Cook County Budget Hearings Continue

Cook County Board Finance Committee - Departmental Budget Hearings
Day #5 of Budget Hearings (Part Two) - October 21, 2016

Office of the Treasurer - presented by Maria Pappas, Treasurer
​Proposed Budget: 
FY17 - $12.9 million   
FY16 - $12.2 million 
Proposed FTEs:: 
FY17 - 88.5  
FY16 - 89  (250 in 1998]
Key Information Presented:

• Cost to Cook County taxpayers would be $1.2 million for this office as the office is 90% self-funded with the majority of revenue [$11.8 million] from commercial user fees.
• 73% of the Budget is employee costs and this year for the first time, the budget will absorb $209,000 for fringe benefits.
• Because of electronic automation, within 3 years there will be no filing cabinets in the office of the Treasurer.  And, all work is done out of one central location with nine options for payment.
• The Treasurer’s office gave 3,000 sq. feet of space back to the county and 1,600 sq. feet for use by the company providing the county’s system-wide computer network.
• On average, there are 400,000 visits a month to its website which can be accessed in 103 languages.
• Stopped $272 million in over-payments.  No longer can anyone duplicate pay on the same pin number.  
• Treasurer Pappas recommends that other elected officials consider hiring Librarians to help with developing systems for information flow and retrieval.  She has two in her IT department.
• Treasurer Paper expressed appreciation to the 7 present Commissioners present stating that her department worked very hard on the budget and presentation and more Commissioners should be in the room.  

Commissioners absent: Butler, Moore, Boykin, Arroyo, Moody, Steele, Garcia, Fritchey, Goslin, Silvestri]

Perhaps of greatest interest and concern to the Commissioners is the state legislated system for sale of delinquent taxes.  If the current law stands, taxes delinquent by 4 months after the August due date can be sold.  The home owner has another several months to pay the taxes but the amount due can end up being 2-3 times more than the original tax because of interest, penalties, and court costs -  plus – the tax buyer receives the income from the redemption – not the County.   Treasurer Pappas is strongly against the state law and blames a power lobby for creating it.   The County is currently working on a compromise plan [6 months before being sold].  The constituent group most affected by this is Senior Citizens.

Homeland Security and Emergency Management 
presented by Ernest Brown, Executive Director
Proposed Budget
FY17 -  $1.7 million *                  
FY16 - $2.6 million *
*Cook County Taxpayer funding  - Another $49 million in Federal grants for 2017
Proposed FTEs
FY17-   76   (55 grant funded)
FY16 - 76  (51 grant funded)
Mission:  To enhance the safety and security of Cook County and its residents by working to build capacity and create a common operations platform with our partners to prevent, protect against, mitigate the effects of, respond to and recover from all incidents, whether man-made and/or natural, including educating our residents through our community engagement program.

• Responsibilities include:
  • Administration and grants   [25 FTEs]
  • Information security              [12 FTEs]
  • Operation, planning, logistics, information [33 FTEs]
  • Training and exercises          [6 FTEs]
• 2 new grant funded positions will work on community engagement.
• The office is capable of engaging in 3 full-blown incidents at the same time.
• Conducted 450 deployments of equipment requested by CC municipalities plus provided 6 high volume pumps to save the Menard Prison in Chester, IL from evacuating due to flooding.
• 2017 Strategic Initiatives
  • Implement a Whole Community Approach
  • Promote Cyber Security Awareness
  • Implement an all-encompassing training & exercise portal system
  • Complete the capital build out of the Department’s Response Facilities to include electrical, data, and satellite communications as well as completion of the build out of the mobile response team vehicles and assets

Observer - Diane Edmundson