EXTRA: Judgely?

SIMS: Judgely?

I’m sure she meant well, but listening to Cook County Commissioner Deborah Sims, D-Chicago, pay tribute Wednesday to one-time county Sheriff and Judge Richard Elrod couldn’t help but give me the quip of the day from a politico.

How else to explain, “I don’t know how you define a judge, but he was as judgely as a judge could be.”

ELROD, WHO SERVED four four-year terms as sheriff before moving up the ranks to serve as a judge for a quarter of a century, died last month. He was 80, and suffered from complications due to cancer of the liver.

ELROD: Long career after injury

Elrod, whose father, Arthur, was once a Cook County commissioner himself, had an incident in his life that would have traumatized many – a broken neck during a 1969 altercation during the “Days of Rage” Vietnam-era anti-war protests that left him with limited mobility.

Yet other commissioners who paid tribute to Elrod on Wednesday during the county board’s meeting made mention of how he did not let that injury get the best of him – and was literally still on the Cook County bench at the time of his death April 19.

And as for Sims, her quip is notable, although not quite on the level with the elder Richard Daley once telling us the police were there to "preserve" disorder.

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Are we, the people, best off with more, or less, from our political officials?

Watching the Cook County Board at work on Wednesday made me wonder if we’re better off with more, or less, of their presence.


County wishes us 'happy holiday.' Do we like their present?

The issue at stake was the county board approving a schedule for their meetings for 2014. Under the measure that finally got approval, the county board next year will hold one meeting per month – with the exception of August.

THAT’S THEIR SUMMER break. No one is going to take that break away from them. It’s sacred!

But that is a change from past years. Until recently, the county board made a point of meeting twice per month (with the exception of August). This year, they made a point of meeting every three weeks. Which meant some months had two meetings and others had only one.

They’re now going to be down to one session per month for them to quibble over issues, while also spending endless hours pontificating over symbolic resolutions in which they praise each other’s friends.

It can get so mind-numbing that I have to confess, a sheriff’s deputy had to nudge me at one point Wednesday because I had fallen asleep.

SO THE FACT that there will be fewer such meetings? That could be interpreted as a good thing, or a bad thing.

Believe it or not, that was the issue at stake as county board members argued amongst themselves Wednesday (the final vote was 10-6, in favor of having fewer meetings).

County Commissioner Bridget Gainer, D-Chicago, may well have hit what many non-political people will consider the key question – she said that the county board members will continue to get the same salaries, even though they’re now expected to show up for fewer meetings.

Agreeing was county Commissioner Timothy Schneider, R- , who said, “The perception will be that we’re doing less work.”

A LOT OF people won’t want to have to take into account that an elective office is not some job where one punches a time card and gets paid by the hour, AND that it’s a post where one is basically on call at all times. Attending the meetings alone aren’t what the job consists of.

Take commissioners John Daley and Deborah Sims, both D-Chicago, along with Joan Patricia Murphy, D-Crestwood, who all used the word “efficiencies” over and over – as in the county board now works more “efficiently” and therefore does not have to meet as often.

Murphy literally went so far as to argue that she could better use time in her suburban office so as to deal with all the people who call her, claiming to have problems with government.

She also argued that the county board will be meeting about as often as the City Council – a fact that county board President Toni Preckwinkle (the former 5^th Ward alderman) confirmed.

“I DON’T KNOW why we have to put in more time downtown than the city does,” she said.

As for government meetings, they often are scripted to a heavy degree. Often, the times when officials spout off and criticize each other are the only impromptu moments So the idea that government officials get paid for their work at meetings?

Nonsense!

If that were it, then we ought to demand a repayment of their salaries. What they do there isn’t worth it.

WATCHING THIS DISPUTE on Wednesday actually brought an odd image to my mind – that of one-time Illinois Senate President James “Pate” Philip.

PHILIP: Was he right?

Some people remember the DuPage politico for his blunt-spoken ways. But I remember him for the fact that he was the motivation behind the General Assembly cutting the month of June off its schedule – ending its spring session business around Memorial Day instead of the old traditional June 30.

Philip often gave the impression that he viewed excess government meetings as merely an excuse for government officials to do something stupid or otherwise harmful to the public interest.

Watching the county board at work on Wednesday made me wonder if perhaps he was right!

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Did Bulls’ 6 NBA titles depend on half-century-old Loyola basketball team?

The Cook County Board engaged in its attempt to bathe itself in celebrity status by presenting a resolution Wednesday that paid tribute to the Loyola Ramblers men’s basketball program that 50 years ago won an NCAA title – the only such school from Illinois ever to win the tourney.

