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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EXTRA: So much for cost-savings!

A part of me is wondering if Cook County Commissioner Bridget Gainer, D-Chicago, is one of the few elected officials with any level of common sense.

GAINER: Stating the obvious

That sure was the impression she gave off on Monday during the county board’s session.

IT WAS DURING the portion of the meeting devoted to the board’s Finance Committee. After approving various settlements of lawsuits (including one related to the bad behavior of now-incarcerated police Commander Jon Burge), the board members heard a revenue report.

A fairly routine procedure, I might add. Except for the fact that committee Chairman John Daley, D-Chicago, ended the report by waving his blue-bound copy and telling his colleagues that in the future they would not be receiving such printed reports.

Instead, beginning with the report intended for the county board meeting on June 5, the report would be sent to each of the 17 commissioners via e-mail.

Then, Daley said, the commissioners would be able to print it up for themselves.

WHICH STRUCK ME as a nonsense move, since it was supposedly meant to be a cost-saving measure (less printing, along with less paper and ink). But if each commissioner is having  their secretary print up their own copies (somehow, I suspect most of the board members get confused trying to figure out their laptops), where’s the savings.

Apparently, I wasn’t the only person to have that thought pop into my head.

Because right after I thought it, Gainer came out and said it.

“The secretary (to the board of Cook County Commissioners) may save (printing up) 100 pieces of paper, and the officials will now print up 100 more pieces of paper?” she asked.

IF THE COUNTY’S objective is to get people to think in terms of reading things off their screens, then perhaps the move makes sense. Although for those of us who remain more comfortable reading large sums of copy in an ink-on-paper format, then there just isn’t any real savings to the change.

And it certainly won’t save a penny if people start thinking of the matter in the way that Commissioner Joan Patricia Murphy, D-Crestwood, did. She semi-seriously said she would need to start purchasing a better quality of paper for her computer printer to make her own copy of the report.

“You’d better increase our budgets for our offices,” she said.

So much for a routine report remaining routine!

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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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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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