What Else Is New?

By Kevin Robinson in News on May 25, 2007 4:00PM

It wouldn't be a week here in the Politics bureau of the Chicagoist offices if we didn't take at least the perfunctory shot at Todd Stroger or one of his handlers. So here's this week's.

In case you hadn't figured it out by now, Stroger and his puppet masters have been playing fast and loose with the county's budget, even though it's in such desperate shape that they have slashed critical services just to keep operating. As if throwing nurses and other health care providers out of work weren't enough, now the Toddler has a personal lawyer. Richard Velazquez is supposed to be defending indigent defendants. Instead, he's serving as the Toddler's private council, being paid out of an office that has already laid off 13 other public defenders. The sad part of all of this (besides the fact that the Toddler is robbing the poor of their constitutional right to due process under the law), it that it is only a drop in the bucket, along with $20 million in other alledged misappropriations of budgeted funds.