February 15, 2009 – By Nathaniel Zimmer – SouthtownStar

Cook County commissioners’ decision last week to modestly trim the county’s proposed budget earned them applause in some quarters, but critics caution the county may not be out of the woods yet.

Commissioners lopped $46 million from the $2.9 billion spending plan. Republicans – including Elizabeth Doody Gorman, of Orland Park, and Tony Peraica, of Riverside – tried to cut more. But the only taker among Democrats was John Daley, of Chicago, whose district includes the Oak Lawn area.

Together with higher revenue estimates, based in part on money expected from the federal stimulus package, the reductions will allow the county to avoid issuing bonds to cover hundreds of millions of dollars of insurance and lawsuit costs. Critics said the bond plan, endorsed by county board President Todd Stroger (D-Chicago), amounted to borrowing to pay for operating expenses.

Commissioners also slashed Stroger’s controversial request to borrow $360 million for capital projects. A final decision on whether to proceed with a bond issue for those projects still must be made, and some believe more spending could be eliminated.

Also still to be decided is how to pay for $104 million in pension obligations. Stroger wanted to borrow the full amount. But that looks unlikely now.

Stroger spokeswoman Chris Geovanis said several options are on the table, including borrowing about $25 million and spreading payment of the remaining pension debt over a number of years.

Meanwhile, there’s the question of whether sharp declines in tax revenue owing to the economic downturn could force further belt-tightening before the year is done.

Without ruling that possibility out, Geovanis said it’s “not something we are anticipating.” Stroger’s finance department believes its revenue estimates are sufficiently conservative, she said.

That the county isn’t contemplating deeper cuts, at a time when the state faces a massive budget deficit, can be attributed to the “unpopular but politically courageous” sales tax increase Cook County implemented last year, according to Geovanis.

“We’re actually in better shape than other government agencies,” she said.

Nevertheless, Civic Federation president Laurence Msall said he’s concerned the cuts may not have gone deep enough. He said figures that Daley requested from the county show that, on average, 1 in 10 county employees are absent every day, indicating there’s plenty of room to slash payroll without affecting services.

“We have not hit the bottom” of the recession, Msall said. “It would be naive for the county to expect that its revenue projections will not be affected.”

Gorman said capital spending could be further reduced. Geovanis disputed that notion, saying commissioners already had “stripped out everything but absolutely critical capital projects.”

Whether there’s more fat to trim or not, Gorman said many of her constituents believe the county budget is bloated.

“People see the inefficiencies of Cook County,” she said. “People feel there’s more cuts to be made.”

Peraica said the biggest problem with the budget is the revenue projections.

“I felt extremely uncomfortable using these pie-in-the-sky numbers,” he said. “We’re going to end up even more short, and when we get to mid-year, if that far, we’re going to be forced, I believe, to cut.”

Commissioners agreed to a 2 percent reduction in the health budget and a 4 percent cut in other departments at a meeting last Tuesday of the finance committee, which includes all board members. But they must meet again Wednesday, as the full board, for a final vote and to decide remaining matters.

Peraica, Gorman and the board’s three other Republicans plus Daley tried and failed to cut 6 percent from all departments before the smaller reductions passed.