Cook Co. state's attorney agrees to budget cuts

Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez and county board President Toni Preckwinkle made peace with a brokered budget compromise Thursday, as Alvarez agreed to a 10 percent cut for her office while taking on additional county business.

“We met our shared objective, which was to achieve this reduction and minimize attorney layoffs,” Preckwinkle said in a joint news conference outside her office in the Cook County Building in Chicago. “We came up with a plan that surely the state's attorney is not happy about, but is prepared to live with, and we're moving forward.”

Alvarez acknowledged her staff is already feeling the pain of shared sacrifice as the county tries to balance what Preckwinkle says is a $487 million deficit, but she added, “We will not have to suffer the severe cut of prosecutors that we initially expected.”

Preckwinkle said it called for “a significant reduction in staff, but it's support staff.” Alvarez added it would cost her about 25 prosecutors countywide, in both civil and criminal divisions, as well as an undetermined number of investigators.

“The state's attorney has made some tough choices,” Preckwinkle said. “The cuts that have been made still allow the state's attorney to preserve her core mission.”

After objecting to budget cuts earlier in the week before the Cook County Board, Alvarez signaled her willingness to submit to making layoffs by trimming more than 100 workers from her payroll on Wednesday. The last of the workers — support staff including administrators, clerks and specialists in community outreach and victim-witness interviews — received word Thursday.

Alvarez said the agreed-upon cuts will trim her budget to between $90 million and $91 million, down from $101 million last year. In exchange, she'll take on forest preserve district work that previously was farmed out to private firms, and also police workers' compensation cases to “go after abusers throughout Cook County,” Preckwinkle said. In that, she added, she expected the state's attorney's office to serve as “a model for the rest of the county when it comes to performance management.”

Preckwinkle also signaled that the public defender's office, which also raised objections to cuts this week, will not be spared at budget hearings scheduled for Tuesday. Preckwinkle spokeswoman Jessey Neves said both staffs were working “to ensure that we adhere to the fiscal responsibility the president's budget recommendation is based on as well as being conscious of impact.”

Preckwinkle said she expected no more budget snags on the way to passage by the county board before a deadline at the end of the month. “I think we're pretty much wrapping this up now,” she said. “I think things will continue to go pretty smoothly.”