Steele: I want my son to replace me; Acting County Board president plans to retire

Chicago Sun-Times

November 24, 2006

By Esther J Cepeda

Taking a page from the Stroger clan political playbook, Bobbie Steele on Thursday said she wants her son Robert Steele, a Chicago Park District employee, to replace her as a Cook County Board commissioner upon her expected retirement from the board as its president.

"Solomon was David's son, the wisest man who ever lived. If it's considered tradition, so be it," Steele, interim Cook County Board president, said in an interview with ABC-7.

Earlier this month, Steele, who was picked by her colleagues in August to serve the last four months of the ailing board President John Stroger's term, had suggested she might look to one of her six children employed by Cook County to fill her spot.

At the time, she had specifically referred to her daughter Valerie Holden, who recently had served on a panel to assess county hospital employee productivity.

"Replace my mom. Her legacy would be something that's very challenging. But I think it's something I can live up to," Robert Steele, 45, told ABC-7.

He and his mother spoke at a restaurant at 5638 W. Chicago, where they were helping serve Thanksgiving dinner to the poor.

Steele did not return phone calls from the Sun-Times.

Re-elected earlier this month to another term as a West Side commissioner, Steele had told the Chicago Sun-Times in July she had no plans to step down after a four-month stint as interim board president. She yields the position early next month to President-elect Todd Stroger, who won the November election after the elder Stroger knighted him.

Steele had maintained in July that she'd spend four more years as an $85,000-a-year commissioner rather than retire from the president's position -- a move that doubles her current pension to $136,000 per year, because her new pension would be based on the board president's $170,000 salary, rather than her commissioner's pay.

'When is this going to end?'

County Commissioner Mike Quigley said Steele's move was widely expected and her Thanksgiving Day announcement rather convenient. "What a shock," he said. "It couldn't have been quieter unless she did it in the woman's bathroom at 3 o'clock in the morning."

County Commissioner Tony Peraica, an outspoken critic of Chicago family politics, also reacted.

"When is this going to end? When are the voters of Cook County going to realize they are being defrauded?" he said.

If she lives to be 85 years old, Steele stands to make $1 million more by retiring as interim board president than had she stepped down from her commissioner's post.

Thursday, Steele reacted in front of television cameras to her apparent flip-flop.

"I don't want anyone to think that I'm a bandit and I'm taking something and running. That's not me," Steele said.

"I didn't make the law, and if I become the beneficiary of it, it's by no doing of my own."

Copyright 2006, Chicago Sun-Times, Inc.

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