Clerks' duties are sacred, not holier-than-thou. They sometimes forget that

In the just-over-quarter century that I have written about government, I have found that clerks are the most important people.

Even these 'clerks' are more logical. And that's scary

They are the ones with access to information about many crucial services that government performs. They are the ones who are the only government officials most people even deal with.

CLERKS CAN MAKE access to government all-the-more easier to have, or as overly rigid and complex as they want to make it.

So I’m not the least bit surprised that the county clerk of Rowan County, Ky., is capable of stirring up a stink that has her rural county in the national news.

That clerk is Kim Davis, and she’s the one who in recent years has “found Jesus” and decided to live her life in an overly-religious manner. Which she now thinks she must apply to the way she does her job.

She is the one who says she doesn’t care what the Supreme Court of the United States says – non-heterosexual couples who try to get a marriage license from her office so they can be married in the eastern Kentucky county aren’t going to get it.

THE HIGH COURT specifically ordered her to comply on Monday, only to have her say “no” on Tuesday – offering an explanation that she thinks having her name on the marriage license will condemn her soul to eternal hellfire!

She’s going to have to appear before a federal judge on Thursday, and it will be interesting to see whether that judge has the nerve to lock her up for contempt – or merely impose a huge fine on her county until they put pressure on Davis to act appropriately.

Yes, I say appropriate. Because I don’t see how a government official ought to be imposing anything on the public because of their own personal religious beliefs. Just as I don’t think it appropriate to impose my own thoughts on spiritual matters on others.

Religion is a very personal matter. It ought to remain that way.

NOW I DON’T want her to get locked up in a jail cell. Personally, I think she’d take that as reinforcement – her being incarcerated for Jesus. I don’t want her to gain such personal satisfaction.

I’d rather see a judge impose some sort of daily fine against Rowan County – the entity that employs her as an elected official. Which means she cannot be fired – the people picked her.

And in all honesty, I wouldn’t be surprised if when she comes up for re-election, a majority of residents in that isolated Kentucky county probably would vote “yes” to retain her. That is probably why local county government officials haven’t been quick to condemn her. They don’t want the backlash.

But a fine from a federal judge – something in the way of an amount that would drive the county broke rather quickly – is something that would get government attention.

PARTICULARLY IF IT is one of those fines that accumulates on a daily basis for every day that Davis continues to refuse to enforce the law – as interpreted by the high court itself.

Do that, and we’ll all be surprised by how quickly the Rowan County officials convene in a special meeting and find reason to pressure Davis to resign – then replace her with a person who will enforce the law without believing they’re on their way to Hell for it.

All I know is that learning of Davis makes me all the more appreciative of one now-former clerk I used to deal with. She was a stickler for the “letter of the law” and liked the idea that she could force people to file formal Freedom of Information Act requests for even routine details.

But that “letter of the law” attitude also made her feel that she was obligated to fulfill every request possible – she’d usually hand over the requested information the moment she got the FOIA forms.

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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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Does anybody really believe that anyone can now get hired at City Hall?

I was amused to read an Associated Press account about the fact that a federal judge lifted a series of restrictions meant to ensure that government jobs weren’t given out purely as rewards for political work.

Who you know may not be enough to land a job at Chicago's City Hall anymore -- that was the story's lede. Do you really believe this to be true?

EXCUSE ME FOR being skeptical, but there’s always going to be a degree to which people hire those with whom they are most comfortable, and to whom each election cycle will mean the coming of new blood – largely because the old blood will have lost their political sponsors in the electoral posts.

Besides, we do have to admit that much of the old, incredibly blatant, ways of government hiring have gone by the wayside. A new generation that just isn’t inclined to be so obedient just to get a job has come in.

Personally, I view the lifting of Shakman Decree restrictions as being merely an acknowledgement of that fact. The blatant problems are over. But the more subtle ones are not, and likely never will be.

What we have to be less concerned with is less about who “sent” someone for a particular post, and more about whether government work (“the people’s business,” as some cynical pols refer to it), actually gets done.

