Alderman Toni Preckwinkle has represented the 4th Ward in Chicago's City Council for nearly 20 years.She counts improving education and public housing redevelopment among her accomplishments. If elected president of the Cook County board, Preckwinkle says she will repeal the sales tax increase over time, make permanent the independent healthcare board and work to reduce overcrowding in the jail.
Windy City Times: Which of your professional experiences and accomplishments do you believe have best prepared you to serve as Cook County board president?
Toni Preckwinkle: I was elected alderman in 1991, and when I was elected, there were 3,000 vacant city-owned lots in my ward and that doesn't count the privately held ones. I've worked very hard over the last almost 20 years to rebuild my ward. We have worked very closely with the Chicago housing Authority on transformation of what were formerly public housing redevelopments into mixed income neighborhoods. So, residential redevelopment has been my principal focus over the last couple decades. But, we have also worked hard to improve public schools. I'm a former school teacher. We've put a lot of time and energy into that. The third thing we've focused on is trying to make our neighborhoods safer by working with our residents and police ... But, members of the city council are also legislators. I have been the champion of affordable housing, along with my colleagues Walter Burnett and Arenda Troutman. I've always been a strong supporter of the LGBT community, especially when issues arose around benefits for partners and that kind of thing.
WCT: Why do you want to repeal the sales tax increase passed under President Todd Stroger? And what economic measures would you put in place to ensure a balanced budget?
Preckwinkle: I usually say government has the obligation has to do two things: provide good service and do that as effectively and efficiently as possible. And I think the county is falling down on both sides of the equation. We have highest sales taxes in country, so I think that is devastating for working families and businesses. I pledge to take down the remaining half percent as quickly as I can in my four-year term ... But when you are reducing income, you also have to think about how you are reducing expenses. You have to look carefully through the budget and look at where there is waste, duplication, where you can save money by consolidating or bringing things in house that were previously outsourced.
Two years ago when the county was in terrible trouble, they sent Dr. Simon over to cut money out of the healthcare system, and they did it in a really thoughtless and brutal way. They eliminated clinics where primary care was given, so that now two years later without those clinics, we are inundated in emergency rooms with babies with earaches.
We have to be very thoughtful and careful about what we're doing, and look at income and expenses over time, and not just stumble from one budget year to the next. We also have to look at resources that might be available beyond our own tax base. ... When I asked somebody why one-third of the City of Chicago's budget was grants from the state and federal government and philanthropic entities, and the county's number is like 5 percent. They said, "You don't understand, if you take money from anybody else, you have to be accountable and you are subject to scrutiny by the funder."
The county has historically been unwilling to seek out funding outside of its tax base because it would be subject to external review. I've pledged in my 12-point plan, which is on my website, that we would put a blue ribbon commission together to look at consolidating county offices because in addition to the 17 elected commissioners and the county board president, there are 11 other elected officials in Cook County, and that is an extraordinary number. The question is: we have an assessor, we have a recorder of deeds, we have a treasurer, and all of them deal with property taxes. Why do we have three separate offices that do that? I would ask commission to look at whether it is really necessary.
WCT: How would you bring more transparency to county government and hiring?
Preckwinkle: All of the county should be represented, and I mean gender, race, geography, sexual orientation, in the county workforce. We should be working hard to be sure, particularly in the Shakman-exempt positions, that we are respectful and inclusive. On the civil service side, we need to make sure job notices are readily available and the hiring process is transparent, and need to work closely with federal monitor instead of fighting with monitor. I think all of those things will make a difference. But, county employment should not be the prerogative or preserve of a handful of ward organizations.
WCT: What do you think are the solutions to the county's overcrowded and sometimes dangerous jail?
Preckwinkle: We're detaining large numbers of non-violent people in the jail, which doesn't make any sense at all. There is a small program at the jail, a diversion program called day reporting. People are ... treated with a 12-step program first for their substance abuse. These are only non-violent offenders, and if they stay clean and sober, they go into education or employment training. When they were doing drug treatment, although they haven't been doing it lately because intake is a mess, virtually no one could pass drug test. Substance abuse, even though people might not have been there for a drug offense, was part of what brought them into the criminal justice system. ...We need [ to ] help them with substance abuse while they are awaiting trial, rather than having them sit in the jail. It costs $100 a day to keep somebody in jail, which is about $40,000 a year. Let me tell you, you can pay for a pretty nice private school education for $40,000 a year. On the back end, we need to look at more alternative sentencing, like sentencing people to drug treatment, boot camp, electronic monitoring.
And I think if we take a lot of the non-violent offenders out of the jail. We can pay more attention to the people who are violent and who are more of a threat to the rest of us.
WCT: How would you improve the quality and efficiency of Cook County's health and hospitals system?
Preckwinkle: A year and a half ago, as the price for his support of the increase in the sales tax, Larry Suffredin extracted a commitment for an independent board of directors for public hospitals and clinics. They are in middle of that temporary arrangement, and it took them a year and a half to find someone to run the system because it had such a terrible reputation for patronage and political influence. They got Bill Foley, who was a nationally-recognized health administrator to come. We're not going to be able to keep good professional managers unless we continue to have independent governance over there. ... They've had professional management, they've been able to trim expenses, and I think we need to make it clear that we are committed to this arrangement on a permanent basis, so people don't think we can wait a year and a half and things will come under the county board's purview again and we'll have the same mess we had before.
WCT: You have said you support the legalization of same-sex marriage.
Preckwinkle: Yes... I support full marriage equality. I think it's especially incumbent on African Americans, who have been victims of so much discrimination in this country to favor extending full equality to everyone. I think it's hypocritical for us, who have endured so much in this country, to be a party in any way to discrimination against anyone else.
WCT: You also said at the Affinity candidate forum that, if elected, you would use your post as county board president as a pulpit to raise awareness on issues like gay marriage. How would you do that?
Preckwinkle: The county has a lobbyist in Springfield and this is one of the things our lobbyist ought to be supporting. Clearly the main mission of the county is around healthcare and criminal justice, so our lobbyist has to be focused on those issues down in Springfield, but our lobbyist also should be supporting measures that contribute to the greater good. And surely directing your lobbyist to support things like full marriage equality is right and just, and that ought to be part of our agenda as well. We should be pushing for things that are in the benefit of all of our citizens, and surely that is one.
WCT: Is there anything else you'd like to let voters know?
Preckwinkle: I'm an independent, progressive, pro-choice Democrat, who has been strong proponent of LGBT issues and is a proponent of full marriage equality.
See www.tonipreckwinkle.org .
