EXTRA: Pop tax falls flat, while judicial temperaments soar sky high

Friday was the day that the Cook County tax on sweetened beverages (a.k.a., the pop tax) came to an end. With it being a new fiscal year for county government, a new budget takes over the finances.

Cost declines 21 cents

And this is the budget that made some $200 million in spending cuts to replace the revenues that were expected to be raised during Fiscal 2018 through pop sales.

A GREAT MANY people are trying to pass off the county’s action to rescind the tax as some heroic measure by which the Cook County Board listened to the electorate and took away that tax of 1 penny per ounce.

Which usually boosted the price of one of those plastic pop bottles by about 21 cents.

But there are those who are upset by the fact that the entities that comprise Cook County government got their spending cut. One of those is Chief Judge Timothy Evans (remember back when he was supposed to be Harold Washington’s successor, but wound up losing to Richard M. Daley?)

Evans is suing Cook County government, and in fact a hearing was held Friday on that lawsuit – although Friday’s hearing which will resume Tuesday was on the merits of bringing in a judge from outside of Cook County to preside over the case.

EVANS CONTENDS THE Cook County Board has no legal authority to cut employees from the courts payroll. He wants some 100 people restored to his payroll, and the county to find somewhere else to cut the $26 million it contemplated whacking from his portion of the county budget.

EVANS: Suing his own home county

Although county officials argue that the cuts they made to balance out the Cook County budget for Fiscal 2018 does not impact any front-line employees of the state’s attorney or public defender’s offices.

This is likely to be an ongoing argument. So for any of you who thought that the issue was resolved by reducing the cost of a bottle of pop back to previous tax levels, you appear seriously misguided.

And for what it’s worth, I’ve heard from some potential voters who say they admire county board President Toni Preckwinkle for at least trying to find a solution that didn’t involve cuts in government services.

PRECKWINKLE: She tried!

I DON’T KNOW exactly how this will all be resolved in the end – other than to say there are bound to be a few individuals for whom essential services wind up being whacked at in the name of balanced budgeting.

Just something to think about when you get all excited about saving 21 cents on a pop bottle – or 64 cents on those two-liter jugs some people like to buy!

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Is it time to write “obituary” for chief judge, one-time alderman Tim Evans?

As much as some people want to believe the political system is rigged in favor of the incumbents and there’s no way to “throw da bums out,” the fact is that every now and then the will of the public works in ways that makes it seem as though we get bored with certain people and let them go.

From back in the days when Timothy Evans (to the mayor's right) was part of the Harold Washington operation to try to govern Chicago

That could very well wind up being the fate come Thursday for Timothy Evans, the one-time alderman who for more than two decades has been a Cook County judge and rose his way to the post of chief judge of the Cook County Circuit Court.

THE ADDED TITLE basically means he gets to claim to have significant power over the courts, and is usually the person who gets called upon when there’s some sort of political ritual that requires the presence of a judge.

It is a nice-sounding post, and actually is quite a way for Evans to wind up a career in public service that dates back to the final years of the first Mayor Daley.

But I’m sure that if Evans winds up losing that “chief judge” title, he’s going to take it badly. He’ll see it as a repudiation, although it’s not really clear what people who are repudiating him think is wrong in the way he has conducted himself.

Which makes one thing very clear – internal elections involving professionals can be just as petty as those public elections that we all have the opportunity to vote in.

THERE IS A certain generation of political observers to whom the name “Tim Evans” brings back significant memories from the days of Harold Washington as mayor – because while the mayor had a majority opposition in the City Council going out of its way to thwart much of what he desired to do, he did have some allies.

EVANS: Wants to remain the chief

And Evans – the alderman from the South Side-based 4^th Ward – was the floor leader. Meaning he was the one who supposedly was trying to coordinate the mayor’s desires when they came up in ordinances before the City Council.

When Washington died, there were those who believed that Tim Evans was the natural heir who should have become mayor. Of course, that would have implied that people were generally in agreement with the Washington agenda; rather than scheming for a way with which to dump him.

ALLEN: Looking for a promotion

That is why the council picked another alderman, Eugene Sawyer (the father of current 6^th Ward Alderman Roderick Sawyer), to be the interim mayor, then dumped Sawyer when the special election came along a year later. Which is how we got the concept of “Mayor Richard M. Daley.”

