Preckwinkle Stands with County Commissioners to Launch Bold County-wide Reforms

Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle announced today the launch of several County-wide, strategic reform initiatives in an effort to continue to transform County government and tackle the structural deficit in the years to come.

On the heels of the approval of modest revenue enhancements by the County Board, Preckwinkle was joined by a bi-partisan group of Commissioners: Elizabeth Gorman (R-17th), Gregg Goslin (R-14th), Tim Schneider (R-15th), Peter Silvestri (R-9th), Jerry Butler (D-3rd), Finance Chairman John Daley (D-11th), Jesus "Chuy" Garcia (D-7th), and Robert Steele (D-2nd) to announce the initiatives that are expected to increase accountability throughout the County and yield long-term savings. The initiatives being undertaken include centralizing the management of all banking and financial relationships throughout the County, consolidating IT functions, overhauling the County's time management policy, and creating a shared-services center to ensure best practices and centralized management and oversight.

"We have to make tough choices in order to transform County government and improve services for our residents," President Preckwinkle said. "I commend the Commissioners for the difficult decisions they made yesterday. Today, we stand together to introduce reforms that will help us more effectively deliver better services to County residents while lowering the cost of County government for taxpayers."

The groundwork for these reforms was established by President Preckwinkle's S.T.A.R. Performance Management program, which helped identify areas in County government where modernizing or consolidating operations will improve services to County residents and lower costs for tax payers. The initiatives will impact all County offices, aligning them with the mandate set by President Preckwinkle's FY 2012 Budget proposal to be both comprehensive and forward-thinking.

The County's mounting structural deficit makes the need for reform more urgent. The deficit projection included in the President's Budget proposal shows an emerging structural deficit of $210 million in FY 2013 and grows to over $660 million by FY 2016.

"It is of critical importance that we continue to show financial leadership now so that we can rein in costs, increase efficiencies and begin to erase our structural deficit," Preckwinkle said.

The public will be updated on progress toward these reform initiatives on a future reform tracker website (reform.cookcountyil.gov).

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