Discord Within Board of Review Apparent During Budget Hearing

Cook County Board Finance Committee
Departmental Budget Hearings: Day 2
October 26, 2021

Cook County Public Defender - presented by Sharone Mitchell and staff
Proposed 2022 Budget - $84,102,421                        2021 Budget - $80,839,889
              (Both include General Funds, Special Purpose Funds and Grant Funds)
Proposed 2022 - 750 FTEs                 2021 - 700 FTEs
Presentation by Sharone Mitchell focused on 4 Challenges within the office.
1. Caseloads/Workloads

• Office continues to have caseloads that are too high compared to other PD offices and also according to national standards
• Office handles misdemeanor as well as felony cases
• Adding an additional 50 positions that will include an additional 20 attorney positions

2. Records Maintenance and Retention

• Current system is antiquated. Showed a slide of boxes of files wrapped in plastic that are stored in warehouse and date back to the 1970’s. 
• Legally mandated to maintain records for a certain period of time - ie homicide records need to be kept for 20 years after completion of sentence
• Building a team that will address the current issues and work towards digitization - 7 new positions in budget  

3. Professional Development

• “Nutshell” training provided yearly - 3 days of training on many topics - attorney staff attends every other year
• Have focused on attorney training in the past but would like to address professional development for other employees
• Increasing budget by $50K for professional development and adding one new position

4. Technology

• Technology needs are changing for how office operates not only in maintaining and storing files but also in technology needs at trial and the need for investigators to have laptops etc.
• Funds included in budget request to conduct a technology audit 
• Funds also included in budget request for computer refresh and to accommodate investigation needs - 2 new FTEs included for technology

Questions from Commissioners

• Comm. Anaya asked about the new Immigration Unit. It is not up and running yet as the 2 attorney and 1 case worker positions did not receive qualified applicants and had to be reposted
• Comm Degnan asked about the decrease in grant funding. Mr. Mitchell and staff indicated that 2 grants have been extended and the budget will be revised to show that and also the office has applied for more grants that are not included now but probably will be received. Comm. Degnan also asked about the possibility of state funding for PD offices. Mr. Mitchell said there is a report entitled “Right to Council in Illinois” that he helped with from the Supreme Court of Illinois. He is concerned that if the state gets involved in funding there will be unfunded mandates. He also said the idea of a statewide PD office that would exclude Cook County has been looked into as many PD offices have difficulty with funding. She also asked about the position of Mitigation Specialist (MS). 5 new MS positions are included in the budget. Mr. Mitchell explained that these Specialists help the PD attorneys by investigating a clients background to help with any plea bargains or in sentencing to ensure that clients are treated fairly 
• Comm. Arroyo asked about the percentage of Latino attorneys. Mr. Mitchell stated that it is 4% and they are making efforts to increase that percentage.   

Cook County Clerk - presented by Karen Yarborough
Proposed 2022 Budget - $76,502,087                      2021 Budget - $56,472,352
           (Includes Corporate Funds, Election Fund, Special Purpose Funds, Grant Funds)
2022 includes $8,823,854 allocated from the American Rescue Plan Special Purpose Fund
Proposed 2022 - 348 FTEs          2021 - 350 FTEs

Highlights of Presentation by Clerk Yarborough
Elections

• Election equipment and the voter registration process have been upgraded and modernized.
• Money is included in the budget to continue with this process in particular to deal with the increase in mail-in ballots.
• She hopes to acquire a new touch free e-polling system using American Rescue Plan funds.
• The office is gearing up for the challenges of the pending redistricting.

Recorder Functions

• The e-recording system is now operational for the recording of documents.  
• The 80,000 document backlog present when the Clerk took over the Recorder function has been eliminated.
• In 2020 a new cashiering system was also implemented.

Questions from Commissioners

• Comm. Daley asked about accessibility of polling sites and was assured that accessibility is not a problem for suburban polling sites. 
• By December precinct consolidation should be known once the mapping has been done using new census data. The need for adding any additional languages based on census numbers is yet to be determined. 

