Budget Woes

By Kevin Robinson in News on Jan 25, 2007 5:30PM

The battle over cuts to the Cook County budget intensified this week, and is expected to get hotter in the coming weeks. Hundreds of people, from county health care workers to community activists to patients turned out en masse at the first of several public hearings over Todd Stroger's proposed budget cuts. Targeting long-term care at some county facilities and slashing the number of Sheriff's police, Stroger, who was noticeably absent from Tuesday's hearing, said "sometimes, there's going to be some pain felt."

Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart for one, isn't taking this lying down. "There's no way I'm going along with this," Dart said. Although Stroger has vowed to close the $500 million budget gap without raising taxes, it seems some county commissioners are thinking about breaking away from him. Said 3rd District Commissioner Jerry "Iceman" Butler "I'm prepared to pay the bill... [w]e cannot cut our way out of this crisis." As Carol Marin pointed out in her column on Sunday, Stroger has a tough road to hoe if he keeps padding the county payroll with friends and family, especially when he is asking the most vulnerable users of county services and the very people that carried him into office to bear the brunt of the pain.