Cook County looking at a $300 million shortfall

Stroger administration suggesting 10% in cuts for next year

Cook County government faces a $300 million budget shortfall next year, and the Stroger administration suggests that could force across-the-board 10 percent cuts.

Jaye Williams, the county’s chief financial officer, delivered that downbeat news this week to other county financial officials, sources told the Tribune.

The administration attributes the shortfall to the County Board’s decision to cut the sales tax rate by a half percentage point against the wishes of Board President Todd Stroger, who earlier had pushed through a 1 percentage point increase. The county also expects lower federal funding, which had spiked because of economic stimulus efforts.

Williams declined to comment Thursday. “The administration is still working hard on the budget,” said county spokesman James Ramos. “It is premature to make any statements.”

But Finance Committee Chairman John Daley, D-Chicago, said he believes the shortfall could be even more and supports the 10 percent cuts.

It is expected that Stroger, who lost his re-election bid in the Democratic primary in February, will introduce a budget before he leaves office in early December. But a final spending plan probably won’t be approved until Stroger’s successor takes over.

Democrat Toni Preckwinkle, Chicago 4th Ward alderman; Republican Roger Keats, a former state lawmaker; and the Green Party’s Tom Tresser are on the Nov. 2 ballot.

Preckwinkle has appointed several panels to review county issues, and one is expected to release an evaluation of county finances by early October, her aides said Thursday. Preckwinkle said in May that the overall budget shortfall could be as much as $500 million next year.

Keats said he would try to avoid across-the-board cuts and instead would review the budget line by line to see what could be cut.

The numbers reported have already been given to you. The additional 200 million isn’t exactly a surprise, but is a bit more than expected. The county refuses to raise revenues, and will look to balance the budget in other areas. Personnel is high on their ‘hit list’. This is not good news as we continue to strive for a new contract, and await the arbitration decision for our Sheriff’s Locals.

We are all proud of Nef and wish her well in her new position!  Our Local will be assigned a new Staff Representative from AFSCME Council 31 soon.

Congratulations Nef! You truly deserve this promotion!

Three UNIFORMED Chicago Policemen have been gunned down off duty. Police Superintendent Weis has stated that these individuals who killed these officers have no respect for the police or law enforcement in general, and no respect for life. And yet, YOU are still required by our department to go into all neighborhoods in Cook County, City and Suburban, and conduct field work twice monthly. Doesn’t Chief Judge Evans or Acting Chief Probation Officer Reyes own a television, radio or read the newspapers? Don’t their trusted staffs see and hear this either? Apparently not. Hear no evil. See no evil. Then there’s no evil, right? Ignore it and it will go away. We do far too much of this anyway. Address this issue.

We have argued that field work is unsafe for unarmed officers. We took the case all the way to arbitration, where we had a Chicago Police Officer, a current Deputy Chief and various other probation officers testify that the streets of Chicago are not the same as they were in the 1960’s! Crime is up. Violence is up. Drive-by shootings increase as the weather warms up, and decline slightly as it cools down. Murder rates always rise after Memorial Day, and decline after Columbus Day. It’s OK for you to be seen in the streets. It’s good for the departmental image. Bulls Eye. It’s actually sad that neighborhood residents have become accustomed to hearing gun shots daily. Should this be a ‘normal’ way of life?!?!

After hearing all of this information, the arbitrator took the pathway down the middle. The arbitrator did not want to rule that the county should stop field work immediately, even though he had more than sufficient evidence to rule that way. No, he chose to have the county ‘train’ its officers. That’s why there have been MANDATORY classes in Street Awareness, Legal & Liability Issues, Gang Crimes, Self-Defense and yes, the ever popular Pepper Spray training.

The Union didn’t demand that you get this training, subsequent to what you have been told by the training staff. The arbitrator did. Having you trained on how to use your radio(s), pepper spray, and where to hide behind when shots ring out is the arbitrators’ answer to continuing the dangerous practice of field work. Not keeping you out of the neighborhoods, or properly equipping you to do this part of the job wasn’t remedied either. No, that isn’t a choice. No guns. No vests.  No asp. No county car. Just a clipboard, outdated pepper spray and two radios. That’s what the arbitrator ruled you need to do your job. Common sense is your own. The county doesn’t give you that either.