BECAUSE MUCH OF the work done in these clerical jobs is stuff that could be done by many people – including the ones who got the jobs because they happened to know somebody.

There are times I wonder if the people who complain the loudest are the ones who are jealous that the only people they know capable of “getting them” a job are ones who work in a gas station, and not some sort of pseudo-cushy political posts.

If they had the right contacts, they’d suddenly be all for the old system.

And yes, I have to tell you that many of these jobs can be mind-numbing in their own right. If not for the perspective that you’re doing work for the public, nobody would want many of these clerical posts.

BECAUSE ANYBODY WITH any real intelligence who works within government either has some sort of serious dedication to the public good (more intense than you’d see in a police officer or social worker), or else they wind up leaving to make much more money in the private sector.

Now I suppose I should say that I once got a government job because of who I knew. It was back when I was in college and I needed a job for the summer. It turned out I knew someone who knew then-Rich Township Democratic Committeeman Lee Conlon.

It also turned out that Conlon and I had both attended the same university. So the next thing I knew, I was showing up at the office of then-Cook County Assessor Harold “Bus” Yourell, whose chief of staff had but one question for me.

 

Literally, it was “Who sent you?” That was my only qualification for a summer’s worth of work in the basement recording land transactions in giant ledger books (the county hadn’t yet fully computerized such information, so the books still had to be kept up to date).

I CAN’T SAY any of my colleagues were particularly qualified for the job. Then again, I don’t think anyone out there would have done any better than we did that summer.

Even if I was, theoretically, just a political hack who was eminently replaceable.

Do we really want a government operated by somebody, even if they have no real qualifications or skills, that anybody sent?

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Split villages know how to deal w/ issues; they can figure out firearms

To listen to the National Rifle Association, the reason there cannot be a bill concerning “concealed carry” that exempts Cook County is because of all the chaos such a measure would create in those communities on the border.

Some of these legislators can't comprehend split (by county) communities.

 

The ones that literally are split down the middle by the county line.

IT’S TRUE. THERE are municipalities that either are Cook County-based, but have newer residential developments that spill over the county line, or are based at the edge of the surrounding counties and have portions that cross over into the Land of Cook!

The NRA-type argue that the potential for chaos is too great – because an individual’s ability to get a permit allowing them to carry a pistol on their person for self-defense (allegedly, although I think it’s more about ego-stroking than anything else) depends on what part of town they live in.

And what happens if, in the course of daily business, a person happens to cross over the county line while remaining in their home town. Is their permit suddenly not legitimate because they happened to come to the attention of police while in the Cook County portion of town?

Theoretically, I suppose it is possible for this kind of chaos to occur. There might well be police officers who will dread the idea of having to pay attention to exactly where an incident occurred. God forbid if it happens that an incident happens RIGHT AT the county line (which usually is a street so innocuous that one doesn’t realize right away that they’re no longer in the civilized land of Cook County and have ventured into one of those bumpkin counties that surround us.

YES, I AM being sarcastic by phrasing it that way. There really isn’t any significant difference between the Cook County portions and the collar county portions of any municipality that happens to be split in such a way.

If anything, the split is a part of the unique character of those communities. Local officials are used to having to deal with different jurisdictions – particularly when it comes to the police having to figure out which state’s attorney’s office to contact and whether they’re dealing with the Medical Examiner’s office on the West Side or one of those coroners in the outer ring of cities at the edge of the Chicago area.

Which means I have faith in the ability of the local police to figure out for themselves how to handle the dichotomy that would occur should it turn out that any “concealed carry” measure winds up exempting Cook County as a political compromise that lets the rural communities of Southern Illinois have their pistol-packin’ mamas while leaving the portion that accounts for nearly half the population of Illinois to decide for itself what sensible restrictions ought to be in place for firearms possession.

The simple fact is that we have many laws in Illinois that are passed with exemptions for any community with 3 million or more people (which means Chicago is exempted) or 5 million or more if the intent is to exempt all of Cook. There even are laws written explicitly for Chicago and Cook County.

