Chief Judge Touts Budget Savings

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