Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Tainted Taskforce
Tainted Taskforce
An Examination of Appointments by Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle to the Cook County Unincorporated Task Force Announced November 4th, 2011
March, 2012
Page 1 of 16
Lobbyists Appointed to the Task Force on Nov. 4th, 2011 Laurence MSALL, an attorney, is President of the Civic Federation8 and an active lobbyist for the Civic Federation. He is registered as such with the Cook County Clerk 9 and the State of Illinois, Secretary Of State10. The Civic Federation itself is registered as a lobbying organization. Laurence MSALL is its chief lobbyist for Cook County.
Adrienne ARCHIA is on the board of directors of The Civic Federation11 as well as being a lobbyist registered with the Cook County Clerk for Rice Financial Products, 12 which recently restructured Cook Counties bonds to the tune of $357,950,000 13. Archia's compensation for her part in that piece of Cook County business is unknown.
CONCLUSION: It is a dishonor to those members of the task force who are open minded and fair to be associated with the rest of the task force. Sadly, Cook County trails behind the State of Illinois in the ethics arena of explicitly prohibiting conditions that permit the very possibility of unethical and undocumented back door lobbying.
8 9 10 11 12 13
http://www.civicfed.org/civic-federation/staff/laurence-msall http://lobbyist.cookcountyclerk.com/Public/LobbyistDetail.aspx?id=247 (Laurence Msall) http://www.cyberdriveillinois.com/departments/index/lobbyist/lobbyist_search.html Civic Federation > Laurence Msall http://www.civicfed.org/sites/default/files/FY2013%20State%20Roadmap%20Press%20Release.pdf (Left Column) http://lobbyist.cookcountyclerk.com/Public/LobbyistDetail.aspx?id=305 Adrienne Archia http://www.ricefinancialproducts.com/News/pdf/2010Q2RiceNews.pdf see Page 4
March, 2012
Page 3 of 16
March, 2012
Page 4 of 16
The difference between that revenue coming in and what the Sheriff's Police costs is $1,549,944, and that's without counting a single penny in Cook County property taxes yet. What it would cost per mooching household to make up that $1.5 million between revenue and expenditures? (Toni Preckwinkle said unincorporated households are mooching off the rest of Cook County in a Sun Times article of November 28th, 2011.)16 Spread across a conservative estimate of 30,000 mooching households in unincorporated Cook County, the amount of property tax each would have to pay to make up the difference is $53.17. Not yet counted are revenues solely from businesses and industries in unincorporated areas. So where does Toni Preckwinkle divert the property tax that is actually received from each unincorporated Cook County property? No amount of research has turned up a single property tax bill that was $53 or less . ... so where does it go? Aggregate Unincorporated Areas: A Large Suburban City Despite its geographical distribution, unincorporated areas together total over 100,000 residents and over 67 square miles including schools, cemeteries, factories, churches, hospitals, restaurants, homes, and everything else one expects to find in a large suburban city. This may not be a big number compared to the City of Chicago, and not impressive to Preckwinkle, but the aggregate size alone is a third of the size of Chicago. In contrast to other large suburban cities, unincorporated Cook County as a whole seems right at home.
Civic Federation Board Members In addition to Laurence MSALL and Adrienne ARCHIA, task force appointee Scott SAEF is a board member of the Civic Federation. Scott SAEF is an attorney and partner in Sidley Austin LLP17. He is on the Board of the Civic Federation18 and is also past chairman.
That's a total of 3 Civic Federation board members on the task force, hardly an impartial start to examining the issue at hand. But Preckwinkle wasn't finished stacking the deck there; she even added a direct contributor to the Modernization Report (next section.)
16 http://franklinpark.suntimes.com/news/8395578-418/county-would-lay-off-more-than-1000-under-preckwinklebudget.html 17 http://www.sidley.com/saef_scott/ 18 http://www.civicfed.org/sites/default/files/FY2013%20State%20Roadmap%20Press%20Release.pdf (Left Column)
March, 2012
Page 5 of 16
Modernization Report Contributors H. Woods BOWMAN is an appointed task force member and Associate Professor at DePaul University's School of Public Service19. He is the former Chief Financial Officer of Cook County (1990-1994.) Bowman was directly credited with contributing to the Civic Federation's Cook County Modernization Report20. He has also contributed to Preckwinkle's political campaign 21. That's at least two conflicts of interest for Bowman his campaign contributions alone document a predisposition of tacit political support for Toni Preckwinkle. Other direct contributors to the Modernization Report (who are not members of the task force) are: M. Hill Hammock (a Preckwinkle campaign contributor and member of the Metropolitan Planning Council, both features he shares with task force appointee King HARRIS); and Susan McKeever (vice-chairman of the Civic Federation, a Preckwinkle campaign contributor, and wife to Lester McKeever. Susan and Lester are principals in the accounting firm of Washington, McKeever, and Pittman22, a significant receiver of County funds.)