HONESTLY, I BELIEVE the fight by the firearms advocates over this issue is that they view it as a way of forcing the rural mindset onto the urban area that accounts for so much of Illinois’ population. An exemption totally undermines that effort!

Which is why the NRA types earlier this year talked of deliberately opposing any Chicago-oriented bills as payback for opposition to “concealed carry” and are now saying they would kill off any bill on the issue that tries to exempt Cook County.

Who knows? They might well find out that those communities that are split between the counties will try to push for local measures that would unify the municipality – most likely in favor of firearms restrictions for the whole community!

Gee, the idea of people realizing that a pistol in the hands of a panicking person who thinks their personal safety is at risk might be just as dangerous as all the “criminals” they want to fear! That probably hurts their ego more than anything else.

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Do we need so many police chiefs?

There’s a bill pending these days before the Illinois House of Representatives; one that would make it easier for police departments in individual municipalities to be done away with and combined into larger law enforcement entities.

I heard about this particular bill earlier this week from a state legislator who absolutely detests the idea. He denounces it as a “bad bill” and makes it clear that he’s going to do whatever it takes to kill this concept off.

PERSONALLY, I THINK his effort will succeed – although not because of this individual legislator (who is way too low-ranking to have any such influence, which is why I’m not going to name him). It’s just that I can see his attitude when it comes to local police to be very pervasive among political people.

There’s no way they’re going to give up their local police departments – which make them feel like they are people of importance. After all, they have their own departments and their own chiefs who have to answer directly to them.

If their respective home communities got merged into some larger-scale law enforcement agency, it might very well show how insignificant some of these towns and villages truly are.

So for the time being, we likely can count on each and every ‘burg having its own police chief and its own law enforcement officers – anxiously patrolling their local streets to keep them safe from crime that they likely think spills over from surrounding communities.

AFTER ALL, ___________________ is far too fine a community to have criminals of its own, the local officials (fill in the blank yourself) will proclaim.

Nonsense!

Because I have to admit that when I heard this particular legislator (who comes from Cook County) start attacking this particular bill, I couldn’t help but get motivated to think what a wonderful idea it truly is.

Perhaps it is because I come from Cook County, where our 129 municipalities run the gamut from Chicago’s 2.7-something million people to the communities that barely have 1,000 people.

HAVE YOU EVER been to Hometown, Ill.?

Not that this is a bash on Hometown, a southwestern suburb so tied into Oak Lawn that I’m sure many people passing through don’t even realize they are separate municipalities.

I also have seen many smaller suburbs where the local police department is a chief, a second-in-command (who usually carries the rank of Lieutenant) and a full-time patrol officer or two – backed up with many part-time cops who do their patrols to bring in extra money to bolster their “real” job.

I wonder what is truly accomplished – other than the fact that the mayor (usually a ‘village president’ in reality) of that town gets to say he has his own department.

PERHAPS WE’RE AT the point where we ought to merge all these local departments into one law enforcement agency. In fact, there are times when I think that the Cook County sheriff’s police ought to be patrolling all of the county – and not just the little patches of unincorporated area that exist.

Of course, that would require a significant upgrade in the budget the county sheriff gets. I’m sure Tom Dart wouldn’t be able to undertake such an effort on his current budget – although he’s already being asked to patrol the streets of suburban Ford Heights without any increase in funding.

Although considering that many suburban municipalities are having their own budget crunches these days and that the cash-consuming part of their budgets is their public safety agencies (police and fire departments), maybe it would cost the towns less money if a larger-scale entity were to do the patrols.

They likely could do it at a slightly lesser cost than it now takes to maintain individual police agencies in all those suburban towns.

PERHAPS IT SHOULD be only the largest of suburban towns (and the city of Chicago itself) that have their own police departments?

Then again, perhaps even that is a mistake. Take Miami and Dade County, Fla., where it literally is the equivalent of a county police that patrols the entire area. Maybe that’s something that city is doing right.

