
It was the tweet heard ‘round the world. Or throughout the Cook County commissioners’ chamber, at least.
Yesterday, Commissioner Tony Peraica used his Twitter account to call out Commissioner Deborah Sims, encouraging voters not to reelect her.
WBEZ learned Peraica used the county’s taxpayer-funded wireless Internet to tweet the message, and today Sims called for an ethics investigation of Peraica’s “tweetering,” as she put it.
“They (Peraica) sent out a political Tweet the other day that said I should not be running. I think there should be an ethics investigation,” she said. “Nobody should be political tweeting in this room.”
Peraica apologized for using the county’s system for political purposes:
"Now that I reflect on it, that was in the county board meeting and I would imagine that the county wireless system was the one that I was transmitting across. And therefore probably better judgment would be not to engage in political comments."
Peraica says the debate got rather personal and he sent the note in the heat of the moment.
He often gives candid looks at county proceedings on Twitter, but during today’s board meeting, he tweeted not a peep.