Cook County Budget Hearings Continue

Cook County Board of Commissioners - Finance Committee
Departmental Budget Hearing
October 30, 2019: 

Commissioners Absent: Deer, Gainer, Tobolski, Sean Morrison 

Clerk of the Circuit Court:  Dorothy Brown

• Clerk’s office is still working on transfer of court case system to digital with Tyler Technology.  Veterans Day 3 day weekend will go live with Crimiinal Courts, MLK weekend 2020 will be Civil Courts, and Kasamir Pulaski weekend will be Traffic Courts.  Electronic Court Order System will occur in Spring of 2020.
• Shakman update includes the Clerk’s filing of an interim employment plan in July with an exempt employee list filed.  All 1400 employees have been trained on Shakman.  They are in the process of training management on how to interview based on the interim plan.  Their remaining job is to agree on the final employment plan and hire a Director of Compliance.  
• Clerk’s budget request is $8 million more than the President’s budget at $100 million.  Most of the increase is due to the need to hire more court recorders since they are an aging workforce and have an absentee rate of 20% every day!  They can only promote from within and need to hire more people to fill the lower positions. Much of this absenteeism is due to leaves of absence.  She also needs more floaters for Cannabis Expungement paperwork, since the Public Defender plans to expunge 150,000 cases in 2020. They must inform police departments and individuals by mail.  Contractual services will cost $359,000 more mostly for postage.  New case filings have slightly increased and the number of e-filings has increased from 750,000 in 2018  to 2.7 million this year since it is now mandatory,
• The clerk is trying to get all Cook County police departments to become E-sophisticated and issue electronic traffic tickets, although there is resistance due to the need for printers in police cars. There are 28 departments doing e-tickets with 16, including Chicago, yet to switch to electronic. The Clerk’s office has invested nearly 37,000 hours of training on electronic systems.  
• Com. Britton, an attorney, complained that e-filing at his office experienced 3 outages in 6 weeks.  The Clerk explained that as they migrate to the cloud (called Odyssey) there are still glitches in the bridge programming with Tyler Technologies.  Com. Anaya asked  the Clerk to keep them abreast of Shakman developments.  Com. Miller asked about negative balances in the Special Purpose Funds and Tanya Anthony explained the County is working at eliminating all these funds in each department’s budget.  Com. Degnen asked very detailed questions about why Expungement help had to be full time, not temporary, how going electronic was supposed to eliminate headcount, not expand it, and why are there more cashiers, not fewer, since the County is increasingly going to electronic filing and payment with credit cards.  The Clerk responded that the process was so complex in going digital that they have been trying to reduce people but for so many reasons, have been unable to.  
• Electronic kiosks will be available in all courtroom areas to help people find cases and courtroom numbers.  Information will be available in Spanish, Polish, and English.

Recorder of Deeds:   Ed Moody

• Recorder Moody believes that the office will soon have Shakman compliance.  Employees have been trained, they have job descriptions, and they have annual performance reviews.  There is an Employment manual in place.  His new Director of HR was head of the County’s Compliance office previously, so has much needed experience.
• He believes the Recorder of Deeds office is fully ready to be merged with the County Clerk’s area within 2 months.  He is ready for “lights off” in December of 2020.
• ​The Recorder’s office has increased revenue and reduced costs, with 108 FTEs in 2019 versus 120 in 2018.  He is requesting a budget 3% lower than 2019 and will  bring $1 million back to the county this year.  He believes he is on track to bring his actuals in at 15% below 2019 budget.
• Outside expenses incurred for Professional Services are for converting the old Deed books from 1871-1959 to digital format (scanning) and moving microfilm deeds from 1959-1971, likewise to digital.  These were emergency expenditures but 2020 needs will go through RFP process.
• Coms. Anaya, Britton, Miller, and Degnen complemented Recorder Moody on a good job.

County Clerk:  Karen Yarborough

• Now voter signatures for filing petitions can be viewed on-line at various offices rather than having to come downtown to check.  Birth certificates can be obtained on-line. The new voting machines have been universally praised by everyone who has tested them.  They come in an easy-to-handle carrier.
• Com. Anaya asked why the $1.5 million increase in special purpose fund, to which the response was, the election in 2020.  Com. Degnen told the Clerk that her office was there to help in whatever way she could to make the merger with the Recorder go smoothly.  Coms. Britton and Kevin Morrison thanked the Clerk for helping to get passed the Voter Participation Ordinance in time for the November 2020 election.  There will be 7 early voting sites in jails next year.
• Deputy Clerk of Elections, Ed Mikalowski said that due to a much better relationship with Chicago Board of Elections, voting records and communication will be much easier.  He praised the LWV Cook County for helping to bring certain awareness and insight to the choice of voting machines. 

Office of Inspector General:  Patrick Blanchard

• This office has 16 employees, with 2 at Metropolitan Water Reclamation District (MWRD) and 1 at Stroger.  It handled 551 complaints in 2018 vs. 554 complaints so far in 2019.   A 9% increase in salaries for 3 positions with a long standing salary disparity are included in this budget. MWRD services are billed on an hourly basis. They have done outreach and 70 trainings on filing internal complaints for MWRD employees (4 times more headcount than the Forest Preserve District).  Quarterly reports of billing and complaints can be found online on the MWRD site and Cook County.  This office also looks at employment plans on behalf of the Shakman rules to make sure departments are within compliance.

Observer - Amy Little