M. Hill Hammock and Susan McKeever: Between them and their spouses they contributed a total of $12,500 into the campaign fund of Toni Preckwinkle. (Washington McKeever & Pittman is a $255,000 audit subcontractor under the contract 11-88-031 from Dec. 2011, signed by Toni Preckwinkle. See pages 30, 36, and especially 63 for more details of their involvement. Page 40 of contract 11-88-031 certifies no lobbying was done to get the County's business. Preckwinkle's signature is on page 47.) 23
19 20 21 22 23
http://las.depaul.edu/sps/About/OurFacultyStaff/FullTimeFaculty/bowman.asp http://www.civicfed.org/sites/default/files/CookCountyModernizationReport.pdf see page 2 http://elections.il.gov/CampaignDisclosure/ContributionsSearchByCandidates.aspx Woods Bowman > Toni Preckwinkle http://www.wpmck.com/contact.html Susan and Lester McKeever http://www.cookcountygov.com/taxonomy2/Purchasing%20Agent,%20Office%20of%20the/Contracts/11-88-031.pdf
March, 2012
Page 6 of 16
Paying suburbs to do the County's work in policing, housing, or other services still costs money. Result: A new bureaucracy administering scores of labyrinthine County service contracts that require near-constant attention to renegotiate terms and costs as they expire. Wasn't Preckwinkle's campaign based on consolidation, not complication? Adding Special Service Areas (SSAs) to impose additional taxes on unincorporated County property owners. Result: Residents and property owners can veto any proposed SSA by a 51% majority on a simple petition.24 While they are rejecting this new tax, they will be asking Where does Preckwinkle divert the property taxes I pay now?!
March, 2012
Page 7 of 16
Other Members of the Task Force Barry Nekritz Nekritz is campaign contributor and husband of Elaine Nekritz, a member of the Illinois State House of Representatives. The campaign fund Citizens for Elaine Nekritz has also donated to the current Cook County Board Presidents campaign fund. Michael Kreloff, who is the chairman of Citizens for Elaine Nekritz, has deemed it necessary to donate to the current Cook County Board Presidents campaign fund as well. He also received a check from Cook County on December 29, 2011 in the amount of $30,000. Nekritz clearly is a tacit political supporter of the current Cook County Board President and has many shared interests. Carol Teschky Teschky is currently the Maine Township supervisor and has worked for Maine Township since 1989. According to records obtained from the task force, she attended two separate task force meetings, one with Des Plaines and another with Glenview. Based on notes from those meetings, those meetings had the most instances of guesswork of population figures and lack of knowledge of Cook County building code regulation. She should have been in perfect position to answer those questions or provide a resource that could reply. There are two possible reasons, either her voice is not recognized by the chairman of the task force, or she is ineffectual and unable to provide any insight into Cook County government, even though her job is to provide that bridge.
25 26 27 28
March, 2012
Page 8 of 16
David BENNETT is the Executive Director of the Metropolitan Mayor's Caucus, which has close ties and regularly collaborates with CMAP and King Harris' MPC. He is the apparent author an defined coordinator of the Mayor's Caucus survey that exclusively targets the Sheriff's Police on Preckwinkle's behalf.
Task Force Work to Date Des Plaines Meeting The task force meeting held with officials from The Village of Des Plaines February 13 2012. These are actual quotes from that meeting. [The task force deliberately arranged their meeting without including representatives from the Sheriff's Office or any other County office.] -We have no idea how active housing code enforcement is in this area, but we suspect the current inspection programs do not meet actual needs The Cook County Board President announced the formation of this task force on November 4th, 2011, and they could not answer this simple question in 101 days.34 This meeting was attended by Maine Township Supervisor (and task force appointee) Carol TESCHKY, who spearheaded an active code enforcement program in unincorporated Maine Township. This program services (among others) unincorporated Maine Township and unincorporated Glenview.
