By: Matt Rosenberg
Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle recently released a county “equity fund” task force report. It advises other county officials on how the county can best spend grant funds to foster greater equity. Preckwinkle says the big idea is to combat what she calls “racialized treatment and exclusion” against blacks. Initial two-year spending explicitly detailed in this report will be just $50 million, but county equity-related outlays could extend to most or all of the $1 billion in federal COVID recovery money Cook County got last year. That’s made clear in a predecessor report the county issued in February called ARPA at a Glance. It mentions “equity” 15 times and details how the first $315 million of the $1 billion will be spent in Fiscal Year 2022, with Cook County’s idea of equity in mind.
Yet here’s the big problem. Cook County has never been sincere about creating baseline conditions for equity. We’ll define equity in practical terms here, as markedly greater social and economic progress for lower-income communities of color. If Cook County really walked the equity talk, it would have better controlled sharply rising spending, pensions, and debt. Its prosecutors and judges would have already done much, much more to inhibit widespread violent crime which victimizes primarily blacks and Latinos. And Cook County would have already permanently stemmed its unending tide of government corruption, which favors insiders over the rest of us.
None of that has happened, though. Instead, Cook County government’s considerable shortcomings discourage rather than encourage upward social and economic mobility. The problems become more serious if one is sincere about equity because Cook County is the state’s black population epicenter, home to two-thirds of Illinois’ 1.85 million blacks.
Let’s review three big ways that Cook County perpetuates and fosters social and economic inequity – by fouling the baseline environment for greater black social and economic progress.
Pensions, debt, and the budget
Cook County is rife with poor fiscal practices. The costs get passed on to residents and increase the financial burden of living here. For those struggling to get a leg up, the impact is even greater. The county has too much debt, a poor credit rating, and its latest budget is built on unsustainable revenues and spending. Already, blacks have been heading for the exits. Almost 175,000 have left Cook County since 2000.
The details aren’t pretty. A December 2020 report from Moody’s Investors Service showed Cook County had the second most debt liability as a percent of revenue among large U.S. counties. That’s largely been driven by growing pension debts. Unfunded pension liabilities for Cook County general employees grew more than twelve-fold from less than half a billion dollars in 2000 to $6.7 billion by 2020.
That’s left Cook County with the same credit rating as New Jersey, according to Moody’s. New Jersey is the nation’s other fiscal basket case – it’s the worst-rated state in the country outside of Illinois.
Then there’s Cook County’s new budget. It was approved last November. It’s $8 billion, a 37 percent jump over pre-Covid’s 2019 budget. As we wrote when it passed, it’s a failure for several reasons. Here’s a big one. They’re spending like crazy on the budget using artificially higher tax revenues which came from Cook County’s share of the more than $180 billion in total Covid aid the federal government sent to Illinois’ public and private sectors in the last two years.
Revenues to Cook County from sales and other taxes all went up due to the federal Covid cash infusion and the resulting spike in spending. But all that won’t last. And with its budget now up nearly 40 percent, Cook County will fall off a fiscal cliff. That’s reckless.
The county also plans on increasing its headcount by 1,600, or 7 percent. That’s sure to beef up operating costs and the county’s already considerable pension debt.
Unsurprisingly, blacks are leaving Cook County. U.S. Census data show black population in Cook County has dropped from 1,405,361 in 2000 to 1,231,209 in 2021. That’s a decline of 12 percent.
Growing homicides of blacks and Latinos; inattentive judges and prosecutors
Violence is another drag on equity, particularly if people of color suffer most. Homicides in Cook County topped 1,000 in 2021 for the first time in 28 years. Blacks were 80 percent of the victims and Latinos 14 percent.
There’s an equity issue for Preckwinkle, Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx, and Cook County Chief Judge Tim Evans, who are all black.
They should tighten the reins on violent offenders so that black and brown people less often end up the victims of homicide in Cook County.
But too often, Cook County’s judges and prosecutors do the exact opposite.
They let out clearly violent or risky criminals before trial on low cash bonds. Or they ease up after conviction for offenses such as carjacking by agreeing to probation; or to parole before sentences are fully served.
The results are too often tragic. Deadly lenience in Cook County – and a state-sanctioned blockade on judicial performance data online – betray a criminal justice system in deep disarray.
People of color pay, and pay, and pay. More than any others. Where’s the equity there?
