The Chicago Sun-Times reports on Crook County:
As Cook County Board President Todd Stroger prepares to fill hundreds of new jobs delivered to him by the County Board last week, a federal hiring monitor says political patronage continues to hamper county hiring.
In a U.S. District Court filing, monitor Julia Nowicki cites repeated examples among hundreds of claims she's investigating -- including an employee boasting shortly after being hired that he was a "Soldier for Stroger" in the board president's election campaign and would soon be a supervising his co-workers.
That employee never even applied for the job, she notes, but quickly became a top boss. That person has also been using county fax machines to process orders for political materials, she notes.
Nowicki cites a "need for a comprehensive overhaul" of county hiring, arguing that since Stroger came to office "there has been little change in the status quo."
Running an illegal patronage operation is a high tax
operation:
Cook County commissioners approved a 1 percent hike just before their midnight Friday deadline. When it goes into effect it will put Chicago's sales tax rate at 10.25 percent, compared, for example, to New York's 8.375 percent and Los Angeles's 8.25 percent.
It also means Cook will have the highest county sales tax in the state, at 9 percent. Two bordering counties -- Lake and Will -- are at 7 percent.
"I think that is ridiculous," said shopper Natalie Mancini.
"Buying gifts and clothes...we won't do it," said Michigan resident Rajaa Sobh about shopping in Chicago.
"There's so much waste in our county, that they're passing their inefficiency onto the consumers, which I think is really unfortunate," said Northbrook resident Peter Sakas.
No word from the Obama campaign on this even though they supported Todd Stroger's status quo candidacy.