Besides, I have often heard those suburban officials complain about how they are susceptible to gang-related crime because those gang members know how to jump across suburban boundaries at-will – using jurisdictional issues to evade arrest for their actions.

Making an all-mighty Cook County police (or Chicago-area police, if you will) could help get around that, while also potentially making police structure more efficient.

THE ONLY ONE who really suffers is the politician – whose electoral ego will take a body check.

Then again, that probably is sufficient reason in the “real world” for legislators to vote against this (they don’t want to tick off the local political operatives who got them elected to their seats in Springfield in the first place).

So in the name of political expediency, the one who will take a body check this spring will likely be we, the people, when this bill withers away faster than Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s attempts to have the General Assembly impose that registration fee on people who own handguns.

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EXTRA: Will Beavers, the “hog,” take on feds the way he takes on Toni?

Bill Beavers, the self-described “hog with the big nuts,” is going to have to brawl with the federal government in coming months, and it will be interesting to see if he is as feisty with “da G” the way he can be with county board President Toni Preckwinkle.

BEAVERS: Speak up to the feds?



For Beavers is the Cook County Board member who represents the far southeastern corner of Chicago and who uses his position to question just about anything that goes on in government that doesn’t meet his standards.

NOT THAT HE has the standards of the “goo-goos.”  Beavers, who was once with the Chicago Police Department and also was alderman of the seventh ward for many years, is an old-school political type who doesn’t have much time for a lot of the “good government” nonsense – as he sees it.

Back when former county board President Todd Stroger was still around, Beavers was a solid backer of his. When Preckwinkle came in and used her authority to eliminate the county sales tax increase that Stroger used to balance the budget, Beavers was her biggest critic.

To this day, Beavers can be counted on to engage in a rant about how short-sighted the county government officials were to do away with that increase – any time anything comes before the county board that requires extra money.

Will Beavers try to adopt the same attitude in dealing with the federal investigators who on Thursday got a grand jury to indict him on tax-related charges? It’s very likely.

WILL BILL BEAVERS go into the Chicago history books as someone who got busted for tax evasion, similar to Al Capone? It’s very possible.

Because what strikes me about the charges now pending against Beavers is that his actions, in and of themselves, are not illegal. To listen to the Internal Revenue Service, he wouldn’t be in any legal trouble if only he had filled out his tax returns differently.

By comparison, I suspect many people will be more offended by the ways in which Beavers spent money, and will be less concerned about the way his tax return was filled out.

The bottom line is that Beavers is charged with obstructing the IRS and three charges of filing false income-tax returns.

WHAT HE ACTUALLY did was used money donated to his campaign committees (which are supposed to pay for his Election Day efforts) and his county commissioner expense accounts for personal purposes.

No one is being specific, but it is being said that some of the money wound up being gambled away by Beavers – which in and of itself is not a crime.

Another part was used to pay into funds that enabled Beavers to get a larger pension for his time with the Police Department AND with the City Council – a $68,763.07 payment by Beavers nearly tripled his pension to just over $6,500 per month.

It’s no wonder he can afford those self-described “finely-tailored” suits.

HIS ACTIONS ARE completely legal. I recall once having a conversation with then-Illinois Attorney General Jim Ryan about this very issue, and how he was planning to bolster his eventual pension by buying credit for more time worked -- making up for the fact that in his early working years, he short-changed his pension contributions so he could have more money for his family’s expenses.

BUT, when you use these kinds of funds for personal purposes, you’re supposed to consider them additions to your income. That means you’re supposed to acknowledge them on your tax return, and be prepared to write out a check to cover the additional tax burden you face from such income.

Federal prosecutors say Beavers did no such thing. When the IRS began investigating, they say Beavers had his campaign committees create records to try to cover up the lack of such payments.

Somehow, I think people are going to be more offended at the idea of a person who already was entitled to a $2,890-a-month pension thinking he should be able to get more.

