Residents of Chicago's 8th Ward, home turf of County Board president Todd Stroger, hold the second-most county jobs of any ward, according to an analysis of Cook County employee rolls and voter records by the Chicago Reporter.
There are 175 8th Ward residents on the county payroll, or nearly 5 percent of the ward's registered voters, according to the analysis. Stroger, the outgoing County Board president, was until recently the 8th Ward committeeman, and is a former 8th Ward alderman.
Here's how the investigative journal describes its methodology:
The Reporter compared a February 2009 database of more than 23,000 Cook County employees with databases of more than 1.3 million registered voters in Chicago, from January 2008, and more than 1.3 million registered voters in suburban Cook County, from September 2007, to determine where many Cook County employees live. The Reporter found unique matches for about 7,800 county workers, roughly one third of the county's workforce.
While Stroger's ward has the second highest number of county employees, it pales in comparison to the top ward, the 19th, run by Committeeman Matthew J. O'Shea. Nearly 250 county workers come from the 19th Ward.
But the area with far and away the most county workers is Thornton Township, home to 424 workers. Worth (359), Bremen (306) and Proviso (253) are home to more workers than the city's top wards.
Chicago's 18th Ward is home to 173 workers, coming in third in the city.
The fewest city-based workers come from the 22nd Ward, run by Committeeman Ricardo Munoz, a Chicago alderman.
The Reporter notes that when county employment is calculated on a per-capita basis, the 8th is not among the top wards.
Another nugget:
Patronage is likely to be, at least, part of the reason for the inflated number of county workers in those wards since they were also among the wards with the highest rates of referrals on the infamous "clout list" that was maintained by Richard M. Daley's Intergovernmental Affairs Office during the first several years of the Daley administration.
The Reporter story notes that the 11th Ward, John Daley's turf, had more jobs on the clout list than any other.