29 30 31 32 http://harrisschool.uchicago.edu/Blogs/HarrisView/?p=760 public policy wonk http://www.chicagometropolis2020.org/5_5.htm King Harris (note his assistant, Nancy Firfer and her MMC connection) http://www.cct.org/about/our-board King Harris https://datacatalog.cookcountyil.gov/Finance-Administration/Comptroller-Cook-County-Check-Register-FY2011/gck3p6tw Chicago Community Trust 33 http://www.elections.il.gov/campaigndisclosure/ContributionsSearchByCandidates.aspx King Harris > Toni Preckwinkle 34 http://www.mainetownship.com/services/code/ Maine Township Code Enforcement since 1997
March, 2012
Page 9 of 16
In addition to TESCHKY's program, housing code is also enforced by the Bureau of Economic Development. The task force and the head of the Bureau of Economic Development are all appointed by the current Cook County Board President, and might have used these connections to answer questions. -We guessed the Des Plaines police would have to add 30 additional people to handle the load, given the population density of the region and the higher than normal crime rate. In addition to members of the task force, this meeting was attended by the Deputy Chief of Police for Des Plaines. No member of the task force in attendance thought about asking him how many police officers he needs. -We guessed that entire unincorporated area of Maine Township west of Milwaukee might 15,000 to 20,000 residents. This meeting was attended by the Maine Township Supervisor, who is a member of the task force, and has the duty of providing services to unincorporated Maine Township. In the 101 days since being placed on this task force she could not find out how many constituents she serves. -A bigger issue: Where to put them? The current Police department lacks spaces. One possible idea: build a new sub station right in the Dee Park area with Cook County dollars. With the task force already conceding Cook County money for additional cars and equipment those in attendance seem very eager to suggest that Cook County spend more money and then not even attach a dollar amount to it. This is a task force sponsored by the current Cook County Board President, and the best they can do is guess how many people a cut in service will affect. Even when they have the ability to ask the Deputy Chief of Des Plaines how many officers he will need to cover newly annexed areas, or at least wait for an answer on a future date, they will guess how many police officers another police agency needs. This exhibition of complete lack of law enforcement experience and unwillingness to obtain answers from sources right in front of them, shows they have a predetermined agenda that they will not deviate from. Glenview Meeting The task force meeting held with Officials from the Village of Glenview on 9 January 2012. These are actual quotes from that meeting. [The task force deliberately arranged their meeting without including representatives from the Sheriff's Office or any other County office.] -The one service that Glenview benefited from, Saturday court processing of those arrested, was recently eliminated to cut County costs. Glenview has a jail that can hold 12 inmates. Glenviews goal is to process people quickly and send them to the county jail. Why? Concern about workers comp and liability issues related to prisoners. This statement perfectly demonstrates how the task force is out of touch concerning law March, 2012 Page 10 of 16
March, 2012
Page 12 of 16
March, 2012
Page 13 of 16
POLICE WORK IS A PUBLIC SERVICE, NOT A BUDGETARY LINE ITEM The task force is comprised of leaders of industry, public officials, and private citizens. They appear to be looking at police work from a dollar and sense perspective, rather than the duty of protecting the citizenry and property, and enforcing the laws of the land. Here is where private sector success turns to public sector failure: Core government functions like police, fire, and the military are public services. They do not turn a net profit. They never will. Everything that makes a successful private sector enterprise comes down to one thing: Profit. Without it, no company survives. The core mission for government functions: Public service. This inherent shift in the core mission makes all the difference. Public agencies do not make widgets in a factory. They cannot go out of business, because public safety is not a business. Public safety is a duty and a service that our citizens depend on, every minute of every day.
The Sheriff's Office generates $25,587,000 in revenue36 and is projected to bring in another $6,000,000 in cigarette tax enforcement, while the Cook County Building and Zoning Department adds $2,100,000 from unincorporated areas. Wheel tax stickers (the unincorporated Cook County version of city vehicle stickers) add another $3,540,000. That's a total of $35,337,000. Compare that to the 2012 total operating cost of the Sheriff's Police (just like that of a large suburban city with 100,000+ residents): $36,886,944.37 ____________________________________________________________________________ If the task force were a dictatorship, they would propose creating a fee-for-service model where none currently exists: Charging residents directly for police services. Imagine their world where a policeman hands you a bill after you called 911: $5 for locating a missing child. $10 for bomb defusing (per bomb, of course). $2 for each mile on a taxi-meter to drive a stranded motorist home. ____________________________________________________________________________
If Cook County enters into any deals for annexation and eliminates the Sheriff Police it will end up costing Cook County more money, create additional bureaucracies, and have hidden costs.
