Progress Illinois

Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle's first budget places layoffs on the table to help close a $487 million budget hole for the county's fiscal year 2011. The layoff estimates have run as high as 2,150 and as low as 1,075; the final number will be fleshed out during a series of budget hearings scheduled for the month of February.

During her budget address this morning, Preckwinkle said she'd close the budget shortfall by cutting "wasteful government spending" and remaking county government processes. "It is not enough to simply cut government," she said. "We have to rethink the way it works." An ongoing desk audit in the president's office, for example, will sort out staff functions there and help Preckwinkle examine issues like the ratio of managers to regular employees. She said her FY2011 budget found new ways to bring in revenue. Specific examples of the latter include "aggressively" going after late and unpaid taxes; bringing some fees in line with costs, such as at a county law library; closing tax loopholes; and shifting part of the foreclosed home sales process back to Sheriff Tom Dart's office, which will allow him to bring in associated fees.

The foreclosed home deal helped Dart and Preckwinkle come to an agreement announced this morning; they were at odds about cutting the 16 percent she had asked each of the 11 elected county officials to find. Dart has agreed to cut 12 percent from his budget, which will mean around 100 layoffs, he said at a press conference today. Preckwinkle said that the county health system will lop off 21 percent of the subsidy it gets from county government for next fiscal year, a move that allowed some other governmental units to cut less.

A question that will get answered as the county budget hearings start to unfold is who, precisely, will be targeted for layoffs: managers, front-line county employees working with the public every day, or some combination of both (note that some of Preckwinkle's old aldermanic colleagues think the city's management corps is bloated). This is a critical question. Some county services -- like the health system -- are already stressed.

The list of contenders for Chicago's mayoral race is getting smaller. Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart announced his decision not to run last week and over the weekend news broke that Ald. Robert Fioretti (2nd Ward) is considering dropping his bid due to health concerns. That mini-trend makes Sun-Times scribe Carol Marin's column yesterday all the more intriguing. Marin predicts that if Gov. Pat Quinn is elected governor tomorrow, Madigan, the state's popular attorney general, will declare herself a candidate for Chicago's top job:

My money says [Madigan] runs for mayor if Quinn wins. And in so doing, she puts some real speed bumps in the road for Rahm Emanuel, who these days is roaring down Michigan Avenue like General Patton in a tank, picking off potential opponents.

Conversely, a Bill Brady victory tomorrow could set Madigan up for a gubernatorial bid in 2014. "And no matter if [Brady] does well or poorly, the hard decisions he must make won't win him much love," Marin writes. "And Madigan, with an already huge war chest, would be perfectly positioned to go after the top job."

The Madigan for mayor talk has been swirling for some time. Earlier this month, she told WBEZ her "goal is to serve as your attorney general" and insisted to Marin her "intention" is to continue in her present positions. But goals and intentions do indeed change. Note that Madigan is taking a look at an issue that Chicago's next mayor will have to deal with one way or another -- the Daley administration's widely reviled privatization of the city's parking meter system. Her office has issued subpeonas to Chicago Parking Meters LLC and some of the other private companies that now control the meter system. That investigation is ongoing.

Cook County Sheriff (and potential Chicago mayoral contender) Tom Dart announced today his office will cease evicting residents from homes foreclosed on by Bank of America, J.P. Morgan Chase, and GMAC/Ally Financial, the lenders at the center of the foreclosure "robo-signers" crisis, unless they can provide "complete assurance that the foreclosure was done properly and legally.”

"I can’t possibly be expected to evict people from their homes when the banks themselves can’t say for sure everything was done properly," Dart said in a statement. The potential eviction freeze is scheduled to begin on Monday. Depending on its length, thousands of families could be impacted by the decision -- approximately one-third of the 3,700 home foreclosure evictions Dart's office annually carries out involve the three institutions listed above or one of their subsidiaries. And the moratorium will apply to other lenders that "also publicly admit to or which investigators find engaged in similarly questionable practices," Dart's office said.

About two years ago, Dart stopped enforcing all evictions connected to foreclosures. He said then that banks allowed to repossess homes were forcing his deputies to push out renters who had no notification of the legal drama swirling around their residence and had steadily paid their bills.