Continuing to put officers in unnecessary danger is the ridiculous choice. Do you feel safer with all the retraining? The arbitrator was wrong. We’re just hoping that he’s not ‘dead wrong.’ Shootings only occur at night when all the players are out, right? Mornings and early afternoons are completely safe as no drug dealing, drive-by shootings or random acts of stupidity don’t happen in broad daylight, right?!?!

We don’t want to make it look like we’re endorsing our weapons officers to be out in the streets either. We’re not.  They have safety equipment, but this isn’t enough should they enter a gang war. We’re supposed to believe that they’re safer because they have ‘training and equipment.’ They work at night when most of the fun starts. But that’s why they make the ‘big money.’ Management wants to have our weapons officers out in the streets more than they’re already scheduled time. More time with a target square on their backs. No critical incident plan is widely made known. No plan on what to do should one of us gets shot or shoots someone else is detailed. Who’s going to be the ‘go to’ guy? Wisniewski? Reyes? Quinn, Bush or Haywood? Loizon? Sobieski? Lasky? Anybody? Anybody?

It’s time to stop the insanity Chief Judge Evans, before you”re making an appearance at a wake for one of your fallen probation officers. Stop field work for unarmed officers. Restrict field work for armed officers who encounter gang bangers and other hardened criminals before it”s too late. What’s the point of our officers working the streets until the early morning hours? We’re outnumbered, just like the Chicago Police. The risk of injury is too great. We’re not the Chicago Police. Stop thinking we are.

You, Chief Judge Evans can bring sanity to this department, something that the current administration chosen by you hasn’t done. Ask yourself this question. If the Chicago Police aren’t safe in the streets, are we? Ask Mayor Daley about attending the funerals of his three fallen officers. Will you be sending a marked car for the procession or are you coming in your own personal vehicle?

Governor Quinn has signed three bills into law during a string of events across Illinois.

In Chicago on Saturday, Quinn signed the Veterans and Servicemembers Court Treatment Act. Quinn’s office says the law will let Illinois counties create judicial courts for veterans with mental health or substance abuse disorders.

Quinn signed a bill in Bloomington that his office says will let Illinois dentists volunteer care at nonprofit health clinics. The clinic can then receive state payments.

And in Harrisburg, Quinn signed a bill that will give Illinois health care providers easier access to patient bathrooms in hospitals. The governor’s office says the legislation is called Seth’s Law, named after a 22-year-old Iraq War veteran who died when hospital workers couldn’t gain access to his bathroom.

Judge Evans is already on this one boys and girls! Looks like he gets his wish and we get to do all of the work. Again. Watch for Judge Gaughn to get involved with this court.

This decision does not effect current Caremark plans, but if Walgreen’s stands by this decision it won’t handle any Caremark-managed prescriptions in about three (3) years.

Walgreen’s will not participate in plans that are awarded to Caremark or contracts renewed with Caremark starting yesterday, Monday, June 7th.

Walgreen’s is giving up billions of dollars in revenue with this move.

And you thought that contract negotiations couldn’t get any worse!!! Bet the County doesn’t know about this one yet?!?!

Public employee unions are emerging as public enemy number1 across the country.

Governors have made sporadic attempts over the past decade to fundamentally alter the spiraling pension costs that have consumed increasing shares of state budgets — and that legislatures in states like New York and California often sweetened as a gift to political allies.

The recent revenue crunch, though, has given governors and big-city mayors new leverage. The early initiatives have largely been stopgap measures: everything from furloughs in the two biggest states, New York and California, to initiatives like Bloomberg’s deal last week with teachers unions to cancel raises in exchange for avoiding layoffs.

Other executives have won larger, structural changes. Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn, a Democrat, signed into law last month a bill changing benefits for all five of the state’s pension systems — raising the retirement age, limiting pension raises, capping maximum benefits and ending public pensions for people who work in another public job.

