Paul Vallas Talks County Board President

By Kevin Robinson in News on May 5, 2009 3:40PM

Paul Vallas, former Chicago Public Schools Chief, and current head of the New Orleans Recovery School District, said Sunday that he'll announce his intentions to run for Cook County Board President "very likely in the next two weeks." Vallas, who would run as a Republican, outlined his vision for county government in remarks on WGN-AM 720 over the weekend. "Clearly, county government is broken, and you just can't do a patchwork approach. I really think that you've got to dismantle and reinvent county government. You've got to deconstruct it before you can reconstruct it," he said. "In the absence of a viable two-party system, the only accountability you have rests in the U.S. attorney's office. That's accountability at the back end," Vallas said. "No one is ever held politically accountable." He then asked the rhetorical question "Preckwinkle who?" (Well, not really on that last one. It was satire.)

Vallas, who left the Chicago Public Schools amid criticism from Mayor Daley and a re-energized teachers union, ran against Blagojevich for governor in the 2002 Democratic primary. After losing that race, he went on to oversee the largest national experiment in privatization of public schools in Philadelphia before heading to Katrina-ravaged New Orleans.