Last year angry voters fired several supposedly invincible incumbents from the Cook County Board. Too many citizens had grown too upset with the slovenly patronage pits of county government–none more egregious than the county’s most valuable but worst-run asset, the Forest Preserve District. In their appeals to voters, many of the new board members cast themselves as loud voices for reform.
On Wednesday, citizens will begin to learn who really wants to overhaul county government and who, after a few weeks in office, has grown comfortable with the snoozy status quo. Barring parliamentary shenanigans–always a possibility–board members will cast their first votes on one, and possibly two, serious reform proposals. While those who say they are reformers don’t all agree on the details, how they vote will send a message to Board President John Stroger. Either he needs to pay attention to them or he has them right where he wants them: in the minority.
Wednesday’s vote, or votes, is rich with symbolism. At issue is a resolution urging Stroger to terminate Joseph Nevius, the forest district’s top administrator, and to “work with the board in identifying a new superintendent of impeccable management credentials.” Nevius’ replacement would be able “to independently hire the best managers and employees as well as fire underperforming or derelict employees … “
Translation: Sorry, Mr. Stroger, but no more patronage hires mismanaging the people’s forest preserves. Passage of this resolution would be just what Stroger’s administration richly deserves–a ringing declaration of no-confidence like the one voters delivered when they rose up against several members of the County Board.
A companion ordinance would reinstate 46 low-level district jobs that were removed from the 2003 budget to save money–a move to be paid for with deep cuts in management positions.
New board member Forrest Claypool, who originated both measures, says they’re necessary so the County Board is no longer complicit in the chronic ruination of the forest preserves, from red-ink budgets to allegations of ghost payrolling and overtime fraud.
Some commissioners counter that the second measure amounts to micromanaging the forest preserves without a master plan assessing whose job is needed and whose isn’t.
That said, if County Board members merely fuss and twiddle and tell one another the measures aren’t perfect, they’ll play right into the hands of the county administrators.
Voting to defend the district’s current management is itself indefensible. The county’s public lands have deteriorated, as money for purchases of new lands were secretly transferred to cover fat deficits, as sexual harassment and other scandals turned what was once the crown jewel of county government into a costly public humiliation.
Yes, the proposals before the board are not perfect. For openers they put all of the blame on district managers–and none on the board president and board members who bear ultimate responsibility. Some of the latter talk a good game but wind up voting with Stroger, explaining that they’re “working from the inside.”
Enough of trying to have it both ways. These measures are two provocations that will begin to remake this damaging and wasteful local government.
Board member Michael Quigley, scarred by four years of reform battles, has the right message here: “Maybe a scalpel would be the best tool, but President Stroger has left us no choice but to use a sledgehammer.” Quigley will strongly urge his colleagues to vote yes on the Nevius resolution, and to send the jobs ordinance to the board’s Finance Committee with instructions for a study to determine which jobs are, or aren’t, necessary. (If forced to vote up or down on the measure as is, he’ll vote yes.)
But passing the Nevius resolution will, at long last, help launch a process of reform. This won’t be the last opportunity to get every detail just so.
The measure needs nine votes to clear the 17-member board. Claypool, fellow newcomer Tony Peraica, veteran Earlean Collins and Quigley are publicly on record as supporters. Board members Gregg Goslin, Carl Hansen and Peter Silvestri must see this as a golden opportunity to stand up for their constituents, many of them suburbanites who have watched the forest preserves fall apart. So should newcomers Elizabeth Ann Doody Gorman, Joan Patricia Murphy and Larry Suffredin, each of whom was elected on a strong reform platform by voters infuriated over the decay of the forest district.
Not that other members shouldn’t vote yes. Bobbie Steele should recall how district money managers repeatedly misled her in her role as chair of the district’s Finance Committee. John Daley and other board members whose districts lie mostly inside Chicago should vote yes as well; their taxpaying constituents have been cheated not only by tremendous waste, but also by the district’s failure to acquire more land around Lake Calumet and in other areas that would be accessible to city residents.
Remember, it was Daley who stunned his colleagues in September by soberly admitting the board’s many years of complicity in failing to crack down on the district’s financial mismanagement. “We’ve known it,” Daley said to a large but hushed crowd at a board meeting, “and we haven’t done jack, in essence.”
Now is the time to act. There is no good reason to vote for the status quo–unless, of course, some board members want to hitch their political careers to the past rather than the future.
Wednesday will provide the first evidence to see if those who enjoyed running for office as reformers have any real interest in reform.