YET IT’S LEGAL, and surely the kind of activity that Beavers will support.

I have no doubt he’s going to claim in coming months that he is the one being prosecuted. I just want to see for myself if he will get as “lippy” with U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald as he does these days with Preckwinkle – and anyone else who dares to challenge his way of thinking.

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Does Todd Stroger think the Latino vote will put him over the top on Tuesday?

That literally was the thought that popped into my head when I saw the release issued by Cook County Board President Todd Stroger Sunday night about immigration reform.

It seems the Cook County Board passed one of its many symbolic resolutions when they last met – this particular one says that the county officially thinks that people living in this country without a valid visa ought to be able to get the proper papers so they can live openly here.

IN SHORT, STROGER is putting himself on the side of people who want serious reform of the nation’s immigration laws. He’s putting himself against those whose idea of immigration reform amounts to an increase in the number of deportations from the United States.

Not that any of those ideologically conservative types would ever have voted for Stroger. There’s also the fact that Chicago is such an ethnic-oriented city (even the white people are usually fully aware of their ethnic origins) that a measure like this is not the least bit controversial.

In fact, I hadn’t seen any news coverage of the fact that the county board approved this measure – which means it probably got lost in the shuffle of all the more relevant activity that the county board did when they met Jan. 26. After all, it’s not like the Cook County Board has any real authority to pass anything into law that would affect the immigration status of anyone.

But now, Todd Stroger can make appeals to the Latino population – which in Chicago accounts for more than one-quarter of the city’s residents. Technically, this is county government making this appeal, not the Stroger campaign; although end end recipient is one and the same Todd.

STROGER IS USING the language usually used by politicos who want to appeal to the Latino voter – who perceive the immigration issue as evidence of how our growing ethnic numbers are perceived since we realize some people in this country don’t want to have to tell the difference between a Latino who was born in this country and one who was born elsewhere.

“These immigrants could contribute even more to our communities if they were given the opportunity to gain legal status, which would enable them to gain more productive jobs, earn more and pay more in taxes,” he said, in a prepared statement. “It would enable in particular immigrant youths to pursue education and serve our nation in the armed forces.”

Stroger can say he’s in full support of Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., who late last year introduced a bill before Congress that would make significant changes in federal immigration law to make it possible for people without visas to get them (the very practice that the nativist element of our society likes to lambast as “amnesty”).

He may even envision having Gutierrez work to turn out some votes in the Puerto Rican neighborhoods northwest where the Congressman has some influence. Considering that the most recent Chicago Tribune poll showed county board President challenger Toni Preckwinkle leading among white voters and Dorothy Brown getting more support among black voters than any other candidate, does Stroger think the Latinos are going to go for him?

HE MAY, BUT that would be delusional, particularly since Gutierrez himself came out in support for the Preckwinkle campaign several weeks back. While I haven’t seen any specific polling of the Cook County Board president’s race broken down along racial or ethnic lines to specify the Latino vote, I wouldn’t be shocked if many are going along with Toni.

Her campaign seems to be the one that is putting together something resembling the biracial, progressive coalition that once put Harold Washington into the mayor’s office. If Stroger wins, I could easily envision the Latino populace being just as shocked as everybody else in this county who wants to count "the Toddler" out.

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EXTRA: There’s no “clout” in Cook County government hiring. Stroger says so

Perhaps it was the effect of the Allegra that he said he took Wednesday morning, but Cook County Board President Todd Stroger seemed in a snarkier-than-usual mood when the county board met Wednesday.

What else would make him say a statement that is bound to come back to haunt him as evidence that he’s somehow out of touch with reality? Does he really believe that anybody will believe his comments that there is no political favoritism involved in working for the county government?

IT CAME UP during a discussion of how the county is trying to comply with court decrees that try to make local government operate more honestly and fairly (rather than refusing to hire “nobody nobody sent”).

Compliance Administrator Mary Robinson told the county board members that determining who is a government employee hired solely for political reasons and who is a legitimately hard-working employee is not a simple, cut-and-dried issue.

