{"id":547494,"date":"2010-04-29T20:32:39","date_gmt":"2010-04-30T00:32:39","guid":{"rendered":"tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d8341c60fd53ef013480420388970c"},"modified":"2010-04-29T20:32:39","modified_gmt":"2010-04-30T00:32:39","slug":"county-board-moves-to-limit-strogers-power-to-hire-and-buy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/547494","title":{"rendered":"County board moves to limit Stroger’s power to hire and buy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Posted by Hal Dardick<\/em> at 7:32 p.m.<\/p>\n

Cook County commissioners took steps today to limit the authority of Board President Todd Stroger in the wake of the latest hiring scandal in the final months of his administration.<\/p>\n

Most hiring and transfers would be frozen and Stroger would have three business days to report all allowed personnel changes and raises under a trio of measures introduced by five Democrats, including influential Finance Committee Chairman John Daley, D-Chicago.<\/p>\n

Stroger also would have to report within three days nearly all spending on supplies, materials, equipment and professional services not already approved by commissioners.
<\/br>
<\/br>Fellow Democrats were reacting in part to recent reports that Stroger hired Carla Oglesby, the manager of his failed re-election campaign, at $116,000 a year and then days later paid her public relations firm nearly $25,000 to promote federal relief funding for 2008 flooding.
<\/br>
<\/br>The county inspector general\u2019s office recently pulled Oglesby\u2019s personnel file and asked for details about the payment to her public relations firm, which was in an amount just $25 below the threshold for board approval, a source said.
<\/br>
<\/br>Commissioner Bridget Gainer, D-Chicago, said board members already were worried that Stroger would make detrimental changes before his term expires in December, when the winner of the general election for board president will be sworn in.
<\/br>
<\/br>\u201cIt is a concern that has been magnified by what we\u2019ve learned over the past couple of days,\u201d Gainer said, who added that a veto-proof majority of commissioners back the restrictions on Stroger. \u201cWe are in a time of budget constraints, and we need to make sure there isn\u2019t any additional hiring.\u201d
<\/br>
<\/br>Stroger spokeswoman Chris Geovanis said the administration had yet to see the measures and therefore had no comment.
<\/br>
<\/br>Stroger, politically bruised by his hiring of a former steakhouse busboy with a criminal history, placed fourth in the February primary. The \u201chiring of friends and family\u201d has become a mantra of his critics.
<\/br>
<\/br>There would be exceptions to the hiring freeze, so court-ordered hiring at the jail and juvenile detention center would not be interrupted, and the independent public health system would maintain its authority. Stroger also could hire to fill vacancies in \u201cessential\u201d posts.
<\/br>
<\/br>All hiring would have to be reported to the board, like the other spending, and commissioners could reverse spending decisions they deemed commissioners inappropriate, said Commissioner Larry Suffredin, D-Evanston.
<\/br>
<\/br>Stroger \u201chas, I think, abused the public trust again,\u201d Suffredin said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Posted by Hal Dardick at 7:32 p.m. Cook County commissioners took steps today to limit the authority of Board President Todd Stroger in the wake of the latest hiring scandal in the final months of his administration. Most hiring and transfers would be frozen and Stroger would have three business days to report all allowed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3992,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-547494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547494","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3992"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=547494"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547494\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=547494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=547494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=547494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}