Would this have been possible ...

The Ramblers’ victory that year wasn’t so much that they beat the University of Cincinnati in the championship game. But it was their matchup against Mississippi State University that gets them their moment of glory.

THAT’S BECAUSE THE Ramblers had an all-black starting five at a time when some people thought they were doing black people a favor by letting a few of them play.

When they beat a segregated team (despite the efforts of political officials to prevent the game from ever occurring), it became a big deal for reasons that go beyond the court.

The “Game of Change,” as the 61-51 victory over Mississippi State came to be known, is the reason that the Loyola team – as a unit – will be inducted next month into the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame.

Like I wrote earlier, the county board came up with their own resolution, which they presented to one-time Loyola center Rich Rochelle.

COUNTY COMMISSIONER DEBORAH Sims, D-Chicago, went so far as to praise Rochelle and his teammates, saying, “if that (the Loyola victory) had not happened, we would not have had our Michael Jordan or Scottie Pippen.”

She extended the thought to the present, saying, “We might not have D-Rose now,” referring to Bulls’ recovering-from-injuries star Derrick Rose.

Which might mean our Chicago Bulls might be even more of a dreadful team than they have been for much of their five decades of existence. Just think of how nasty the Chicago sporting experience would have been in recent years if not for that brief taste in the 1990s of New York Yankees-like dominance over a sport that the Bulls gave us with two three-straight runs of NBA titles.

... without this?

For his part, county Commissioner Larry Suffredin, D-Evanston, recalled following the ’63 Ramblers, remembering that the championship game wasn’t even televised live in the Chicago market (quite a difference from today’s broadcast juggernaut that is the Division 1 NCAA basketball tourney).

THERE WAS A delayed television broadcast, although Suffredin recalls word of the Loyola victory slipping out prematurely. “Everybody on the North Side who heard the screams coming from the campus probably figured out that something good had happened,” he said.

County Commissioner John Daley, D-Chicago, took the moral high ground; saying at one point that a Loyola victory with an overwhelmingly African-American roster (a term no one would have used at the time) was something that needed to be experienced.

“It is a sad commentary on where we were,” Daley said, of the segregated ways of the past. “It is something we should not forget.”

Although despite the efforts of political people to dominate the scene, it may well have been Rochelle who was most eloquent –even though he tried to describe himself as, “a man of few words.”

AS HE PUT it, “At the time we played, you have to understand the world we existed in.”

In a condition when maybe a sports starting lineup could have a black player (with maybe another on the bench), a team with four starting players and a fifth who also saw significant playing time, “was unheard of.”

Yet Rochelle said he and his teammates were less concerned about revolutionary racial acts and were more concerned about how their actions would be perceived by others – particularly if that perception would be seen as negative.

The Ramblers have accomplished something no other Division 1 Illinois school has

 

“We didn’t expect to be in the national limelight,” he said. “We just wanted to represent Chicago well.”

IT COULD BE argued they did exactly that – even if the ultimate outcome for Loyola was so unique. After all, they won.

While also creating a moment that forevermore brings some pride to our city; even if it leaves DePaul Blue Demons basketball fans (and fans of the 1979 team that fell just short) seething with a touch of envy.

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EXTRA: Cook is hardball w/ softball

The Cook County Board had serious issues (cremation instead of burial for the indigent, constitution of the Metra commuter rail board) on its agenda Wednesday.

Yet what was it that seemed to generate the most enthusiasm amongst the officials who represent Illinois’ largest county?

SOFTBALL. OR SHOULD I say a gold-colored cup filled with a ratty-looking, dinged up ball that was put on display as the “trophy” won by the Cook County softball team.

For the past three years, the team consisting of staffers from various county government agencies has played games against other government-inspired teams.

Such as the Illinois governor, the mayor and the City Council of Chicago (separate teams, you wouldn’t expect them to play together?). The city treasurer. Heck, even the Chicago-based staff of the federal government’s General Accounting Office.

County officials passed a resolution declaring themselves the champions for the third straight year of this competition – pointing out that in three seasons, they are undefeated.

AS IN 20-0 since 2011.

Not bad, although I wonder what would happen if Cook County were to take on one of the teams from the Illinois Legislature – where the state Senate and House of Representatives take each other on annually for some of the most intense sporting bragging rights ever claimed.

WHITE: Never could top Ernie Banks

Or if an Illinois secretary of state team containing one-time Chicago Cubs minor leaguer Jesse White himself (who’s more athletic at age 78 than most people are in their prime) were to take on the county ballplayers?