“Your systems can be manipulated,” Robinson said, later adding, “I can’t tell you who’s clout.”

To which Stroger cut her off by saying, “I can tell you, None.”

LATER, HE ADDED, “we don’t use clout in” human resources.

It makes me wonder if Stroger is one of those people who honestly thinks that the White Sox are still in the pennant race because they have those six games remaining head-to-head against the Detroit Tigers.

Or is this just the usual rhetoric about good government from political people to whom it is not their top priority.

It wasn’t even his only moment.

STROGER STARTED OFF the county’s session by letting us all know how he plans to get himself an influenza shot in upcoming days to deal with the possible spread of H1N1, along with more conventional strains of the flu.

It’s a cute comment. Considering that signs hanging around the County Building/City Hall say, “It’s simple. Wash your hands,” it would have fit in with the idea of a simple gesture to promote public health.

Yet Stroger insisted on turning his intent to get that flu shot into a political shot at his opponents who wanted to reduce the county’s portion of the sales tax.

As Stroger so bluntly dumped on his political colleagues, “those of us who are lucky to have insurance can just make an appointment.”

HE THEN ADDED, “it can be work for those low-income people to get them flu shots.”

As though a potential spread of H1N1 into the Chicago area could be blamed on the majority of the county board that wished to reduce the sales tax in the city from 10.25 percent to 9.75 percent (and down to about 9 percent in most of suburban Cook).

-30-

EXTRA: Everybody doesn’t hate Todd

Sometimes, I think people need to be reminded that their distaste for Cook County Board President Todd Stroger is not universal.

The man will have some support come next year’s election, and the trick is whether that support will be sufficient in a field with several candidates splitting up the vote.

SADLY ENOUGH, IT has become a racially motivated thing, as many of Stroger’s votes will come from people who perceive the upcoming campaign session as an excuse to take away a political office from an African-American male.

For those who would like to think that we’re beyond all that as a society, we’re probably not.

I couldn’t help but notice a couple of fellow African-American officials on the Cook County Board who, during the nearly two hours of debate concerning the sales tax issue, came to Stroger’s defense.

“You haven’t been a bad president in terms of trying to do things to benefit people,” said Commissioner Earlean Collins. “You get a bad shake, there’s no denying it.”

AGREEING WAS COMMISSIONER Jerry “the Iceman” Butler, who told Stroger he likes him personally, but is backing another candidate for county board president next year because, “the press has done a job on him, he’ll never get out from under it.”

For the record, Butler was among the four commissioners who backed Stroger with his vote on the veto override, while Collins was one of the 13 who voted against Stroger’s interests.

As she explained it, “You have to go and give (people) what they want, even if it’s not the best thing.”

Which reminds me of a line that once came from the mouth of former Illinois Senate President James “Pate” Philip, R-Wood Dale, in explaining why he voted to lower the legal standard for intoxication to 0.08 after years of opposing it. “Sometimes, you have to do what the people want,” he said.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: For those who haven’t read it anywhere else, a brief account of how Todd Stroger (http://nwitimes.com/news/local/illinois/article_d737cc6a-9416-5a33-9aff-5789ef92d83f.html) prevailed yet again on the sales tax decrease issue.

Todd, Make up your mind!

Todd Stroger is going to get dumped on, no matter what he winds up doing with regard to an attempt to reduce the sales tax paid by people who shop in Cook County.

Stroger, the president of the Cook County Board, was absolutely correct when he denounced the actions of the county board, which earlier this week voted to repeal the sales tax that they approved last year.

WHEN THE VOTE came down (12-3, with two other county commissioners being absent), Stroger called it “political theater,” and noted that many of the political people who are now so quick to talk anti-tax were among the measure’s supporters.

So it is hypocritical for these government officials to start talking as though they are protecting the interests of the taxpayers when they sure didn’t do anything to protect those interests last year.

It’s sort of like they broke it, and now they want full credit for getting out the glue bottle to try to piece it back together.

