Cook County commissioners averaged just over $4 million an hour this week.
In cuts, that is.

Daily Southtown

February 27, 2005

By Jonathan Lipman

In 18 hours of budget hearings Wednesday and Thursday, they filled a $73 million gap in the 2005 budget through a series of cuts, consolidations and conjuring.

Watchdogs and reform-minded commissioners said the $2.9 billion budget package is a historic stand against the old-fashioned way of running Cook County government. For the first time since John Stroger became board president, commissioners approved a budget that cut from Stroger's proposal and rejected his proposed tax increases.

Stroger maintained the cuts would destroy the county's health care system and leave its courts and tax functions crippled. He said later that he could live with the cuts, but still other officials and department heads warned of layoffs and longer waits at county hospitals.

So what got cut and what is left?

Review of the 112 amendments considered by the board last week shows some of the cuts were real restructuring, a trimming of fat from a budget criticized in many quarters as bloated and ripe with cronyism.

Redundant human resources and finance departments at county hospitals were consolidated, which Commissioner Mike Quigley (D-Chicago) said would save $2.1 million this year and $8 million next year.

Overtime was cut by $5 million. Funding for the county's 1,443 vacant positions was cut by $10 million. Many of those positions have been open for months, and reformist commissioners said that proves the county can live without them.

Other fixes were purely on paper, as commissioners nudged estimates and shuffled accounts toward more optimistic projections.

For instance, the county found $8 million by changing the amount of money it expects to collect through cigarette taxes.

Commissioner Robert Maldonado (D-Chicago) asked his colleagues three times to change the estimate, saying he thought it was clear the county would collect more than last year. Maldonado lowered his proposed revision each time, and the board rejected it each time as too risky. But a final version that Maldonado offered late Thursday became the last budget amendment needed to close the gap.

Many cuts called for real reductions in payroll budgets, too.

Elected officials and county heads have threatened real consequences, though many have backed off since the cuts were passed.

One who isn't backing off from his promise of less service is State's Attorney Dick Devine.

Commissioners pressed all elected officials to cut 2 percent from their spending requests. Those who refused the first time they testified before commissioners were brought back. Even on the second round, Devine still wouldn't do it, saying such cuts mean he would have to lay off prosecutors.

Commissioners forced another $981,015 in cuts on Devine Wednesday night. Devine said Friday that he would reduce "both staffing and programs" but that he has not yet decided where. Even so, Devine is getting $3.5 million more than he spent last year.

Like all other elected officials, Devine said he needs that money because personnel costs, particularly health care, rise every year. Devine isn't allowed to negotiate the contracts with his employees; Stroger's office handles that.

Commissioners agreed the per-person cost was not Devine's fault, but it was still the kind of answer that drove many of them nuts during weeks of budget hearings.

"We have a major crisis in government, and the alternative is raising taxes," Commissioner Forrest Claypool (D-Chicago) said when Devine's office protested the cuts again Wednesday night. "Everyone can be 2 percent more efficient."

The biggest cut passed in the two-day hearing last week was a $21 million chop of departments directly controlled by Stroger. It was pushed by the board's longest-serving member, Republican Carl Hansen of northwest suburban Mount Prospect.

Hansen cut the offices under Stroger's control from $1.38 billion to $1.36 billion.

His cut included a $17 million reduction for the county's health services, though Stroger's office said Friday that the $8 million boost in cigarette tax revenue would cut that in half.

During the budget debate, Stroger brought out bureau of health chief Daniel Winship Thursday to present a list of nine services Winship said he would be forced to reduce.

Those included a $5 million drop in elective surgeries, a $1.5 million cut in a patient transportation program, $4.4 million less for prescription medications for the poor, and $500,000 less for the 2,500 abortions performed at county hospitals every year.

Four neighborhood clinic sites would close, Winship said, all of them in districts represented by commissioners opposing Stroger.

Commissioners, outraged at the threat, accused Stroger of putting Winship up to it.

But Friday, bureau spokeswoman Rendy Jones said it wasn't clear which, if any, programs and clinic sites would close.

"That list that (Winship) read from was really just a list that he put together in terms of areas that could be severely impacted," Jones said. "But we haven't set any dates or determined if in fact they'll have to close."

Stroger spokesman John Gibson said Friday the president would not veto the budget, as he had threatened during the hearings, because he thought the health department would not need to cut service.

All of which is to say no one is sure yet how the commissioners' cuts will play out. Everyone took turns congratulating their foes Thursday night, praising each other for being able to come together at the end and pass the budget with a unanimous vote.

But looming not so far in the distance is the 2006 budget. Already projected is a $190 million deficit, and commissioners began staking positions as they finished the vote Thursday night.

"We've said nice things about each other today. That's not going to get us away from the fact that we're going to have a $190 million deficit, there's no way ... all the revenue sources we have are good enough to get us what we need," Stroger said in his final comments of the meeting. "People are still going to be going to jail, we're still going to have plenty of people in all of our hospitals, and it costs us money."

Copyright 2005, Daily Southtown

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