California, however, remains ground zero for pension fights, as the seat of both the nation’s highest-profile budget crises and some of its most powerful public unions. Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has been fighting them since he took office, and they have handed him his most stinging political defeats.

Now, though, Schwarzenegger — in his last months as governor — is gearing up for what he views as a final, climactic battle over public-sector pensions.

“The atmosphere has changed,” Schwarzenegger told POLITICO. “People understand that they have to lay off their workers or they don’t have the money for their family. What they don’t like is when there is a certain group that doesn’t like to make the sacrifices.”

Schwarzenegger said he “will not sign” a budget without pension reform.

“I will hold up the budget. It doesn’t matter how long it drags [on] — into the summer or fall or into November or after my administration — and I think the people will support that,” he said.

Schwarzenegger’s political judgment reflects a growing national consensus that public-sector unions may be at their most vulnerable point ever.

“The public mood is clearly changing regarding these issues,” said Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty.

A likely 2012 presidential candidate, Pawlenty boasts of weathering a 44-day bus strike in 2004, the longest in the nation’s history. He recalled that during that “knock-down, drag-out brawl,” he shored up support by telling the public that “bus drivers under one version of their contract could get retirement benefits for the rest of their lives after working for just 15 years.”

“If you inform the public and workers in the private sector about the inflated benefits and compensation packages of public employees, and then you remind the taxpayers that they’re footing the bill for that, they get on the reform train pretty quickly,” Pawlenty told POLITICO.

The assault has caught the giant national unions that represent public employees largely flat-footed, and many leaders concede privately that they find themselves on defense.

“The Al Shankers and the Victor Gotbaums … they’re not around anymore,” said Norman Adler, former political director of the New York public workers union, referring to public-sector union leaders who battled through the crises of the 1960s. “The people who have replaced them are either not as sophisticated or not as talented as the old guard was.”

But a consultant to major unions pointed to a different, more structural shift: Public-sector unions are increasingly the face of American labor, and they have prospered as private-sector unions disappeared and workers’ wages stagnated.

“The face of labor today is now public employee unions whose wages and benefits largely outstrip those of average Americans,” the consultant said.

Democrats from Obama on down, however, have backed the pressure on teachers unions to drop inflexible work rules and accept private-sector-style merit pay. But the sharp attacks on the workers and their leaders remain largely a Republican theme. Illinois’s Quinn, for instance, who won a major victory over unions in pension changes (which apply only to workers hired starting next January) distanced himself from the Republican rhetoric.

“I don’t get involved in that kind of scapegoating; I don’t think it’s right,” he said, after hearing Daniels’s remark about a “privileged class.” “I respect public employees, I respect teachers, and I think they deserve a pension,” he said.

Quinn noted that pension liabilities had blossomed under the Republicans who governed Illinois from 1977 to 2002, and indeed, local Republicans from coast to coast have often accepted the support of unions and defended their perks. That day appears to be over, at least for now. Former eBay CEO Meg Whitman, campaigning to replace Schwarzenegger, has promised to cut 10 percent of the state work force, or 40,000 jobs.

The lingering question, however, is whether the turn against public-sector unions is here to stay. Union leaders hope that rising state revenues will ease the pressure, while Republicans insist there has been a deep shift in the perception of public workers and even of typically popular teachers.

“The question now is, is there going to be a paradigm shift?” said E.J. McMahon, director of the conservative Empire Center for New York State Policy.

“Or are the unions simply going to hunker down, let the wave wash over them and emerge stronger than ever?”

Today, final offers were due from AFSCME and the County in the Sheriff’s Binding Arbitration .

No information is available yet, but your negotiation team will find out next week when we return to the table to see what move(s) the county is going to make to try and settle this contract before years’ end! Stay tuned for any information that we may share!

Peter is a very special friend to this Local. You can literally say that without him, we wouldn’t be here!

Thanks Peter for your 25+ years of service to us here in Local 3486. We will miss you, not only in the next round of contract negotiations, but as a friend and mentor to all of us who serve as officers of this Local. We wish you all the best in your pending retirement!