But it seems that the county will keep at their play – county Board President Toni Preckwinkle says she plans to take the field in 2014 along with her colleagues.

ALTHOUGH COUNTY COMMISSIONER Deborah Sims, D-Chicago, said she was skeptical anybody would be willing to play against Cook ever again.

PRECKWINKLE: Wants to play

“I’d advise you not to win so much, or nobody will want to play with you,” she quipped.

And Preckwinkle had the final say; claiming the cup on display at the county board meeting ought to be treated like the Stanley Cup (which goes on tour so the fans can see it, up close).

“Everybody gets this cup for an hour,” she snapped.

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EXTRA: Pols a little too self-righteous when it comes to Dixon official

We’ve all gotten a good laugh off of the public official in Dixon, Ill., who originally was suspected of ripping off as much as $30 million from her city, but now has officials saying she enriched herself by as much as $53 million.

SIMS: Crooks are everywhere, she says

Quite a sum, considering that Dixon’s total annual budget in recent years has only been about $8 million.

YET IN RECENT days, we’ve had some Chicago political types taking a little too much pleasure in bringing up the Dixon situation, where Comptroller Rita Crundwell faces charges that claim she took municipal funds for herself (much of which allegedly enriched her horse farm) during a 22-year period.

Cook County Commissioner Deborah Sims of Chicago’s Far South Side and surrounding suburbs brought up Crundwell earlier this week when criticizing a measure meant to make county board members more accountable for the way they spend expense money.

She’s right that some people are too quick to toss out the “crook” label when it comes to the Chicago political establishment but would never think of using it for political people outside of the city.

But Sims seemed just a bit too eager on Tuesday to trash someone else, rather than trying to figure out how to resolve the problems locally.

SIMS ISN’T ALONE. Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, told reporter-types in Springfield this week that a measure to merge the state comptroller and treasurer offices into one government post is bad because you don’t want so much financial power invested in one person.

Because that, supposedly, is what the real problem is in Dixon.

MADIGAN: Dixon the example of what's wrong



Personally, I agree that merging the two state offices is a short-sighted move (one that probably would result in another measure 20 years from now to split the duties back into two positions). But I’m inclined to think that government in Dixon is on such a smaller scale that it is near-to-ridiculous to treat it as comparable to state government. It's only natural that a small municipality can get by with fewer people than the government of the state of Illinois.

Sims and Madigan come off as Democrats too eager to rub it in the face of the town that likes to think of itself as Ronald Reagan’s birthplace.

IT IS AS politically-partisan a maneuver as any of the trash talk that conservative ideologues have engaged in when trying to trash urban interests. It is just as petty!

For our officials to gain the “moral” high ground, they have to act above such tawdry behavior.

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EXTRA: Coffee, or milk?

Who’d have thought that girl scout cookies could be a subject for debate for hard-core Chicago political types?



MURPHY: Plugging the Girl Scouts?



Yet that seems to be the case, as the matter of those pastries peddled each year to help raise money for Girl Scouts of America programs managed to creep its way into the debate of the Cook County Board.

THE MATTER STARTED when county board member Joan Patricia Murphy of suburban Crestwood sponsored a resolution asking the county board to praise the Girl Scouts – who are getting recognition all over the place these days because the organization is 100 years old.

One full century of existence will even get a resolution from the Cook County Board, which was in a mood Tuesday to praise just about everything. (For the record, Murphy was not a Girl Scout – but her daughter was).

Anyway, such a resolution meant that many county board members felt the need to say something spirited about the Girl Scouts.

Even county board member Deborah Sims of the far South Side, who managed to find something sort of negative to say – she says she believes that the recipie was changed for the Peanut Butter sandwich cookies.

SHE SAYS THEY don’t taste the same as she remembers them from when she was younger, and she wishes the Girl Scouts would go back to making them the old way.

Leave it to county board member William Beavers of the South Side to feel compelled to disagree.

He says the cookies are still “delicious” and knows that for a fact because he had four of them for breakfast – along with his cup of coffee.

Have they really changed?

Which led to a one-on-one discussion between Beavers and Sims, with the latter pointing out to Beavers that the only way to truly enjoy a Girl Scout cookie is to dunk it in a cold glass of milk.

SO DOES THE presence of coffee somehow cover up potential flaws in Girl Scout cookies? Or do Chicago politicos have to become a batch of milk drinkers in order to appreciate the delicacy?

