Sheriff Dart Suggests Ways to Cut Cook County Budget

Cook County Board of Commissioners Finance Committee - Departmental Budget Hearings
October 25, 2017

Office of the Sheriff of Cook County

Commissioners absent for all or most of the meetings:  Butler, Goslin,  & Schneider. 
Commissioners present:  Arroyo, Boykin, Daley, Deer, Fritchey, Gainer, Garcia, Moody, Moore, Morrison, Schneider, Silvestri, & Tobolski.  Suffredin and Sims arrived at about 11:35am.

Comm. Daley, Finance Committee Chairman, presided over meeting.​
Items of Interest:  

• Sheriff Dart talked about how the role of sheriff has expanded:  The Sheriff’s police force found a drowning victim in the forest preserve that had eluded the Forest Preserve Police.  The Sheriff’s police force now does policing for Ford Heights, Robbins, and Dalton.   While the Sheriff’s office overlaps responsibility with CPS and Cermak Mental Health Clinic, they do not control the programs and must work in tandem with other entities.  The Cook County Sheriff’s police force is also patrolling as supplementary to the CPD in certain areas like Englewood.
• Sheriff Dart said that FMLA (Family and Medical Leave Act) and IOD (Injury on Duty) were the number one reasons for overtime and overstaffing .

The Sheriff’s big ideas for reducing the budget were:  

• Possible consolidation of the Forest Preserve police with the Sheriff’s police.
• Potentially shutting down one or more of the satellite branch courthouses that exist in Skokie, Bridgeview, Schaumburg,  155 West 51st Street, and other locations, depending on the age and usage.  Morrison pointed out that many of the courtrooms are underutilized in these locations.  It would cost far less to transport families to another courtroom than transport the inmate to these locations.
• Allowing videoconferencing for status hearings  to reduce bus rides of inmates for 20 seconds of courtroom time.  This is allowed in many other criminal systems.
• Shutting down more divisions that house inmates at the jail due to reduced population.

A few discussions:

• Commissioner Morrison brought up supervisor to hourly employee ratios and produced stats that said Dart’s staffing was top heavy.  Dart said he wanted to see the source because he had been searching for benchmarks.
• Commissioner Silvestri was interested in Dart’s sharing some IT or HR costs with the president’s office to save money.
• Commissioner Gainer asked pointed questions about the recent contract negotiations and who was exactly present and how there had occurred a misunderstanding.  Dart had wanted changes in hours required work, vacation and holiday pay, and several other things.  These were considered “Work Rules” while the President’s HR lead was responsible for “economic” issues.  Dart was grateful to have been included in the union negotiations but unhappy they had not been there at the final agreement signing.  
• Commissioner Gainer said that since 80% of the County’s costs are based on labor costs, and this was the first negotiated contract (still not presented to the Board for approval yet, so not final), they had to get a better handle on costs going forward and include the elected departments through the end of the contract.

Observer - Amy Little (left shortly before end of meeting)