Brown waves flag of reform in Cook Co. president bid

Dorothy Brown touts herself as a candidate for reform.

"Cook County is in a financial and management crisis," she said in a formal endorsement interview at the Daily Herald this week, "and the time is ripe for a Cook County Board president who has a proven track record of reform, innovation and saving taxpayer dollars, as I have as clerk of the Circuit Court of Cook County."

The Chicago Democrat pointed to her creation of a Revenue Increase Initiative Task Force in that office, and said it has helped bring $187 million in new funds and savings into the system since she took office nine years ago.

According to Brown, the clerk's office raised more than $10 million by applying a court-security fee to cases, another $8 million by intercepting state tax refunds to people who owed court fees and another $32 million by taking credit cards on bail bonds, which also eased overcrowding in county jails.

Yet she blamed the Illinois Supreme Court for preventing her from raising more money by putting locally filed lawsuits online and charging to view them, a profitable device used by private legal and business media, and explained there were unresolved privacy issues.

"I've been told you don't ask the Illinois Supreme Court. You wait," she added.

Similarly, she said she freed the clerk's office from patronage when she was elected without any formal Democratic Party backing in 2000.

"We won because we took our campaign to the people," Brown said. "Because I was elected in that way, I was able to hire people who were qualified. I kept some of my predecessor's people. I had no problem with that, because they knew what they were doing.

"I think independence is very good," she added, "because you're going to have to be able to hire people who are qualified for the job."

Brown promised to extend that basic policy to the county if elected president.

"I'm not just about politics," she said. "It's professionalism."

She did not deny she has accepted campaign contributions from her staff.

"There's been a lot said about that," she said. "I've never pressured anyone."

She added that she's told her staff, "'You do not have to donate to me. It will not affect your ability to be promoted.' They know I've kept my word on that. 'And it will not help you get promoted either.' And I've kept my word on that."

Brown insisted she's running on the issues, and said she's issued four positions papers, while her three opponents in the Feb. 2 Democratic primary have not issued a single one between them.

The papers lay out how she would

• encourage economic development through a round-table of county mayors and village presidents and the creation of a county Small Business Administration to act as a liaison with the federal agency;

• streamline the county legal system by instituting many of the recommendations of an American University study;

• reform health care financing; and

• streamline the budget process.

Brown is the product of Louisiana parents she described as poor and uneducated, but who pressed their children to get ahead through education. She is a certified public accountant, has a master's degree in business administration and is also a lawyer - all of which she said would serve her as county board president. She made her name as general auditor at the Chicago Transit Authority in the '90s, helping to implement the fare-card system still in use today.

"Everything I've ever gotten I had to earn," she said, "and I had to earn the hard way, the old American-dream way."

Her reform message took a hit recently when her campaign field director was accused of using state EarnFare workers to collect signatures for her filing petitions.

"That doesn't hurt me at all, because I didn't authorize it," Brown told the editorial board. "Those allegations are between him and the state. Of course, as soon as I found out about it I terminated the relationship.

"I have a reputation of trust and honesty and reform," she added, "and I will not give that up to anybody."

Meanwhile, on Thursday, she picked up the endorsement of U.S. Rep. Danny Davis, who himself mulled a run for the office before deciding instead to stick with the re-election bid for his congressional seat. Davis, a Chicago Democrat, cited several public opinion polls that put Brown as the leading candidate in the Feb. 2 primary election.

Brown is running for the office against incumbent President Todd Stroger, Chicago Alderman Toni Preckwinkle and Cook County Water Reclamation District President Terry O'Brien.