11,000/d a few years ago to 5,600 to 5,900/d now) there hasn’t been more cost reductions in Sheriff’s budget for the jail.

State’s Attorney:

SA Kimberly Fox stressed that office using data to make decisions on staffing and prioritizing work. Top priority are cases involving violent crimes, which are up 1% this year. Convictions for crimes involving guns up 9% this year.
Now available on www.cookcountystatesattorney.org/dashboard is information regarding number of felony cases initiated, disposed of, and sentencing results, which you can get by year and by Commissioner district, along with other information. This is updated every day.
Highest number of potential felony crimes by far is retail theft. Largely because threshold for felony is $300 in Illinois, much lower than surrounding states. To keep focus and resources on violent crimes, most of these lower value retail theft cases are instead being dealt with as misdemeanors.
SA Fox said that 770,000 prior convictions in Illinois for cannabis usage may be eligible for expungement under new law; 72% of these in Cook County. Not sure how to staff to take care of this.

Public Defender: While will not exceed budget for 2019, PD Amy Campanelli said that will be pushing for more money than President’s Office wants for 2020, in part to start an immigration unit with 4 new staff members. These would represent those charged with crimes (whom they are representing anyway in State courts in Cook County) at Federal immigration detention hearings. Cites statistic that have a 90% chance of no detention if have a lawyer and 90% chance of detention if do not. Would not work past detention hearing, but leave to pro bono immigration attorneys to handle the rest of Federal cases.

County Clerk (elections):

More registered voters in Cook County than ever before.
New voting equipment tried in 3 townships in April local elections was very well received. Will be used throughout suburban Cook County in 2020 primary and general elections.
Assured Commissioners that confident that election security in place.
In change from past practice, Clerk’s office will not allow people on ballot who do not have the requisite number of petition signatures. Previously, allowed people on ballot unless someone successfully challenged.

County Clerk and Recorder merger in December 2020:

Working groups formed to deal with various issues that have to be addressed.
After merger, Clerk expects to be able to provide recorder services at 2 satellite locations closed by utilizing existing Clerk’s personnel through cross-training.
Both Clerk and Recorder said they understood the need for Recorder’s office to come into substantial compliance under Shakman cases prior to merger.

Observer: Priscilla Mims

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Cook County State's Attorney Requests Additional Funds to Hire 16 Attorneys

10/28/2018

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

State’s Attorney

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

State's Attorney (SA) Kim Fox stated that:

Her department inherited over $2 million debt and has paid down 1/2 of that debt so far.
Her strong focus is on data and evidence, integrity and transparency.
The Cook County prosecutor office is second in the country, after LA.
They have a Conviction Integrity Unit and referenced 50 people wrongly convicted. She mentioned the importance of rebuilding trust.
They have an 85% conviction rate in gun cases (up from 50%). Her focus is on violent crime. Misdemeanor cases are being looked at as there is a high number.
Best practice is 400 cases per Assistant State's Attorney (ASA) Cook County ASA’s have about 3000 cases. Further, about 50% end in dismissal. A lot has to do with the need for victims to show up in court. There is no mechanism to screen out dismissal cases.
About 250,000 cases come from suburbs.

Com. Daley and Silvestri asked about Electronic Monitoring (EM). SA Fox said that she has no position regarding consolidating or what the difference is between EM from the Judges or Sheriffs departments.

There was a question regarding the money spent on outside counsel, which is significantly different between inside or outside counsel. SA Fox asked for money to hire 16 attorneys (the number that was lost previously). This would allow her to decrease outside counsel and save money. Request is for $945,000 up to $1.3 million for FTE’s.

SA Fox discussed a felony review guidebook for Chicago Police Department with the goal to have consistency with charging.

Suffredin asked about the revenue generated from civil diversion: Narcotic forfeiture fund (modeled after New York) and the Records automation fund where money comes from the state. More money is not being generated because they don’t have enough resources.