Corrupt insiderism: a hallmark of Cook County
Corruption in Cook County also runs deep and also poses major inequities. It is a troubling reminder of the divide in access, influence, and power between the wired insiders who get fat pensions, bribes, and kickbacks – versus clout-less taxpayers who get stuck with the bill.
Across the enterprise, Cook County is a rogue’s gallery of self-dealing at taxpayer expense. Here are just a few examples; there’s not room to list them all.
Jeffrey Toboloski pled guilty for accepting bribes as a Cook County Commissioner and mayor of suburban McCook. The payments he extorted or accepted in return for official favors totalled at least $250,000 and were harvested in at least five separate instances.
For 16 years, Joseph Maria Moreno was a Cook County Board Commissioner. He got 11 years in prison for several bribery and kickback schemes.
Prosecutors said he told a cohort, “I don’t want to be a hog; I just want to be a pig. Hogs get slaughtered, pigs get fat.” One bribe-paying contractor allegedly texted Moreno, “Hermano. Are we eating huevos de toro [bull testicles] or steak? Please let me know.”
There’s your equity. Insiders get steak. The rest of us? We get the chewy stuff.
Then there are arrangements which may be legal but look questionable to those who aren’t insiders. According to the Chicago Sun-Times, the Cook County Land Bank took ownership from a Chicago City Council staffer of a building carrying a $200,000 debt in delinquent taxes, interest, and penalties. The debt was wiped clean. In another instance, the Sun-Times reported, the Land Bank sold a county-owned residential parcel to one of its own staffers, despite a higher price offered by another bidder.
Remember this. There’s an insidious twist that unites political corruption and violence here. It’s the “hey, just don’t get caught” ethos. It’s evident among crooked politicians representing Cook County and its biggest city of Chicago, and among Cook County members of the Illinois General Assembly. That same shamelessness, that same playing of the odds against detection and punishment, cannot help but be noticed by violent and larcenous criminals. Only one in ten political lawbreakers are caught, experts say. Street criminals know their chances are about as good.
Here’s the root of inequity in Cook County.
Politics is not a calling for officials elected to the Cook County Board, the Chicago City Council, or for many Chicagoland members of the Illinois state legislature. Instead, it is a business proposition facilitated by a very specific rhetoric.
First, politics in Cook County negates black agency. Because acknowledging and abetting real black power would make much of the government’s current job irrelevant. No amount of bureaucratic double-speak, which permeates the equity fund task force report, can hide that.
Second, politics in Cook County is also about incompetence; which is by turns callous or in some cases of judicial and prosecutorial lenience, deadly. It’s callous because correcting it would get in the way of business as usual. And that business is rooted in the ambition to hold and build power. Rather than to act for the greater good.
Third, Cook County politics is about systemic corruption which results from longevity and insider knowledge.
So let’s review the bidding here.
Modern-day government in Cook County has served as a monument to inequity. Structural problems of governance make living there too expensive, too dangerous, and too sleazy
A 37 percent budget increase since 2019 is built on unsustainable revenues and spending. Payroll and pension debt are up, the credit rating is low. The county’s black population has declined by 175,000, or 12 percent, since the year 2000.
Cook County has also become a killing field for blacks and Latinos. Again, blacks and Latinos comprised 94 percent of the more than 1,000 homicides in Cook County last year.
Finally, corruption in Cook County which began decades earlier has continued to proliferate based on privilege for insiders and inequity for the rest of us.
And now the county’s chief executive wants to spread around maybe up to a billion dollars in federal COVID relief money, in some large part to advance “equity.”
Sure. What could possibly go wrong?
This article was updated to revise a section about the Cook County Land Bank.
Matt Rosenberg is senior editor of Wirepoints, and author of What Next, Chicago? Notes of a Pissed-Off Native Son.” He has worked in journalism, public policy, and communications for more than three decades.
Read more from Wirepoints:
- Wirepoints’ Podcast: The Dialogue
- Students Smack Down Chicago ‘Disinformation’ Conference Panelists, Exposing Far More Than Apparent About Media
- Illinois needs a multiyear restructuring plan to stop residents from fleeing
- Rahmaan Barnes asks: What will you paint on your life’s canvas?