EVANS TRIED CHALLENGING all of this, but lost at the polls. Then lost a 1991 re-election bid for the City Council, which is how current Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle gained her entrance to electoral politics.

A year later, Evans became a judge. And in a sense of peace-making, Daley supported his rise through the ranks that saw him ultimately be able to call himself the “chief judge.”

But the Cook County judges on Thursday (all 241 of them) will gather to pick a new chief judge for a three-year term, and Evans has challengers. Particularly in the form of Tom Allen, a former alderman-turned-judge who’d like to have the top title.

Allen has his ties to the Cullerton family that has produced many generations of government officials in Chicago. He even has the backing, of sorts, from Preckwinkle – who has made it clear she thinks Evans has undermined her own efforts to push for reforms in the criminal justice system.

Sentiment of some, but not enough, to make Evans the mayor

ALLEN ALSO HAS been aggressive in trying to get his judicial colleagues to back the idea of a change in leadership, to the point where 34^th Ward Alderman Carrie Austin this week was publicly critical of her Democratic colleagues who are backing Allen – saying they are guilty of a “double cross.”

Feisty rhetoric for a title that I imagine most of us didn’t know was up for grabs and didn’t realize would be decided on Thursday.

It will be interesting to see how the judges take all this into account. Is there a serious sentiment to depose Tim Evans? Do they really want a new chief judge? Or is this a lot of hype being spewed to an impressive-sounding-but-obscure post?

Is it really time to write the political obituary of Timothy Evans? Or will judicial life carry on come Friday as it has before?

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How stubborn can Cook County be? We’re going to learn fairly soon

We’re going to learn in coming weeks, if not days, just how stubborn our county’s court system is capable of being.

Who'd have dreamed of cellphones back in the days when Anton Cermak gave us our current Criminal Courts building?

For there is a change that took place beginning this week with regards to those people who have business bringing them to the Criminal Courts building (a.k.a., 26^th and California) when they have to comply with court orders concerning their personal cellular telephones.

BECAUSE TECHNICALLY, PEOPLE aren’t supposed to have such phones on their presence inside the courthouse.

And the storage lockers that used to be in place for people to put their phones while they’re at the courthouse are no longer in use.

So we now have a situation where someone can show up at the courthouse, be forbidden to enter because of their phone, then somehow be found in contempt (and perhaps even have a warrant issued for their arrest) because they couldn’t make it to court.

Because it seems that chief Judge Timothy Evans (the same man who once had dreams of being our city’s mayor) has no intention of easing up on the restrictions against cellphones being in one’s possession when they’re inside the courthouse.

PERSONALLY, I GET the reason for the restriction. It seems that before the ban was put in place back in 2013, people inside courtrooms were using the camera functions on their phones to take pictures of things happening inside.

It seems some of those pictures were winding up in the public amongst gang-oriented people as a way of identifying people who had the unmitigated gall to testify against them in criminal cases.

EVANS: Soon to have to make a tough decision

There also were instances where people were using text message functions to pass along information from criminal cases to people outside the courtroom who might have to testify in the future. In short, there were people using modern technology to try to undermine the legal system.

Evans came up with the outright ban on people having their phones in court as a way of countering that problem.

BUT IT CREATES a bigger problem in that cell phones are so common place these days – particularly since the ability to find a public payphone can be pretty difficult these days.

What does a person do with the phone while they have to be in court?

I know from being a reporter-type person who has covered several of the courthouses in Cook County that what the local officials always say is to leave the phone out in your car. And perhaps at the suburban-based courts, that makes sense since they all come equipped with ample parking lots and expect people to drive to court.

But court officials always like to say how every single courthouse was designed to be on a bus route so as to remove the excuse that someone without a car can’t physically get to court.

AND I ALSO know I’d never want to have to park a car near the Criminal Courts building (take the pink line el train to California Avenue, then a bus six blocks south to the front door of the courthouse). Which is the way many people get themselves to court when they have to be there.

Those storage lockers may be a pain in the butt for sheriff’s police to have to oversee (because the same gang-types who were using their cellphones to take pictures and make recordings of court proceedings allegedly are using the lockers to store drugs while in court).

