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Poor people as battle shieldsChicago TribuneFebruary 13, 2005EditorialCook County officials are again exploiting a fiction as cynical as it is self-serving. The fiction is that any request for efficiency in the county's wasteful budget is an attack on poor people who rely on it for health care. Or, as County Board President John Stroger huffed Thursday: "Anybody who wants to try to destroy the health-care system of this county has got me to fight. And I'm going to fight you any way I can." Even, he should have added, if it means once again using poor people as battle shields. What's especially cruel about this fiction is that it inverts the truth. The real enemies of this community's public health system, and the needy people it serves, aren't the County Board members who insist that the health budget be stripped of duplications that Stroger's administration has publicly admitted. The real enemies of the poor are those board members desperate to prop up a health bureaucracy that many politicians milk for patronage hires. What are the allegedly evil budget cuts that reformers on the board demand? They want to end such costly inefficiencies as redundant public relations, human relations and other non-medical office staffs within the puffy health budget. Don't forget, it was Stroger's handpicked health boss, Daniel Winship, who last month said that his budget could be streamlined. If less money were wasted on bureaucrats, more and faster care for the poor would be affordable. Helping poor people is never the issue in defending bloated budgets--as a shameful charade last year demonstrated. At issue was a shortfall in the county's 2004 budget. Board member Roberto Maldonado, a reliable Stroger bobblehead, was sponsoring a cigarette-tax hike. Maldonado went on and on about how the new revenue would help Cook County treat childhood asthma and other diseases caused by smoking. But Stroger already had admitted that he needed that tax increase to balance his county budget. Board member Larry Suffredin exposed Maldonado's noble-sounding fraud with an amendment to spend every penny of the new cigarette tax revenue to treat lung illnesses and campaign against smoking. A suddenly unhinged Stroger, Maldonado and John Daley, head of the board's Finance Committee, frantically beat back Suffredin's amendment. All that piety about poor kids with lung problems? Forget it. One year later, same game. Stroger's people have re-educated poor Winship, who must wonder why he took this job, so he's now parroting the party line: Any further cuts will hurt patients. So which is it, Dr. Winship? (A similar fiction holds that cutting budgets of the sheriff, the state's attorney and the courts--each includes political flunkies--means going soft on crime.) Board members Michael Quigley, Suffredin and others want to slash more vacant job slots from Stroger's health budget. Both men say that and other health efficiencies, plus a 2 percent cut in all other spending, would shrink the $73 million shortfall--a pittance in a $3 billion budget. After that, it's time to shred a third perennial fiction: that if board members will just vote for Stroger's proposed budget this time, trust us, everything will be streamlined by next year. This year, that truly has to happen. After this year's budget gets resolved, higher personnel costs and other problems already promise to blow a $196 million hole in the 2006 budget. Stroger doesn't have the votes for tax hikes this year. How, if he doesn't reduce overhead, can he possibly avoid next year's much bigger shortfall? The non-negotiable time for broad reform is now. Taxpayers can't afford a government that gives its featherbedded workforce raises far beyond cost of living increases, but won't cut costs. First, though, Stroger, Winship & Co. need to stop intentionally confusing a crucial county mission--giving health care to the poor--with defending their flabby health bureaucracy. Gentlemen, stop using poor people as battle shields.
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