Toni Preckwinkle has pushed a flurry of no-nonsense reforms since being elected Cook County Board president in 2010. But her attempts to extend her influence this election season have left a longtime ally wondering if Preckwinkle's brand of independence is drifting toward “machine-like” power politics.
Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle says she wants “blow ... up” the juvenile jail on the West Side and begin housing wayward kids in smaller regional centers. Preckwinkle was responding to a report issued Friday by the Jane Addams Juvenile Court Foundation and the National Council on Crime and Delinquency.
Cook County should demolish its long-troubled juvenile temporary detention center and needs to address an array of problematic trends in how it detains youths, such as disproportionately high admission rates for African-Americans, according to a new report.
The Cook County Board on Thursday voted against giving voters the option of doing away with the recorder of deeds office. The measure to include a referendum on the November ballot asking voters if the recorder's office should be folded into the county clerk's office in 2016 failed to clear the Finance Committee by a 9-8 vote. Committee Chairman John Daley, D-Chicago, cast the deciding vote against the plan.
The graves have been selected, transportation lined up and burial services planned as Catholic Cemeteries of Chicago is standing by with an offer to bury — at no cost to taxpayers — up to 300 of the bodies languishing in the Cook County morgue. Only the county, struggling with overcrowding in the morgue’s storage cooler, hasn’t called to greenlight the burials.