Which may be something that Beavers will want to savor now – particularly if federal prosecutors ultimately succeed in their case against him and make him a room-mate (so to speak) of our state’s “illustrious” former governor (one day left of freedom) who has indicated he will give us his “last words” on Wednesday.

Why do I suspect that the Sims/Beavers exchange about Girl Scout cookies will wind up being more significant than anything Rod Blagojevich has to say.

Maybe we should stuff a Girl Scout cookie in his mouth (a Samoa?) to shut him up.

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COUNTY QUIP: Halloween aftershock

SIMS: Voice of reason?

The Cook County Board spent a portion of its meeting Tuesday once again debating an old issue. Furloughs. As in whether or not it is appropriate to expect county board members to take them – especially since the budget proposed by Toni Preckwinkle asks people to take eight unpaid days off to help balance the budget.

Commissioner William Beavers still thinks he was right in refusing to take the time off or accept any financial loss this year, and his backers still back him Commissioner Elizabeth Doody Gorman still claims to be “offended” at such talk, and she has her backers.

THE BACK AND forth of the debate became juvenile and led Commissioner Deborah Sims to express her own disgust at the fact that her colleagues can’t let this issue go. Or maybe she was just influenced by the fact that Monday was Halloween.

For as Sims so “eloquently” phrased her political observation; “This is what happens when children have candy for breakfast.”

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Being cautious? Or careless?

There are times when I’m not sure whether to think that our government officials are being cautious and protective of the tax dollars they’re spending – or if their unwillingness to rush into something is just evidence that they don’t have a clue as to what they’re talking about.

That was definitely the impression I gained Tuesday from watching the Cook County Board in action.

THE ISSUE OF the moment was approving an item that would have allowed the county to seek bids for, “the purchase of uniforms and clothing for various county departments.”

When I first read that on an agenda, my gut reaction was to wonder, “What departments?!?”

So it was with a jolt of excitement that I heard county board member Deborah Sims start off debate on this issue by asking the very blunt, and straightforward, question.

“What departments are we talking about?”

GEE. A GOVERNMENT official wanting to have a clue as to what is going on. In fact, a government official refusing to just cast a knee-jerk vote in favor of something – even though it really was just a procedural step in the whole purchasing process.

But before you start using e-mail to send me all your horror stories about Sims and her past government actions, this commentary isn’t about to become a piece praising the county board member from the Far South Side and surrounding suburbs.

In fact, it’s not a piece that will make anyone happy – except for maybe the malcontents who like to complain about government and get their joy from watching our public officials screw things up.

I don’t, because I realize it ultimately harms our interests and reflects badly upon us. After all, we voted for Sims and all the other members of the Cook County Board. Her gaffes are our gaffes.

WHAT ENSUED IN response to Sims’ question was a back-and-forth in which the bureaucrats who handle government purchases for the county government tried to avoid giving a direct answer.

“Various departments” was the initial response. Upon some pushing by Sims, one such department was identified as the sheriff’s police.

Which led to some confusion since the sheriff’s deputies and other law enforcement personnel are required to purchase their own uniforms – with eventual reimbursement for their expenses, provided they don’t get carried away with their sartorial demands.

After much more squabbling, it eventually came out that what was being considered here were those deliberately-hideous jump suits that inmates at the Cook County Jail and other facilities are required to wear so that they stand out in a crowd of people.

WHAT THIS IS about is seeking bids from companies to sell the county the khaki clothing that inmates must wear.

But county purchasing agent Maria de Lourdes Coss said, “we do not want to limit it,” because there’s also the chance that they may include bids for uniforms worn by the civilian personnel who work for the sheriff – such as the janitorial staff.

It was a lot of squabbling over what should have been a very straightforward issue. We do, after all, have to clothe those inmates while they are in the custody of the county. It’s one of those dreaded, but very necessary, expenses.

And Sims was legitimate in her indignation upon finally being given a straight answer, saying of the written description provided to county officials, “this doesn’t tell us anything,” adding later, “you’re not telling us who these departments are.”

AGREEING WITH HER was county board member Robert Steele, who said, “we want to be quite aware of what we’re voting on.”

In fact, Sims at one point tried to postpone a vote on this measure (which is just about seeking the bids, it’s not about actually awarding a contract) until a future meeting.

Yet that is where Sims goes from being the good-government aggressive-type to being the official who probably didn’t have a clue what she was being told.

Because when she was finally given the explanation, she ultimately voted for the measure to seek bids – even though she admits she’s still upset about the lack of details provided.

“I THINK THEY should give us a better explanation, but this will suffice for today,” she said in backing the measure. Was this just a backing-down to cover up her confusion? It sure seems that way.