Despite that, Stroger is the one who comes off as laughable, and not just because he doesn’t know the difference between “fertility” and “futility.”

STROGER IS THE official who responded to his colleagues’ attempt to score cheap political points for themselves by promising to use his “veto” power to prevent the tax cut from taking effect.

After all, the financial circumstances that caused county government to need the additional revenue last year are still in place. Some might argue that the struggling economy makes them just as severe now.

So there is one sense in which a “veto” would not be an irresponsible act. If Stroger would decide to play the role of hard-liner who makes the unpopular (but necessary) decisions, he might be able to gain the respect of people who are interested in good government.

He’ll never gain the respect of the people who have been bashing him about for the past couple of years – the ones who will add this debacle to the list they are compiling in their minds of reasons why we should have Anybody But Todd as county board president come the 2010 elections.

BUT STROGER MAKES himself look like a bigger fool than these people are because he can’t make up his mind.

Depending on which radio station one listened to on Wednesday, Stroger either is continuing with the hard-line or is reconsidering. He told WLS-AM during an interview that he may let the county board’s tax repeal remain in effect.

One of the problems with using politically strident rhetoric is that a government official has to take a stance, then stick by it.

If he starts flopping about to give himself wiggle room, he makes himself look indecisive. If he tries to do an about-face and change his mind, he comes off as a nitwit.

THAT IS THE position Stroger has put himself in.

As far as I’m concerned, Stroger does not deserve to be lambasted in this instance for holding the line on a tax hike. He deserves to be smacked about a bit because he’s trying to play both sides.

Now the hard-core political pundits have been making a big deal out of the fact that Mayor Richard M. Daley’s brother, John, was one of the county commissioners who voted for repealing the tax hike.

They say it is evidence that the Daley family has lost faith in Stroger, and likely will be giving its support to someone else to challenge him come the Democratic primary next year.

DALEY (THE MAYOR, not the commissioner) on Wednesday called the original act a “very questionable increase in taxes.”

Now I’m not going to say that I enjoy paying the roughly extra penny per dollar so that the county can get its share of the sales tax revenue. I know that I have a brother who occasionally crosses over into Will County when he needs to shop for something so as to avoid paying the Cook tax hike.

But I do have a problem with officials of other government entities dumping on Cook County. For the fact is that the sales tax paid by people who shop here is a collection of shares to the respective municipality, the county and the state.

To listen to Mayor Daley complain about “questionable” tax hikes makes me wonder if he’s willing to put his money where his mouth is, and consider some sort of decline in the city’s share of the sales tax (since city residents pay a higher rate than anyone in suburban Cook does).

I DOUBT HE would make that offer. Does that mean he just doesn’t think any other government entity ought to be allowed to tax, because it might make people less willing to buy things so that the city can get its share of the proceeds?

In short, I’m not stepping up in defense of Stroger in this incident. But the idea that he deserves to be singled out for blame is ridiculous. It took a whole slew of government officials to get the sales tax rate throughout Cook County as high as it currently is.

The idea that Stroger should be the lone official dumped upon is wrong.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: The whole Todd Stroger vs. the County Board fight over tax hikes (http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/clout_st/2009/05/stroger-now-wants-to-talk-to-fellow-officials-before-deciding-whether-to-veto-sales-tax-repeal.html) is a politically partisan (http://www.suntimes.com/news/cityhall/1560810,stroger-cook-county-sales-tax-repeal-050609.article) match-up meant to make politicos look good. It has nothing to do with the good of the taxpayers.

Wheaton police can’t afford to respond to traffic. What remains, I don’t know

I’m not sure what to make of the recent decision by the police department in Wheaton, Ill., to cut down on the calls they will respond to.

Police say they have a limited budget, and they want to ensure they can afford to respond to serious crimes when they occur. Yet anyone who looks at the crime rate for the seat of government for DuPage County will see this is a town that has little serious crime.

