Cook public defender nears budget compromise

Cook County Public Defender Abishi Cunningham Jr. said he’s “very close” to reaching a compromise with President Toni Preckwinkle for a 6.1 percent cut in the budget for his office, which he said was the maximum he could support and remain “constitutionally viable.”

Yet, with a budget deadline looming at the end of this month, Preckwinkle said she’ll hold Cunningham to a 10 percent cut. Preckwinkle asked for 16 percent cuts across the board to address what she said is a $487 million deficit, but has accepted cuts of 10 percent from the state’s attorney’s office and 12.5 percent from the sheriff.

“Any losses felt by our staff will be keenly felt,” Cunningham said in a budget hearing Tuesday before the county board. Asked if he were “comfortable” with the cuts, he replied, “I am not comfortable cutting any areas. “I’m a realist.”

“I believe it’s going to happen. It’s just how deeply,” he said.

Cunningham said the public defender’s office has 719 employees, including 458 assistant public defenders, and that a 10 percent cut from last year’s $58 million budget would call for 150 layoffs. A 6.1 percent cut would require cutting 90, he said, and produce a staff which he called “the bare minimum of what we need to be constitutionally viable.”

Yet, Preckwinkle’s office wasn’t so quick to signal a compromise. “The public defender reports to the Cook County Board president and will be held to the 10 percent cut listed in the president’s budget proposal,” said Preckwinkle spokeswoman Jessey Neves. “Both offices are still working together to come up with a plan that is conscientious of impact while upholding fiscal responsibility.”

Many commissioners were sympathetic to Cunningham’s budget arguments, for instance his statement that cutting defense lawyers for the indigent would raise court processing times and therefore inmate stays at the county jail, where it costs $117 a day to house each inmate. “At some point,” said Chicago Democratic Commissioner Earlean Collins, “you have to stand up and say some things are penny-wise and pound-foolish.”

Treasurer Maria Pappas also addressed a budget hearing Tuesday, and impressed commissioners by surpassing the 16 percent cuts called for with what she said was in effect a 33 percent cut when additional revenues were factored in. She said she had cut her staff 54 percent from 250 to 114 since taking office in 1998 and that she planned to get down to 80, largely through streamlined property-tax collections online and through local banks.

She clashed, however, with Chicago Democratic Commissioner John Fritchey when he asked about a custodian on her staff whom Pappas also pays separately to clean her home. Pappas said that was a personnel not a budget matter and that she would have her personnel department get back to him. She said she was going ahead with a departmentwide audit to correct discrepancies in job titles and salaries.