City County, Plan on Merging Services to Cut Costs

By Chuck Sudo in News on Jun 13, 2011 8:20PM

In what can be described at the very least as an example of good common sense in government, Mayor Emanuel and County Board President Toni Preckwinkle released a joint report that shows the city and county governments could save up to $140 million if they simply combined to do many of the same services they already do separately. That's no small chunk of change considering the combined budget deficits of the two governments is nearly $1 billion.

Considering City Hall and the County building are separated by a hallway the question on everyone's mind: what took them so long to consider this? Mayor emanuel had no immediate answers, but seemed eager to hit the ground running.

"I don’t know what prevented [cooperation] in the past. But, I can speak to the future. ... You set a tone at the top. We expect people — not to argue about turf, but to get the results.”

The report showed that joint purchasing alone could save $24 million. Preckwinkle said.

"The county’s budget is $3.1 billion. The city’s is about $6.2 [billion]. Together, that’s $10 billion in purchasing power. And there are just some obvious ways in which we can leverage that purchasing power to save money on both sides of the building."

In addition to purchasing, the two governments could combine resources on elections, tax and revenue collection, 311 service, facilities management and minority business certification.

The projected savings doesn't even consider what city and county governments could save if they merged their respective healthcare systems. Both Preckwinkle and Emanuel indicated that this report is not intended to gather dust on a shelf and, given the precarious financial situations of both governments, they intend to work together to implement these recommendations sooner, rather than later.