Forrest Claypool, the county commissioner who left the Democratic party to run as independent candidate for Cook County assessor, says he'll file petitions today signed by more than 90,000 voters in his bid to get on the ballot in November.
Claypool is running against Democrat Joseph Berrios, a board of review commissioner and chairman of the party, Republican Sharon Strobeck-Eckersall, a former Evanston assessor, and the Green Party's Robert Grota.
Claypool announced his candidacy in early April, angering Democrats by leaving the party and running without having participated in the primary. He needed to garner 25,000 signatures to get on the ballot, and expects a tough challenge from election lawyers retained by the Berrios campaign. Read more...
The Cook County Health and Hospitals System's board tomorrow will debate a resolution in support of making the system permanently independent of county government.
The 2008 ordinance establishing the independent board calls for the health system to revert back to Cook County Board oversight in 2011.
Making the health board permanent was a campaign point for candidates vying for the County Board presidency. Both Democrat Toni Preckwinkle and Republican Roger Keats support making it permanent; Green Party candidate Tom Tresser says he would like the board embrace more diversity and community input. Read more...
Following news yesterday that Democratic nominee for Cook County Board president Toni Preckwinkle would not commit to repealing the remainder of the county's sales tax until 2012 at the earliest, Preckwinkle's opponents went on the offensive.
The Cook County Republican Party released a statement calling her a flip-flopper and dishonest.
"After months of misleading voters, Alderman Toni Preckwinkle has finally acknowledged she has no intention of immediately repealing the Cook County sales tax increase and will not cut wasteful spending to east the tax burden," the statement says. Read more...
Toni Preckwinkle
The Democratic nominee for Cook County Board president is backing off one of her main campaign promises: eliminating the remainder of the county's sales tax.
The Chicago Sun-Times reported this morning that Preckwinkle said a growing deficit, which she placed at between $250 million and $500 million, would prohibit rolling back the remainder of the sales tax until at least 2012. Preckwinkle has said throughout her campaign she would gradually reduce the sales tax.
In December, county commissioners won a battle to eliminate half of the county's penny-on-the-dollar sales tax hike. In response to the unpopular tax, voters shunned County Board President Todd Stroger, siding with Preckwinkle, who promised to cut the tax. Read more...
Republican nominee for County Board President Roger Keats today announced he would embrace a number of reform proposals supported by anti-corruption watchdogs, and said he hopes lawmakers in Cook County and Springfield will put such reforms into law.
Keats says he has support from some county commissioners and state lawmakers to make some of the reforms outlined in a February report from the University of Illinois at Chicago law.
“What we’re trying to remind people is that as corrupt as this place is, there are some of us who are trying to do something about it,” said Keats, who is running against Democrat Toni Preckwinkle and Green Party nominee Tom Tresser.
Read more...