- Stunning rise in Chicago carjackings leaves lawmakers scrambling
- Four reasons why the state pension buyout program is problematic for taxpayers
- Illinois carjacking bill falls short; organized retail crime measure more promising
Expect no retraction or apology. This what they do.
The state’s existing buyout program for its own pensions is the precedent for Chicago, which should be a warning: Look out for similar exaggerated claims and shoddy analysis.
Cook County’s momentum toward doom is unstoppable. The most critical problem is the complete failure of the “press-tocricy” to challenge the idiots and thieves in government. They never do. They roll over like dogs. They lap up and repeat like parrots.
Chicago is going to talk about Equity subsidies, it’s the Woke thing to do. They don’t have any intentions of doing anything. Can’t afford to. Stop waiting for the city to intervene, fix it yourself. If you want a decent education, get one, if you can’t, fix the system so you can. If you want a job, get one, but it means following the rules. If you don’t want to follow rules you won’t get a job. If you want to move to a better neighborhood for the lifestyle you want, remember why you moved, don’t bring your old ways… Read more »
This raises the question whether Illinois is too big to fail. Essentially a federal bailout question. GM, Chrysler. Goldman Sachs? Like the retirement benefit companies that also made automobiles, the state and its cities have a lot of jobs and pensions at risk. Plus a whole lot of other people dependent on tax revenues. Do they meet the requirements for “too big to fail?” Then there are the more likely threats of arson, mayhem and murder. What sort of interventions will those warrant? Kicking-the-can involves postponement of problems that politicians won’t solve because they would lose their jobs and their… Read more »
Unfortunately Illinois is on the decline and won’t be coming back anytime soon. Voters I believe are the main problem. Alexi ran his commercial and mentions playing basketball with Obama as the reasons why we should elect yet another crook. Low information voters are continuing this trend statewide and locally. Because of no real 2nd choice in political parties, Illinois has a one party system. When you look at what our politicians have done, every one of them has sold us out leaving us no choices but to leave. Its going to get worse before it gets better. It’s unrealistic… Read more »
So,basically,Chicago and Cook county is one huge dumpster fire?-Great article Matt but you left out the part about the major problems the “White Supremacists” are causing,must have been an oversight cuz according to Biden and Mayorkas white supremacists are the #1 threat to democracy
Correct for about the 100th time. Chicago and Illinois are effectively unfixable – Democrats have worked very hard with the public employee unions over decades to keep things broken. Your options are to escape, or stay and accept the abuse.
Exactly correct. It’s that simple. Don’t expect anyone or anything to save the state. Equity won’t save Illinois. Elections won’t save Illinois. Wirepoints won’t save Illinois. Leaving will save yourself.
This needs to be broadcast all over the city, county, and state. The Tribune and the SunTimes, and the local television stations are derelict in their duty. All of the local public office holders need to go as they’ve been complicit as have the entire state legislature. They’re hollowing out the middle class. Chicago once was majority black. We’ve lost most of the taxpayers and have been left with the poor and all of the issues that poverty brings. Elites like Preckwinkle act like a Robin Hood, taking from those who have a little and buying votes from unions and… Read more »
What happens when there’s no middle class? It’s called the Third World. A few rich people, no middle class, and a bunch of poor people. That is Chicago’s fate.
Pleased to read the obvious. That three of the four honchos in Cook County – Preckwinkle, Lightfoot, and Evans – are black, with two of those, I believe, being UC grads. How’s that diversity working out for you, voters? UC, you should hang your head in shame. How’d these fakes ever get admitted, much less get a degree? Affirmative action in action, I’d reckon, ’cause there’s little content in their characters, as MLK might observe.
This is a good indecator of what all the covid arpa/equity $ have solved, from a couple of weeks ago—45,000 CC property owners who can’t pay thier property taxes or are just walking away. And that’s on top of all the mortgage relief arpa /equity grants. SHOCKING!! With ZERO coverage in press
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/pappas-certified-notice-out-on-45-000-properties-with-unpaid-taxes-in-cook-county-301508498.html
If your home is worth 80 grand and your taxes are 5 grand, why not walk away? Most of you wouldn’t pass up the government cheese either, even if you didn’t vote for them.
What’s most telling are the buildings downtown where the owners have walked away and given them back to the banks. I expect more of that to happen.
Equity is a word politicians use to get more money from taxpayers.
Equity is a word only stupid people use.
