History has taught Chicagoans to be suspicious when it comes to elected officials moving staffers from here to there while handing out raises.
So when Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle shuffled her security staff from one county payroll to another, awarding raises even as hundreds of other county workers were being laid off, it was bound to raise Sun-Times reporters’ eyebrows.
They asked questions.
And Preckwinkle, looking exactly like the kind of old-school pol she claims not to be, supplied no answers.
As Lauren FitzPatrick and Rachel Hinton reported Sunday, Preckwinkle declined to discuss the matter when they asked why three members of her security detail were moved from the county’s homeland security office to the forest preserve police unit and given raises.
All three guards already were earning six figures and their duties did not change. Meanwhile, hundreds of county workers were laid off in 2018, and positions were left vacant, to help erase a budget gap.
This also looked to us like a replay of Preckwinkle move in 2014, when she gave raises to her security detail as they were transferred from the county sheriff’s police unit to homeland security, at the request of Sheriff Tom Dart.
The editorial board reached out to Preckwinkle’s office on Monday. And this time a spokeswoman got back to the Sun-Times.
The officers were transferred to the forest preserve police, the spokeswoman said in a written statement, because that unit — unlike homeland security — “has law enforcement powers.” The raises, she wrote, are “representative of the significant time” put in by security detail members, who are not eligible for overtime but routinely work more than 50 hours each week.
Fair enough, we suppose. As best we can tell.
But then why did Preckwinkle’s office dodge the question in the first place?
The people of Cook County have a right to know, often thanks to inquisitive reporters, exactly how and why their tax dollars are being spent.
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