Cook Dem prez candidates jab at each other in debate

The four Democratic candidates for president of the Cook County Board found ways to nettle each other in a debate sponsored by the City Club of Chicago at Maggiano's Banquets in downtown Chicago today.

Much of the needling came in a session in which the candidates were assigned to ask questions of one another.

Citing herself as the lone progressive reformer, Chicago Hyde Park Alderman Toni Preckwinkle asked Clerk of the Circuit Court Dorothy Brown how she could call herself a reformer after admitting her campaign had used state workers to collect campaign signatures and that she had accepted gifts and donations from employees.

"They all relate to other individuals besides myself," Brown replied, adding, "We're like a family. We give each other gifts during the holiday season."

Brown asked Metropolitan Water Reclamation District President Terrence O'Brien how he got to be a millionaire on his $80,000 government salary, suggesting it was in doing consultant work for polluters. "I do not apologize for being a successful businessman," O'Brien said, adding, "Terry O'Brien does not protect polluters." He called those charges, previously leveled by Preckwinkle as well, "defamatory."

O'Brien, in turn, asked incumbent President Todd Stroger about a Better Government Association report last summer that found only three of 11 contracts had been awarded to the low bid. Stroger was unapologetic, saying, "To be responsible, you don't just take the lowest price."

Stroger asked a lengthy question of Preckwinkle that concluded, "The county is in perfect shape after my three years of service." Preckwinkle replied that she'd heard otherwise.

Preckwinkle attacked Brown's push for an upgrade in technology countywide by asking why she hadn't already gone to using electronic files in the clerk's office. "That needs to be done right away," she said.

Brown replied that she'd form a 10-year strategic technology plan and that electronic files would go online in the chancery division later this year.

Stroger charged O'Brien with raising the MWRD property-tax levy 33 percent over his tenure, but O'Brien shot back that was because the agency took on stormwater management from the inept county government. Both Stroger and O'Brien hit Preckwinkle on supporting city taxes as an alderman, but she answered by pointing to how she was one of the few to oppose Mayor Daley's controversial move to privatize parking meters.

All said the county has to cut costs through diversion programs for nonviolent inmates at Cook County Jail, but Preckwinkle had the best line, saying, "The jail is not a hotel where we need to maximize occupancy."

O'Brien, however, got off the best line of the debate in his closing statement, saying that on Groundhog Day, for the Feb. 2 primary, he'd crawl out from the sewers and cast his shadow at the County Building as the victor.

O'Brien pushed early voting by casting his vote at the county's Board of Elections earlier in the day. Later in the afternoon, Preckwinkle accepted the endorsement of U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsy, an Evanston Democrat. Stroger announced he would unveil a new government efficiency program in a news conference Tuesday before the regularly scheduled county-board meeting.