I think “equity” is more what stupid people fall for. It’s the lipstick on the pig, the frosting on the turd
“Equity”. That word is the golden goose for even more corruption from our “ no info voter” representatives.
The whole concept of equity based on gender/race/sex/religion is flawed. By definition, equity (or fairness) means ignoring these characteristics.
There’s a referendum on the 2022 ballot to increase the Cook County Forest Preserve property tax levy 50%, from 0.051% to 0.076%. Of course, Preckwinkle and Co sell it as “one-fourth of one-tenth of 1%” but it’s a freakin’ 50% increase! I mean, who allows things to get so bad that it requires that large a price hike?
Absolutely! Doesn’t happen here in Illinois and Chicago cause most Illinois politicians put themselves above their oath of office. Fix the public pensions-medical benefits and political corruption, for real, now, before Illinois refugees make this place a ghost state-town.
Their oath of office requires them to support and uphold the constitution. If they “Fix the public pension” by attempting to reduce them they would be violating our constitution. The only real “Fix” is to start paying more into the funds. Need to raise taxes to make that happen.
Bogus. The non-public union taxpayers have been subject to a absence of “honest dealings”, and therefore crazy trillion dollar pension-medical commitments are n/a. Lack of “honest dealing” re legislators’ own assessment of their political management skills, and most importantly, lack of honest dealing in serving the non-public union tax payer and complying with their oath to be an honest fiduciary for all —and not just for themselves and public unions (which by their fundamentals an unjust, cause politicians have no incentive except “integrity”, which in IL we know is de minimis overall, to stand ground against public unions).
Your word salad means absolutely nothing. The taxpayers have been part of this the entire time. They voted for the constitutional amendment that guarantees these pensions as well as all the politicians over the last 52 years. Whine all you want but the money is owed.
You can write into the state constitution that we all get a free rocket trip to the moon, doesn’t mean it’s going to happen.
Muh Pensions
Muh tax increases
Here’s some more salad for you. Greed. You justify With twisted logic that my descendants have to pay off this debt. It’s as asinine as the reparations argument. Wirepoints has some “fixes” which would help no doubt, but don’t go far enough. No one should get a pension over 100 grand, period. No one should get lifetime Blue Cross paid by the taxpayers. There should be no pensions for elected officials. We also need term limits.
If your descendants are paying off the debt it’s because you left it for them. Start advocating for tax increases now so that your kids don’t need to pay. Stop trying to steal pensioners retirement. Nothing twisted by my logic. Pensioners agreed to said pension for the work they performed. The state agreed to pay. Straight forward and simple. The only twisted logic on this board is from people trying to weasel out of their debt. Bunch of dead beats. “No one should get a pension over 100 grand” Why? Because Rob M from the internet said so? No thanks.… Read more »
“Work”
It does sound straight and simple, but only if you leave out a big part of the history. You call it “the state”, but it was actually legislators bought and paid for by unions.
Unions donate money to politicians. So? Ken Griffin donated money to kill the progressive tax. That’s how money and elections work. Just because you didn’t win doesn’t make it any less valid. Straight and simple.
Unions bought the public’s servitude fair and square?
Griffin bought lower taxes fair and square?
My definition of fix the pensions is that I would address the pension management fees first. How many of the companies who manage the funds are politically connected? Second I would address the excess bloat in administrative costs to implement the pensions. Look at the fees in this link for Pennsylvania vs Illinois. PA teachers fund fees are $478M vs TRS/Illinois (the highest) at $778M per year and that’s just one fund. If that is correct that is almost $8B in fees in ten years which comes off the top. There are many way to address reforms without pensioner losing… Read more »
You and I both know that does not move the “trillions dollars needle”. I think I speak for most Illinoisans in saying that “a promise is not a promise, in the absence of honest dealings“.
But, do you really think the “absence of honest dealings” applies only to negotiations with public employees and their unions? I don’t, so how far should we take that concept? To me there’s likely no clear end to where it might well apply. Legislators are merely human beings first with all their weaknesses and self-serving motivations, then maybe 10% of the time they are the altruistic beings we might assume they ought to be in our wildest dreams.
Illinois government and public unions have legally destroyed the state. Although despicable, since it was/is legal, the taxpayers should be held responsible for commitments made by the government. The taxpayer can opt-out of their responsibility by leaving the state. I imagine they may also opt-out, to some degree, by declaring personal bankuptcy. Illinois state will deteriorate at increasing speed, as it should, for its gross mismanagement. Other states will flourish. Pensioners will slowly die off. Whatever is left of Illinois in 30 years will have a chance to bounce back. The system works.