But the fact is that if court officials really are going to be so absolutist in their approach to phones, they’re going to have to assume responsibility for them. And if they’re not willing to do so, then they’re going to have to lighten up.

Which is what I think will ultimately have to happen. We’ll just have to have those sheriff’s deputies who patrol each courtroom (and are already prepared to crack down on anybody who gets out of line during court proceedings) be prepared to bust anybody who thinks they’re being cute by trying to take a “selfie” with the judge in the background.

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What happens to opponents following the Tuesday municipal elections?

Jesus Garcia may wind up being the “big” winner of this election cycle, even if he doesn’t wind up winning a mayoral election either Tuesday or in April.

Garcia has been on the local political scene off-and-on for the past three decades, and has served at City Hall, the Statehouse in Springfield and at the County Building.

THE LATTER IS his current place of political occupancy – he’s been a county board member for the past four years and just got himself re-elected to another four-year term back in the November election cycle.

Which means he doesn’t face political oblivion if he doesn’t win on April 7, or finishes lower than second place on Tuesday.  If anything, he’s now a county board member with a bit of the public spotlight glowing off him.

He has a chance to be one of the power players on the county board; and definitely one of the more significant of the 17 commissioners.

He’s probably not going to become the equivalent of Commissioner John Daley, D-Chicago, in terms of being significant in the way Cook County government does its business (the Daley brother is the county board’s finance committee chair).

BUT HE’S CERTAINLY going to draw more attention than someone like Gregg Goslin, R-Glenview, whom I wonder if even northwest suburban residents are aware of who he is.

A return to the county board following the municipal elections could give Garcia the chance to have so many political observer eyes focused on him that he becomes someone significant.

If he handles himself right, he could become a political powerbroker in his own right. People could wind up benefitting in the key issues and the constituency that he claims to represent during his mayoral campaign.

If anything, I wonder if he could wind up being one of the most successful mayoral also-rans on the local political scene.

CURRENTLY, I’D HAVE to say that niche is filled by Timothy Evans.

Remember when he challenged Richard M. Daley back in the late 1980s when the future mayor was trying to win his first term (actually, the right to finish what was left of the late Harold Washington’s mayoral stint)?

Evans was a significant part of Washington’s allies in the City Council, and he managed to dominate the African-American vote the same way Harold did. Only he couldn’t take any significant white or Latino vote like Washington, so he wound up losing.

Yet Evans is now the chief justice of the Cook County court system. Which isn’t a bad post to have. I can think of a lot of political people whose over-bloated egos would be thoroughly satisfied if they could wind up with such a position some day!

IT’S NOT LIKE some of the other Daley challengers throughout the years, such as Danny Davis or Bobby Rush – who remain in Congress but clearly have shown they will never advance any further than their own particular neighborhoods in terms of being taken seriously.

Garcia, if he conducts himself properly in coming weeks, could provide himself a chance to move up in authority. Or else he could be the guy who quickly gets forgotten except for the confines of his home Little Village neighborhood.

We’ll have to wait and see.

As for the other mayoral challengers, I’m not sure what to think. Second Ward Ald. Robert Fioretti had to give up a chance to keep his City Council post in order to run for mayor, and I suspect his outspoken demeanor as an alderman will ensure the powerbrokers will go out of their way to keep him outside the political structure.

IS HE THE new member of the “ancient history” club that now includes people such as Richard Phelan and Jack O’Malley -- the one-time county board president and state's attorney, for those who have forgotten?

Willie Wilson likely also will not have much of a political future. Although I’ll admit it would be interesting if whoever does wind up winning the mayoral post were to consider making the one-time McDonald’s franchise operator-turned-millionaire into some sort of adviser to government.

He does have some ideas worth considering (albeit not his suggestions of doing away with the police superintendent’s post) and he speaks for a constituency that does not get listened to often enough.

And as for William “Dock” Walls? We’ll likely see him again in 2019 when he again tries running a token bid for mayor and takes 2 percent of the vote – making him the 21^st Century equivalent of Lar “America First” Daly, who ran for mayor and so many other political posts during his life without ever winning a thing!

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