This week, in all likelihood, the board of commissioners of the Forest Preserve District of Cook County will pass a balanced budget for 2002. In April, it is almost certain the district’s auditors will issue a report showing a $9 million to $10 million deficit for the district. The commissioners know this, but they are required to pass a balanced budget–and so they will. They will conduct this annual exercise in fuzzy math because this is business as usual for the forest preserves.
At recent budget hearings, interim chief financial officer Sharon Gist Gilliam noted that, when attempting to get Forest Preserve accounts in order, she had found a number of Forest Preserve employees “floating in space”–people being paid but not appearing anywhere on the books. This year one of these floaters has now landed in the Conservation Department–a storeroom supervisor being paid $47,000 a year. No one has yet managed to explain where is the storeroom, what is being supervised and what on earth this has to do with conservation.
We admire Gilliam’s efforts to bring rigor and accountability to the district’s finances–and to tether those space walkers to the mothership. But the truth is, unless there are major changes at the Forest Preserve District–changes in leadership, attitude, and direction–the district will remain a dysfunctional agency far more concerned with protecting patronage jobs for political friends and contracts for cronies than in protecting its forests and meadows.
If I borrowed money from a friend and didn’t pay it back year after year, eventually someone would question my motives. Year after year the Forest Preserve District has raided the land-acquisition fund to cover expenses in other accounts and it has presented no credible plan to pay it back. Departments that focus on the district’s core mission have been shrinking, or padded with workers who aren’t doing the job. Both the volunteer and privatization programs are given lip service but could proceed a good deal more briskly. The time for many reforms is long overdue.
Commissioners Mike Quigley and Herb Schumann have offered budget amendments that would both save the district money and help reverse some of the deterioration that we’ve seen in recent years. We urge County Board Finance Chairman John Daley and President John Stroger to consider them carefully. The public is impatient.
