Mayor Daley's Cousin: Secret discipline of $150,000-a-year Cook County DUI judge 'could take two years'

The Southtown Star reports:

She quietly pleaded guilty to drunken driving and was sentenced on the day President Obama was inaugurated.

But it may be another two years before Cook County Judge Sheila McGinnis is disciplined by the authorities who oversee Illinois judges - if they discipline her, according to the executive director of the Illinois Judicial Inquiry Board.

McGinnis on Tuesday dodged a potential one-year jail term when she admitted drunkenly crashing her Chevrolet sport utility vehicle into the back of a family-of-four's minivan May 9 in Tinley Park.

With the attention of the Southland and the world focused on Washington, D.C., Judge Edward Burmila fined McGinnis $1,000, ordered her to complete an 18-month probation stint, to attend counseling and to attend a victim impact panel during a brief hearing at the Markham courthouse.

The sentence was normal for a first-time offender, Burmila said.

But McGinnis, a cousin of Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, continues to draw a $150,000 judge's salary from the county. She was transferred from a criminal courtroom to administrative duties at the Daley Center after her arrest last summer.

Secrecy governs the process by which judges are disciplined in Illinois, meaning the JIB cannot reveal if an official complaint has been made against McGinnis in her role as a judge, JIB executive director Kathy Twine said.

The board has the power to refer judges' cases to the Illinois Court Commission, which can censure, suspend or dismiss judges.

A SouthtownStar survey of Illinois Court Commission records shows that not one of the eight Illinois judges investigated for DUIs since 1973 has been removed from the bench for even one day.

Seven of the drunken-driving judges were reprimanded.

No word yet from Chicago Alderman Ed Burke,the man who slates all the judges in Cook County.Also,no word yet on whether Mayor Daley is proud of his cousin.