Stroger vows to freeze hiring

Cook County Board President Todd Stroger vowed publicly Tuesday to institute a hiring freeze.

The announcement came at the County Board meeting as commissioners were about to twist Stroger's arm and possibly embarrass him with an on-the-record request for just such a freeze. Even after his announcement, they went ahead with their resolution.

Technically, the board's measure is advisory, since under constitutional separation-of-power doctrines, the legislative branch can't dictate to the president how and whom to hire, only how much he can spend.

But it was a very public advisory suggestion by John Daley, usually a Stroger ally but one who has been moving to distance himself from the president in the past few months. The measure urged Stroger to institute such a freeze except for the case of emergency hires needed for critical positions. It requires constitutional officers like the court clerk and treasurer to appear before the board and state the reasons why they hired someone in the face of such a freeze.

Daley, a Chicago Democrat, noted there have been hiring "freezes" in the past.

"If you look at the history of it, it's quite honestly a joke," Daley said, noting the "emergency" exceptions quickly swallowed the rule.

Evanston Democrat Larry Suffredin waved an inch-thick stack of papers, noting each document represented an "emergency" hire under a past freeze.

Stroger did not announce the guidelines of his freeze, but said he intended to institute such a freeze anyway, because he believed commissioners' budget numbers in the 2009 budget on the rate of employee turnover was optimistic. He said he was going to have to freeze hiring to actually meet the budget commissioners had set.