On June 23, 2022, Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle issued a preliminary budget forecast for fiscal year 2023. The fiscal year begins December 1, 2022 and ends November 30, 2023. The report provides end-of-year estimates for the current 2022 fiscal year and a forecast for the upcoming 2023 fiscal year in the County’s operating funds. The operating funds include the General Fund, which accounts for administrative and public safety operations, and the Health Fund, which accounts for…
With new data released by the Office of the Chief Judge of the Cook County Circuit Court earlier this year, a more complete understanding of the number of people confined to electronic monitoring, or home confinement, in Cook County—and the types of crimes they are charged with—is now available. There are two main pretrial electronic monitoring programs in Cook County—one operated by the Cook County Sheriff and one operated by the Adult Probation Department within the Office of the Chief Judge…
Update (May 24, 2022): The Cook County Finance Committee held a special meeting on the elected officials’ salary ordinance and approved the salary increases laid out in substitute ordinance 22-2825. It was also ratified by the Board of Commissioners. The elected officials’ salaries will increase by 10% in FY2023, and the lesser of 3% or the rate of CPI in each year thereafter. The Civic Federation and the League of Women Voters of Cook County provided testimony in support of salary…
Click here to read the full report. Click here to read the press release for this analysis. MAJOR FINDINGS This report provides an estimate of the full market value of property in Cook County between tax years 2010 and 2019 using data provided by the Cook County Assessor and the Illinois Department of Revenue. It does not incorporate any changes to the value of property in Cook County due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Data to estimate the full value of real estate in 2022 using this report…
Click here for a PDF of this issue brief. This post presents information on residential and commercial effective property tax rates in south Cook County municipalities in tax years 2005, 2008, 2011, 2014, 2017 and 2019. These 84 municipalities are all located in the South Cook County Assessment Triad.[1] The report also compares these effective tax rates to those for the City of Chicago in these selected years. Effective property tax rates are a measure of property tax burden for…
The Office of the Clerk of the Circuit Court of Cook County saw a change in leadership for the first time in 20 years in 2020. The change in administration presented an opportunity for meaningful reform of an office that had been notorious for corruption, delays and substandard constituent service. The Civic Federation, in partnership with the Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts and the Chicago Council of Lawyers, issued a series of recommendations prior to the 2020 November election for…
Click here to read the full report.Click here to read the press release.Click here to read the 2020 recommendations.Click here to read the 100 days update.INTRODUCTIONThe change in administration within the Office of the Clerk of the Circuit Court of Cook County in December 2020 represented an opportunity for meaningful reform of an office that has been notorious for corruption, delays and substandard constituent service. Prior to the November 2020 General Election, Chicago Appleseed Center for…
The $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) was signed into law on March 11, 2021 and provides for $350 billion in funding for eligible state, local, territorial, and Tribal governments. The Coronavirus State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds (SLFRF), a section of ARPA, provide significant revenue support to state and local governments, and in contrast to prior pandemic relief such as the CARES Act, the funding is not restricted to combating COVID-19. As part of SLFRF, larger governments…
In less than a year from this writing, money will no longer be a factor in pretrial release decisions pertaining to defendants accused of committing crimes in Illinois. The elimination of cash bail was one of the major reforms in a criminal justice omnibus bill signed into law by Governor Pritzker in February 2021, and will take effect on January 1, 2023. This change in policy and practice represents a historic and fundamental shift in the pretrial release system in Illinois. Instead of setting…
In an analysis of Cook County’s FY2022 budget proposal released in November, the Civic Federation supported the Cook County budget proposal of $8.0 billion. This blog post takes a closer look at public safety spending in the County’s budget by examining five of the five key County criminal justice stakeholder offices—the Sheriff, Chief Judge, Clerk of the Circuit Court, State’s Attorney and Public Defender. Public Safety makes up the second largest area of spending in the Cook County budget…