March, 2012
Page 14 of 16
The majority of independent task force is filled with supporters of the current Cook County Board President. They demonstrate little understanding of unincorporated Cook County and no knowledge of how law enforcement works. From its inception, the majority of this task force was assembled to justify a position held by the current Cook County Board President that has already failed when previously brought before the Cook County Board. While it is easy to say annexation will only affect the patrol functions of the Cook County Sheriffs Police Department, this will affect Cook County as a whole. In every police depaprtment nationwide, the patrol division is the core and backbone. It is the front line that provides support, intelligence, and security all enabling suppression of gang activity county-wide, assisting in every task force, curbing prostitution, and standing ready with bomb disposal. By farming out services it will affect not only Cook County but northern Illinois as well, by eliminating a bomb squad and a role in the FBI-founded Chicago Regional Computer Forensic Laboratory. The annexation of unincorporated Cook County will assuredly cost the citizens of Cook County more than its spending right now - through loss of revenue and no oversight as to how each particular town spends the money given to them. This task force appears to be trying to put a price tag on a public service; thats dangerous to do by any measurement. __________________________________________________________________________ FINAL CONCLUSION __________________________________________________________________________ Infrastructure & Building Codes The task force has said unincorporated Cook County building codes are inadequate. Compared to what? If one were to believe their unproven assertions, the newspapers should be full of daily headlines about buildings falling down every day in unincorporated areas. Why don't they use their lobbying power to improve building codes instead of creating more bureaucracies that will cost more money? They could open the Lobbyist Back Door that Preckwinkle created to exert their benevolent influence. Coming Soon: The Tainted Report Ultimately, this Tainted Task Force will report its recommendations, which will rubber stamp and regurgitate Preckwinkle's agenda: Eliminate unincorporated areas without regard to cost by pushing annexation, or paying suburbs subsidies to do the County's jobs in those areas, or driving for additional punitive taxes & fees on unincorporated residents ... all based on an unproven premise. No consideration will be given to keeping anything unincorporated as it is (allowing natural annexation to occur as it has since 1831) even if it's more cost effective. Please ask yourself two final questions: 1. As the Cook County Sheriff's Police Department is virtually self funded by existing revenue from Sheriff's Office functions, why are Toni Preckwinkle and the Civic Federation so intent on eliminating it? 2. If the position of Toni Preckwinkle has so much merit, why the need to assemble so blatantly biased a task force that rubber stamps goals already set, rather than impartially examining options and objectively reporting independent findings?
March, 2012
Page 15 of 16
TONI PRECKWINKLE
BARRY NEKRITZ
HENDERSON YARBROUGH
RANDY BLACKENHORN
DAVID BENNETT
KING HARRIS
ADRIENNE ARCHIA
LAURENCE MSALL
SCOTT SAEF
WOODS BOWMAN
Elaine Nekritz
Karen Yarbrough
Metropolitan Mayor's Caucus (MMC) CIVIC FEDERATION Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning (CMAP)
LEGEND
Recipient of County Money PRECKWINKLE Campaign / Contributor Lobbyist, Active & Registered Related Individual Modernization Report / Contributor CIVIC FEDERATION / Board Member CMAP Member / Legislative Sponsor MPC / Executive Committee MMC (Metropolitan Mayor's Caucus)
Lester McKEEVER
M. Hill HAMMOCK
Susan McKEEVER
* Task Force Members shown above: Barry NEKRITZ, Hon. Henderson YARBROUGH, Randy BLANKENHORN, David BENNETT, King HARRIS, Adrienne ARCHIA, Laurence MSALL, Scott SAEF, and Woods BOWMAN. * Task Force members NOT SHOWN: Hon. Timothy Schneider Hon. Deborah Sims Carol Teschky, Maine Tsp. Supervisor The remaining persons shown are not members of the task force.
March, 2012
Page 16 of 16