Second Day of Mid-Year Budget Hearings

Cook County Board Finance Committee Mid Year Budget Hearings
July 20, 2021
Presentations - Cook County State’s Attorney, County Clerk, and Board of Review

Cook County State’s Attorney, Kimberly Fox

• Currently under budget by $4.7 M for 2021.  Has 109 vacancies (50 of which are attorneys) out of the budgeted positions of 1,241.
• Ms. Fox reviewed the office’s progress on the alternative prosecution program, the gun crime strategies unit and how they dealt with the pandemic.  The trial work will increase substantially now that the courts are opening.
• The commissioners’ questions focused on the current crime problems.   Commissioner Deer asked how much do mental health issues contribute.   Ms. Fox said a good proportion of the people arrested are dealing with mental health issues.   She would like to see more local sources for help such as the local mental health clinics that were closed several years ago.   
• Commissioner Aguilar asked about recent reports about repeat offenders being on bond and involved in shootings.   Ms. Fox explained how the bail process works and how it is the judge’s decision.   She said that the elimination of cash bail will help the problem, because many repeat offenders have enough money for bail.   
• Commissioner Degnen asked if the video hearings would continue for gender-based violence hearings.   The victims feel safer in that mode.   Ms. Fox said they were reviewing that.
• Commissioner Kevin Morrison asked about the attrition in the department.   There has been an uptick in retirements and other attrition.   They are getting applicants, but most are recent graduates.   Ms. Fox said they are also working on maintaining a level of expertise by recruiting experienced prosecutors from outside.  Commissioner Daley asked Ms. Fox to let the Commissioners know what they could do to help with HR recruiting and onboarding new staff.
• Commissioner Sims asked what would Ms. Fox wish for in the next budget.   She would like to have a full complement of employees for the criminal court, increased staff in the wrongful conviction unit and civil court, and improve the department’s technology in remote access and integration of data.   She would  like to expand the gun crime unit into the suburbs. It would help her attorneys if the court rooms had more up to date technology.
• Commissioner Sean Morrison asked if the department kept statistics on citizenship of offenders.   They do not.   The department has developed a Data Dashboard to track cases and they have most of the information on the felony cases captured.  The dashboard can be viewed on the office’s website.

Cook County Clerk’s Office, presented by Chief Deputy Clerk Cedric Giles

• Mr. Giles described the work that was done to incorporate the Recorder of Deeds office into the Clerk’s.   When they took over, there was an 800,000-document backlog.  Now there is only a 7 day’s delay in recording documents. The office worked with a third party on indexing.   He also reviewed the work on the spring election and gave statistics on the increase in vote by mail ( 487%) and early voting (20%) from the 2019 election. 
• Commissioner Degnen noted that the Clerk’s office  is above on revenue due to the housing market increase.   A staff person from the Clerk’s finance office said they are below on expenses.

Board of Review, presented by Commissioner Larry Rogers, with Commissioners Michael Cabonargi and Tammy Wendt  

• Currently is under budget by $284,941.
• Over the last 6 months, the BoR has handled 223,000 appeals.  They received appeals between October and December and finished by June 21.   They instituted a digital approval process.   They have BOR staff attend the PTAB (the state agency where tax payers appeal assessments) meetings to object to the further appeals.   They saved local taxing bodies $138 M in refunds as a result in successfully defending the County’s assessments at PTAB.
• The BOR generated $80,000 in revenue from a “Data Subscription Service” provided to high volume users at the BOR. The product is a compiled data package of BOR appeal decisions which allows users to digitally organize their filings and results.
• Commissioner Rogers addressed the reported alleged bribery scheme of a BOR employee.   The employee has been placed on administrative leave and the BoR has contracted with outside counsel to investigate.  Commissioner Rogers and Cabonargi stated that this person was an exception and that most of the BOR employees are hard workers.    Both stated that the employee had not been selected by any commissioner for their  staff.   He had been employed since 1995 and had been cross-trained on the appeals process.
• Commissioner Daley mentioned that the BOR needed to respond to the IG report.

Observed by Kathleen Graffam