Agreed. It’s the only way to learn and prevent these types of mistakes in the future. Voters need to stop playing the victim.
Nope, politicians will never fix public pensions because they collect public pensions and won’t cut their own income. (A perfect example of the inmates running the asylum.) The fix is for those paying the pensions to pay more into them and for the government not to spend any of that money under any circumstances. That’s why we’re in the problems we’re in now.
Nope, not legally allowed. Politicians hold no such power even if they wanted. The politicians need to pay more into them but the money will come from the taxpayers not the pensioners.
PPF – you never really seem to answer my repeated questions. Let’s assume the state can raise taxes on a basis other than the death by a thousand cuts regressive taxes the current administration favors. What evidence do you have that the state would materially reduce the pension debt? Every single tax increase of recent vintage has been accompanied by an increase in the pension hole. Do you honestly believe the crowd in Springfield, which if anything has tilted more to the left than in the past, would show the fiscal discipline to draw down the debt? Nothing in recent… Read more »
I’ve answered these questions many times. “What evidence do you have that the state would materially reduce the pension debt?” They won’t do it until they have to. Neither will the GOP if they are in control. Until the voters demand that additional money goes to pensions we will continue to go deeper in debt. Instead democrats decided to throw a temporary tax cut while the GOP wanted more permanent tax cuts. Nobody advocated for paying down the pension debt even though we are only making statutory contributions and falling further behind. Also, pension debt hasn’t increased because taxes were… Read more »
Sincere question: why do you believe that voters would demand more taxes before demanding a referendum to repeal the pension clause in the Constitution?
ProzacPlease is correct, voters have zero incentive to raise taxes to pay pensioners. They would rather see the state go bankrupt. There’s a much larger chance of the state going bankrupt than the pension funds being adequately funded.
The sooner the state goes bankrupt, the better.
It won’t be a choice of raise taxes to pay pensions or let the state go bankrupt. Pensions are first in line. There will be enough to pay pensions and debt just not enough for all the other spending. The choice will be raise taxes for services or don’t have said services. Think of pension costs as garnished payment. If you don’t believe me, look at what is happening in cities where their revenue from the state is taken from them and put right into pensions. It comes off the top before any other spending.
If federal bankruptcy law is changed to allow states to go bankrupt, pensions will be included for reorganization since they are a major driver of state bankruptcy. The many, many stories of Illinois’ outlandish pensions passed by a cabal of corrupt politicians in cahoots with corrupt unions will easily turn the tide against fat cat pensioners to allow Congress to include pensions in reorganization. An obvious solution would be to cut a gold plated Illinois pension to the level of a Social Security payment. Also remove the double dippers and only pay them from one term of service. Anything goes… Read more »
States are sovereign entities, they cannot go bankrupt. Individual governmental entities, like cities and towns, and quasi-governmental entities, like schools and pension funds, can go bankrupt, but only if the state has allowed the entity to go bankrupt. IL doesn’t not currently allow government and quasi-governmental entities to go bankrupt.
Agreed, and that’s too bad.
Sure, dream on!
An obvious unconstitutional decision. I’m amazed at the people on this site that think a state bankruptcy is going to happen or if it does that you would get the relief you desire. PR just went through bankruptcy and pensioners are still being paid. Detroit cut a whopping 5.5%. Bondholders end up taking the brunt of any bankruptcy. But you keep dreaming about stealing money from retired people. in the meantime, keep paying your taxes.
I think you’re right that voters may demand an amendment to the constitution as taxes continue to rise. I just don’t believe it will pass constitutional muster to go back and take any benefits already earned. Without that it doesn’t save the state any money. Voters won’t demand more taxes because they think it’s just a pension problem. They don’t get that the state is just borrowing and will pay in the future with even greater taxes. The state is required to pay the pensions even if we don’t raise taxes. They are first in line. There will be enough… Read more »
The Edgar Ramp, courtesy of Governor Edgar.
In November of 22 vote against the Illinois Right to Collective Bargaining Act or it’s a guarantee you will be paying more for more pensions.
Public employees need to all stop paying union dues and should never be allowed to strike