IS THIS JUST a case where the local officials are so strapped for cash that they really can’t afford a police department? I don’t know that for a fact, but it would seem that way.

How serious is the situation in the town that likes to think of itself as the home to the Belushi family and the Rev Billy Graham (an alumnus of Wheaton College)?

WBBM-AM radio reported this week about the Wheaton situation, quoting police officers as saying that as of June 1, they will no longer respond to traffic accidents occurring on private property – unless people are injured.

In which case, the first call should be to the paramedic, with police following along to figure out if someone got hurt because of someone else’s negligence.

POLICE SAY THEY also will no longer bother showing up if someone locks themselves out of their car – unless in can be shown that getting that particular vehicle open immediately will save someone’s life.

In theory, I can understand the motivation behind these particular changes.

Accidents on private property are usually incidents that do not result in any kind of criminal charge, or even a ticket. So perhaps it is justified for police to say they have more important things to do than to send an officer out to the scene – just to collect information for a police report that the insurance companies ultimately want to see.

Police in Wheaton say those motorists should just report the incident to their insurance companies directly.

AND AS FAR as someone locking themselves out of their car (which I did once in DuPage County), perhaps someone should call a locksmith – rather than assuming that the police should handle such activity.

Yet I can’t help but remember the time I was locked out of my car, and a police officer ultimately broke in for me. What made the incident comical was that I was a reporter-type that day, covering a presidential event (George Bush the elder) out in the Chicago suburbs.

So I’m the guy who had a local police officer break into his car, while several Secret Service agents observed to ensure that neither the police officer nor I posed a threat to the president.

I can understand how that was a lot of wasted manpower. I can kind of see Wheaton’s point for not wanting to have to “jump” every time someone screws up and shuts the car door without removing their keys from the ignition.

YET IT’S THE claim by Wheaton police officials that such changes will free up officers to do more important things that makes me wonder. What are these “more important things?”

I have always been under the impression that Wheaton (a municipality of some 54,000 people – about 88 percent white) was a fairly low-crime place where these minor actions comprised the bulk of local law enforcement’s daily activity.

A look at some of the crime “statistics” shows a community where 1 murder and 5 rapes in any given year makes that year particularly violent.

Burglaries and thefts appear to comprise the bulk of criminal activity in Wheaton (with an average year consisting of a few hundred such incidents). There have been times when I have wondered if a place like Wheaton (like many of the couple hundred other suburbs that surround Chicago) would be better off doing away with the idea of a separate police department.

SERIOUSLY, WE OUGHT to county sheriff’s departments more authority, turning them into regional law enforcement entities. If a place like Wheaton, which many people think of as a wealthy suburb (median income in 2000 was $73,385 and median house value was $222,100), is having trouble funding a police department, perhaps someone in a position to do more ought to take over.

I literally have wondered about the logic of every single municipality in Cook County feeling the need to have its own police chief and uniformed officers – particularly since many of those smaller towns usually have only one or two full-time officers, and the rest being part-time cops whose professional competence becomes the butt of local jokes.

But I also realize that having one’s own police department is a sign of independence, allowing each municipality to feel a jolt of pride that it can look out for itself.

Even though a sheriff patrolling all the towns in their respective county could probably do a more professional job of protecting the public, I’m fully aware that no local official is going to be willing to consider doing away with the local police.

SO THAT MEANS this new attitude in Wheaton is likely to become the trend of the future, since Wheaton is far from the only municipality that faces financial constraints in these tough economic times.

We’re going to get police departments that deal with smaller budgets by doing less and less, to the point where someday a call to the police will warrant the response, “Don’t call us, we’ll call you.”

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Police don’t want to waste time on minor incidents. Is this the beginning (http://www.wbbm780.com/Wheaton-Police-To-Cut-Back-On-Minor-Calls/4280401) of a new cost-cutting trend among law enforcement agencies? Here's what Wheaton Police themselves have (http://www.wheaton.il.us/news/pressreleases/detail.aspx?id=4746) to say about the matter.