Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez this week announced that her office would be reopening “neighborhood offices.”

Such a great community service, right?  Wrong.

Two words:  Window dressing.

While these neighborhood offices might make a community feel like their State’s Attorney cares and provide some nice marketing for the State’s Attorney’s office — it does little to actually help the county taxpayers.

It does, of course, provides taxpayer-funded jobs.

If you think the job of the State’s Attorney’s office (like the rest of county government) is to serve as an employment agency for those seeking to join the county payroll — then you probably like these neighborhood offices.

This news story points out that, by opening these neighborhood offices, Anita Alvarez is making good on a “major campaign promise.”

But we will note that another claim she made on the campaign trail was that the State’s Attorney’s office is strapped for resources — a major reason, she explained, that the office was not equipped to fight public corruption.

But apparently they have enough cash to open these neighborhood offices?

During the past several years, we’ve seen just how busy the U.S. Attorney has been in fighting county corruption.  And we’ve all seen the headlines of corruption that slipped through the cracks.

Perhaps the State’s Attorney’s office should ditch the “neighborhood offices” schtick and put scarce resources to better use by joining Patrick Fitzgerald’s corruption-fighting team to help clean up Cook County government.

Now, that would be a service to our local communities — and may even help free up resources (that currently are going toward waste, fraud and abuse) that could be used to further fight crime and serve the public.