So in the end, the routine measure got a routine vote of support – everybody said “aye.” If anybody opposed this measure – which seeks bids for a one-year contract to sell the county inmate uniforms, with three one-year renewal options – they kept it to themselves.

Which in the end means this was county business, as usual.

That may be the real key to comprehending the way government at any level operates. Something does not have to be illegal in order to be bad. Sometimes, it’s the most innocuous moments that are the most cheesy in character.

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The Fantastic(??!?) Five too good for cost-savings Cook County furloughs

From what I have heard and read, this seems to be an effort led by Cook County Commissioner William Beavers, with support from commissioners Earlean Collins, Joan Patricia Murphy, Deborah Sims and Robert Steele.

BUTLER



They are the five county commissioners (out of 17 total) who are pushing forward with an effort to be reimbursed money from their county salaries that was part of a plan to cut the county budget – but which they say is an illegal attempt to cut their pay.

COMMISSIONERS SENT LETTERS to the county demanding to be reimbursed for the 10 “furlough” days they were supposed to use to take time off. Since they officially weren’t working, they weren’t paid for those days.

This is a move being asked of every single person on the Cook County payroll. All the people who do the actual work in the assessor’s office or the recorder of deeds or in the other agencies are being asked to do the same thing.

Yet in letters sent this summer that came to a head when the county board met this week, these five commissioners contend that since they’re elected officials, this cost-cutting move cannot be done to them.

We’re hearing a lot of rhetoric about how it is “against the law” to cut an elected official’s salary during their current term. Which would imply they would accept the idea of a furlough if its implementation were postponed until county board members begin their new terms in 2015.

I MUST ADMIT that I don’t get what is going through the minds of these five county commissioners. This is a cut that everybody in the county, and even many people in city government, has been taking in recent years.

To suddenly come up with this objection now makes them look absurd.

COLLINS



Besides, it becomes quite apparent upon listening to the commissioners that I’m not sure they truly comprehend exactly what state law says on this subject.

What the law says is that an elected official’s salary cannot be changed during their current term. Whenever a government body approves pay raises for themselves, those pay hikes must be delayed so that they don’t take effect until a new term.

WHICH MEANS IF government officials want to approve pay raises for their future successors (or themselves if they manage to get re-elected), that is acceptable.

MURPHY

It is the law that is meant to prevent county board members from approving big fat raises for themselves up front, knowing there would be at least four years before the next election cycle.

The law itself makes sense. Officials know going into a political post what (if anything) it pays. If it is insufficient, then perhaps they should reconsider their desire to hold an elective government office.

But no matter how many times I hear Beavers say the words “pay cut” and “illegal” (as he did Wednesday night on WTTW’s “Chicago Tonight” program), I’m not sure how this current situation applies to the law that says a salary cannot be changed.

BECAUSE AS I see it (maybe Beavers and crew can convince a judge to see it differently if this ever winds up in court), the base salary being paid to these people – along with all the county employees who also are taking the furlough – remains the same.

The reason why a few of their paychecks were smaller is because they were asked to work fewer days. They’re being paid at the same rate, but for less work. Where’s the pay cut?

SIMS



Now I realize that a county board member, in a sense, is on call at all times. If some business had come up on one of the days that they were officially “off-duty” and not being paid, they likely would have tended to it anyway.

But that, in a sense, is the drawback of doing a job that one enjoys (and I don’t doubt they enjoy carrying the title of “government official” with all its perks). If you don’t like it, go find one of the declining numbers of assembly line jobs – where management will likely laugh at you before firing you if you were to pull this kind of rhetoric on them.



I’M SURE SOME people are going to argue that less money in the check constitutes a pay cut, and that trying to view the issue any other way is wrong. Actually, trying to view the issue that way is simplistic – and misses the whole point.

STEELE



That point being that the county government, along with city and state governments, businesses and just about everybody, are enduring tight economic conditions.

County government employees and officials are far from the only people who are enduring the possibility of working fewer hours in order to help their companies maintain the same number of jobs.



Considering that the county furlough amounts to less than one day per month, it is not the most intense pay loss one could suffer. I’m sure someone who got whacked from full-time to perhaps 30 hours per week feels the loss more intensely.

SO NO MATTER how much Beavers tried spinning the issue on Wednesday as one where he agreed to a furlough only as part of a since-ignored deal to keep Provident and Oak Forest hospitals open, it just doesn’t play.

I have no doubt that the public is going to see this issue as a matter of five government officials who are even more lacking in public perception of themselves than the typical politician.

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