Clerk of Circuit Court of Cook County - Presented by Iris Martinez and Staff
Proposed 2022 Budget - $125,285,335                   2021 Budget - $120,480,906
                   (Includes General Funds, Special Purpose Funds and Grants)
2022 budget includes $4,345,794 allocated from the American Rescue Plan SP Fund
Proposed 2022 - 1479 FTEs            2021 Budget - 1386 FTEs
2022 includes 25 FTEs under the American Rescue Plan

Highlights of Presentation by Iris Martinez

• Technology and Transparency have been her focus since she took over the office in December.
• Her office collects funds from the courts and distributes them to various entities. $2.87M has not been allocated to local governments and they hope to have them distributed by the end of 2021.
• The office had 218 vacant positions and they have been working on filling those positions.
• Changing the culture in the office is important and Shakman compliance is a focus. The office is moving towards compliance probably by the 1st quarter of 2022.
• Implementation of the Odyssey system for document storage was halted and is being implemented again after making changes. In July 2021 Domestic Violence Courts started implementation and Civil and Traffic Courts should be implemented by the end of 2021.
• A Call Center for questions about the Court System is being developed that will be able to answer questions in 200 languages. 

Questions from Commissioners

• Comm. Daley asked about filling the vacant positions since other departments have indicated difficulty in filling positions. The HR person stated that 60 new FTEs had onboarded in July and another 40 are in process. They have budgeted for an additional 138. They initiated a very aggressive outreach plan in which they posted 6 different types of positions and received 5000 applications of which 4000 could be processed. 
• Comm. Anaya asked about any concerns with the proposed 24/7 hours of operation for the  Domestic Violence Court. The Clerk’s office is working with the Chief Judge and the advocates to come up with a model that will work and they can staff. 

Board of Review - Commissioners Larry Rogers, Michael Cabonargi, and Tammy Wendt
Proposed 2022 Budget - $15,686,657                      2021 Budget - $14,072,527
2022 budget includes $1,064,256 allocated from the American Rescue Plan SP Fund
Proposed 2022 - 151 FTEs                  2021 Budget - 142 FTEs
2022 includes 9 FTEs under the American Rescue Plan

Highlights of Presentation by Larry Rogers

• The review of assessments by the Board of Review (BoR) depends on the Assessor and that office has not yet made the data available for review from the Chicago reassessments that occurred this year. 
• The BoR office had converted to an online review system in 2015 so they had no difficulty going to a total remote environment in 2021
• The defense efforts of the BoR saved all taxing bodies within Cook County from having to make refunds of $32 M, including $10.4 M just for Cook County government.
• When they get the information from the Assessor they expect to see an increase in appeals from the city and have budgeted for overtime for their staff so they can get the appeals done in a timely way.
• The office continues with its outreach efforts to make taxpayers aware of the appeal process.

After his presentation Comm. Wendt expressed her disagreement with the budget as presented and stated that she was not included in the development of the budget as the other 2 commissioners did not meet in an open meeting and she thought it was a violation of the Open Meetings Act so would not meet with them. She also expressed several other concerns with the operation of the office as well as her feeling that there was not equity in the distribution of staff among the 3 Commissioners who are separately elected and run separate offices - yet have one budget. 

Questions/Comments from the Cook County Board Commissioners

• Comm. Degnan stated she had reached out to the offices of each of the BoR Commissioners with her questions prior to this meeting but had not received response from any of them. She wanted to know why the budget for Professional Development had increased fourfold. Comm. Rogers said that more of their staff needs to be certified as Assessment Officers. She also wanted to know why there seemed to be different sets of information that are used by the Assessor’s office and the BoR. If they had the same information would that not make for fewer appeals. The standard of review is different as the BoR gets more information to determine if an adjustment is necessary. Comm. Degnan further said she also could not tell from their salary distribution chart what positions there were and she was not comfortable having to vote on their budget.
• Comm. Daley suggested that since there was disagreement among the BoR Commissioners about their budget perhaps they needed to meet with the Budget Director to come up with a budget they can agree on. He also stated that perhaps in the future each Commissioner should submit their own budget as the commissioners operate their own offices independently. 
• Comm. Anaya said her office does outreach for the BoR as do many of the other commissioners. She said they had asked before for data and it would be useful to them to know what the data on the numbers of commercial and the number of residential appeals/district as well as the % of appeals that result in a decrease in the assessment. Comm. Rogers said that was a great suggestion and they would try to include that data in their next Annual Report. 

Item of Note:

• Comm. Daley said that he was referring the video of the Board of Review portion of this meeting to both the Inspector General and the Board of Ethics because of the issues raised.  

Observer: Cynthia Schilsky