SA Fox discussed community justice centers for the south and west sides. Idea is to invest resource in prosecutorial engagement. Prosecutor office is involved at the end of the process rather than front end. SA Fox wants more money for resources to put in crime reduction investment and prevention.

Observer - Laura Davis

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Cook County Budget Hearings Continue for Second Day

7/30/2018

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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

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Cook County State's Attorney Will Cut Budget if Forced to but the County Could End Up Paying More

10/30/2017

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

State’s Attorney
County Clerk
Chicago Board of Elections

Commissioners absent for all or most of the meetings: Butler, Goslin, Schneider and Suffredin (arrived 3:40 during Clerk’s meeting and stayed for Board of Elections)

Commissioners present: Arroyo, Boykin*, Daley*, Deer*, Fritchey, Gainer, Garcia*, Moody*, Moore*, Morrison, Silvestri, Sims*, Tobolski* (* indicates that these Commissioners were also present during the meetings with the Clerk and/or Board of Elections)

Items of Interest at State’s Attorney meeting:

State’s Attorney’s letter outlined how up to 10% of the office’s budget (equal to $12.3 million) could be cut:
- Consolidating its information technology (“IT”) function with the County’s IT department
- Consolidating its human resources (“HR”) function with the County’s HR department
- Closure of the 5 branch courts would allow reduction of personnel
- Staffing of suburban courthouses will be reduced so caseloads are more equal
- Reduction of supervisors in external affairs division
- Reduce the Civil Actions Bureau by hiring outside attorneys to handle work
- Eliminating the Drug School, a diversion program for low-risk drug offenders by dismissing those cases
- Reducing/eliminating the Asset Forfeiture Unit
- Eliminating the Consumer Fraud Unit and instead relying on the Illinois Attorney General to handle
These actions are estimated to reduce the budget by $8 million, short of the 10%.
During questioning by Commissioner Gainer, State’s Attorney Fox said that work given to outside attorneys cost County $185/hour vs. $60/hour average cost for assistant state’s attorneys (not clear if this cost is just for salaries or includes costs of all benefits for assistant state’s attorneys). Costs for outside attorneys hired to represent the County come from the self-insurance fund, which is part of Fixed Charges. So that amount would likely have to go up if cut assistant state’s attorneys, because the work still has to be done so outside attorneys would have to be hired.
Comm. Gainer also asked what categories of misdemeanors should go to court and what not, in order to reduce workload. There have been 260,000 misdemeanors and 76 assistant state’s attorneys assigned to handle those; but 50% end up being dismissed. If didn’t pursue in first place, would also reduce costs of court and Clerk of the Court. Question as to whether some of these misdemeanors could be handled instead by Administrative Hearings.
Comm. Morrison asked about vacancies. Lost 56 attorneys in July, but have not been able to hire for most because had to pay value of unused vacation days and did not have money in budget for 2017 for new hires.
Comm. Silvestri asked about continuances which slow down cases and add to costs. State’s Attorney Fox agreed too many continuances, often due to workload, and said would try to quantify costs.
State’s Attorney Fox said that Sheriff’s idea of using video conferencing for status hearings for those in jail, in lieu of bringing them to court, would be found to be unconstiutional because of a prior case in Cook County.

Items of Interest from Meetings with County Clerk and Chicago Board of Elections:

County Clerk handles elections in suburban Cook County, while the Board handles elections in Chicago. Cook County funds $17.7 million of Board’s budget; City of Chicago funds rest.
Both Clerk and Board are planning on purchasing new election equipment and hope to have recommendations to County Board by December.
In answer to questions from Comm. Sims, Clerk Orr recommended that none of the Clerk’s fees, which bring in $11 million to County, be raised.

Observer - Pris Mims

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Midyear Budget Hearings Continue with Cook County State's Attorney Presentation

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

No Expected New Taxes or Fees Projected for 2020 Cook County Budget

Cook County State's Attorney Requests Additional Funds to Hire 16 Attorneys

Cook County Budget Hearings Continue for Second Day

Cook County State's Attorney Will Cut Budget if Forced to but the County Could End Up Paying More

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