Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle and County Sheriff Tom Dart have different views on the county's policy of detaining undocumented immigrants. more ›

The family of a woman whose body was in the morgue for over 14 months filed a lawsuit against the County Medical Examiner's office. County Board President Toni Preckwinkle had an investigator under her authority who has been investigating time card abuses at the medical examiner's office for a year. more ›

The problem may go deeper than the morgue. Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart told Fox News Chicago in an interview Jan. 26 that the way the county handled paupers' burials are still coming back to haunt them. more ›

Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle is sending staff members to help the Cook County morgue deal with the backlog of 300 to 400 dead bodies at the morgue. more ›

U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement Director John Morton criticized Cook County’s illegal immigration policy in a letter to County Board President Tony Preckwinkle. more ›

A year ago today Toni Preckwinkle succeeded Todd Stroger as Cook County Board President. (Has it only been a year?) While her first 12 months would have been considered a positive by simply not being Stroger, Preckwinkle has been, for the most part, as advertised. more ›

Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle is unhappy with the city of Chicago and the CTA, so she is taking matters into her own hands. more ›

Commissioner William Beavers called the beer tax “a poor man’s tax” and said a new round of taxes would simply shuffle the burden. more ›

Toni Preckwinkle is hoping increases in sin taxes, county fees and budget cuts will help fix a $315 million deficit. more ›

Two of the five Cook County commissioners who refused to accept furlough days are realizing the public fallout from their actions and are reconsidering their position. more ›

This isn't unexpected from "the Hog with the Big Nuts." For Collins, it's a reversal of what she agreed to in February. more ›

Looks as though local business groups are happy with how Toni Preckwinkle is going with the county budget so far. more ›

County Board President Toni Preckwinkle said as only she can that layoffs will be a part of any effort to balance the county's $315 million budget deficit. more ›

Both County Board President Toni Preckwinkle and Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy recently criticized the current drug laws on the books. more ›

Mayor Emanuel and County Board President Toni Preckwinkle released a joint statement that shows their respective governments could save $140 million if they're able to consolidate services they already provide separately. more ›

Another problem from Todd Stroger's watch falls into Toni Preckwinkle's lap. more ›

Unlike some politicians who call themselves reformers, Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle at least has a track record of acting opposite of the party line. Preckwinkle has been making waves the past couple of days with two notable acts. Yesterday, Preckwinkle and County Commissioner John Fritchey announced the Open Cook County Plan, a major transparency initiative intended to rebuild the public trust in county government by making government data and information available to the public, hopefully allowing better interaction between country residents and their representatives and helping residents have a better understanding of what county government does. more ›

Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle made a visit to the northwest suburb of Palatine on Monday night to address the village's ongoing threat to secede from the county. more ›

City Inspector General Joe Ferguson is this week's big winner. Heading an office that seems to have no shortage of investigations into local government waste, patronage and corruption, Ferguson capped an impressive week by announcing the City Department of Public Health brushed off nearly all of his office's recommendations for preventing the theft and loss of nearly $1 million worth of drugs used to supply city health clinics. Recommendations, by the way, the IG's office recommended nearly two years ago. While Ferguson did admit that the Health Department management had "significant turnover" during that span, he said it was no excuse. more ›

Former County Board President Todd Stroger's attempts at collecting unemployment were shot down in flames because he was an elected official. But his former aide, Carla Oglesby, was approved for unemployment benefits by Stroger in the months before he left office.Oglesby collected at least $3,465 in unemployment compensation in the final months of 2010, despite being charged with theft of government property, money laundering and official misconduct. more ›

After over 19 hours of deliberations, the Cook County Board unanimously approved a $3 billion budget at 4:25 this morning. more ›

With bipartisan support from county commissioners, Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle approved a gradual rollback of the penny sales tax increase instituted by her predecessor, Todd Stroger. In the process, Preckwinkle made good on one of her major campaign promises. more ›

Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle has been pushing for a substantial pay raise for one of her newest staff hires, and questions are starting to circulate. Preckwinkle has been pushing for a $43,000 pay raise for Mary Laraia, who is "second-in-charge" at the Cook County Forest Preserve. Laraia has been a contributor to Preckwinkle's aldermanic campaigns in the past, and Laraia contributed $2,250 to Preckwinkle's campaign last year. If the raise is approved, Laraia's salary will jump from $111,908 to $155,172 per year, which Commissioner Liz Gorman pointed out was almost a 40% raise. more ›

As Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart looks at as many line items as possible to comply with County Board President Toni Preckwinkle's mandate to balance the county budget, one of the casualties could be the Sheriff's Department's graffiti removal program. The anti-graffiti unit is responsible for removing gang tags and other graffiti throughout the suburbs, but cutting it from the budget will allow Dart's department to continue patrolling unincorporated stretches of Cook County, guarding Cook County Jail and the Circuit Courts. Given the choice, Dart may have to err on the side of overall safety. more ›

County Board President Toni Preckwinkle seems headed for a showdown with Sheriff Tom Dart over proposed cuts to his department's budget. If Dart holds the line with his current proposed cuts, it could become the first confrontation in Preckwinkle's administration. more ›

Given the mandate from County Board President Toni Preckwinkle to cut department budgets so she can bring the county budget into balance, it looks like the Cook County Department of Public Health has done that, reducing their budget by $36 million over last year through a combination of job cuts and operational restructuring. Now, Preckwinkle has to incorporate the department budget into the larger county budget. more ›

It's nice to see some civil discussion about budget cuts for a change, even though Toni Preckwinkle said it's her way or the highway. more ›

Less than a month on the job and Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle is tackling some of the problems her predecessor left behind. This week she met with state officials to try and sort out the mess that Stroger's infamous "zoo party", paid for with funds allocated to help county flood victims, left for her. more ›

Yesterday we took a look back at the salad days that were the Todd Stroger administration. No matter how much you loved or hated the guy, the fact of the matter is that corruption and clout in Cook County is now Board President Toni Preckwinkle's problem. And with her taking the helm in Cook County comes a new report by county Inspector General Patrick Blanchard that Cook County’s Highway Department is a patronage "dumping ground." more ›

The moral of this story? “A man without hope is a man without fear.” more ›