Aramark Correctional Services is a Chicago-based company that provides food services for inmates at Cook County Jail. It rakes in about $1 million a month, or roughly $180,000 to $195,000 a week.
But if you were to examine the county’s new
online check register, you wouldn’t know that. In fact, you might think Aramark was fleecing the county, providing “miscellaneous services” and “computer accessories and supplies.”
A food company providing mouse pads? Printer ink? And for more about $1.5 million a month in January and February?
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About 900 obsolete electronic monitoring anklets sit in the Cook County Sheriff's Department's storage closets, and the department is requesting authorization for a $4.5 million contract to lease new ones, a spokesman says.
Steve Patterson says the contract with Naperville-based ElmoTech, Inc., would bring the sheriff's department's electronic monitoring program up to date. The program currently relies on products it purchased in 1998.
"You can imagine in 1998 when we got these, the technology that was available then versus now. It's a night and day difference," he says. Read more...
Does the Cook County Sheriff’s Department actually employ 15 elevator operators?
If you were to look at the department’s 2010 budget, you’d see that more than $527,000 went to pay elevator operators at various county locations.
You’d also see that more than $119,000 is reserved for two marble polishers. And more than $800,000 goes to pay 17 window washers.
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For years, it's seemed that the far south suburb of Ford Heights couldn't get a break.
First, its police force dissolved when officers stopped showing up for work. Last year it stopped collecting garbage because of budget problems. Earlier this month a moldy rape kit was found in the vacant police station; the man tied to the evidence was about to be released from prison.
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Cook County could soon be free from a pair of decades-long decrees that require judicial monitoring of detainees at the Cook County Jail.
Commissioners today approved a set of measures that will eliminate the so-called Duran and Harrington decrees, which monitor overcrowding and mental health of the jail population.
If the county adheres to guidelines proposed by the federal government, the plaintiffs in the two cases have agreed to drop their complaints. Read more...
