Ricardo "Rick" Munoz: Candidate Profile

Note: Answers provided have not been edited for grammar, misspellings or typos. In some instances, candidate claims that could not be immediately verified have been omitted. Jump to:BioKey IssuesQA Bio City: ChicagoWebsite: http://taxpayersforrick.com/Office sought: Cook Clerk of the Circuit CourtAge: 46Family: Married, two childrenOccupation: Member of the Chicago City Council (22nd Ward)Education: Northern Illinois University: Bachelor of Arts in Political Science, 1987; Major in Constitutional Law; Minors in Spanish, English, PhilosophyCivic involvement: I've been a Board Member and strong supporter of organizations like the Boys and Girls Clubs and the YMCA. I've been an active participant in pro-labor causes ranging from the Living Wage to justice for our hotel workers. Nationally, I served for 10 years as a Board Member of the National Association of Latino Elected Officials.Elected offices held: I am proud to represent Chicago's 22nd Ward, and I strive to live up to the words the Sun-Times used in endorsing me during my last serious campaign for Council. ?Munoz is an independent, practical and competent alderman who doesn't shy from challenging Mayor Daley but is by no means an obstructionist,? the Sun-Times wrote. After helping build 5 new elementary schools, a new high school, an expanded library and a new police station, I am currently working to create a major new hospital and park that will double the amount of local green space. I am also a progressive voice within the local Democratic Party as both a Ward Committeeman and a State Central Committeeman for the 4th Congressional District.Have you ever been arrested for or convicted of a crime? If yes, please explain: Yes, when I was a teenager. Since that time, I've tried to be a role model for the young people from my community. Our kids must know they can still have a bright future -- even if they make mistakes along the way, as I did. It's one of the reasons I'm so committed to the Boys and Girls Clubs and the YMCA.Candidate's Key Issues Key Issue 1 I will work with President Preckwinkle, who has endorsed my campaign, to eliminate corruption inside the Clerk's Office. We will start by canceling the no-bid contract Clerk Brown awarded to one of her top 10 campaign contributors -- an Alabama company represented by a right-wing Republican lobbyist. The 'contract' was so badly written it allows the contributor and Brown to charge users virtually unlimited fees for documents filed electronically with the courts. As a result, it will soon cost $4.95 for every document filed electronically in Cook County. By comparison, the state of Alabama negotiated with the same company to get the same service for free. Filing electronically is also free of cost in DuPage County. So far, the Supreme Court of Illinois has blocked Clerk Brown from implementing this scheme. However, if the contract is not cancelled, this Alabama company will make up to $30 million per year; Clerk Brown will continue getting huge campaign contributions; and, Cook County taxpayers will get stuck with the bill.Key Issue 2 As anyone who uses the Clerk's Office knows, our court system is hopelessly out of date. One reporter described walking into Clerk Brown's Office as 'stepping back in time into a Charles Dickens novel.' I have a record of innovation and reform on the City Council. Concerned about class sizes and overcrowding, I found a way to fund millions of dollars in new school construction without raising taxes simply by reallocating the city's bonding authority to include the public school system. I believe we can make similar efficiency gains at the Clerk's Office without increasing taxes. I will start by re-bidding the contract for electronic document filing that Clerk Brown awarded to the Republican lobbyist financing her campaigns. Real, effective electronic document filing will save Cook County taxpayers millions. Clerk Brown has been promising to get it done for a dozen years. Enough is enough!Key Issue 3 These are tough times, and I believe it is simply wrong to ask taxpayers to continue providing the Clerk of the Court with a chauffeur and luxury SUV. Clerk Brown says she's entitled to these perks, and they make her a more efficient elected official since she does not have to look for parking downtown. I will sell the car and get rid of the driver. Also, no one will have to pay me to keep his or her job at the Clerk's Office. Clerk Brown continues to fund her campaign with contributions from the people she supervises. I believe it's impossible to demand accountability from workers when you need their money to stay in office. I will follow the Secretary of State and others who have banned employee campaign contributions, because it's the right thing to do.Questions Answers What changes would you propose to improve the operation of the office of the clerk of the circuit court? Why?The Illinois Supreme Court has allowed the counties surrounding Cook to begin accepting documents electronically over the internet. They have refused to let Cook County proceed with electronic filing, because Clerk Brown awarded the contract for the program to a top campaign contributor. I will re-bid this contract and get electronic filing started in Cook County immediately. E-filing is vital to prevent the loss and theft of court records.Though she blames others, Dorothy Brown is the single largest reason electronic document filing has not moved forward in Cook County. According to Dorothy Brown's own statistics, of the 1.3 million cases filed and the 18.3 million related case activities, less than 3,000 documents were filed electronically last year. Cook County deserves much better.The Illinois Supreme Court has refused to approve full electronic filing in Cook County, although they did so in DuPage. The difference is that Dorothy Brown gave the Cook County contract -- a sweetheart, no bid contract worth millions of dollars -- to a major campaign contributor. This contributor, On-Line Information Services (OLIS) of Mobile, Alabama, and its Chief Lobbyist, Steve Windom, have showered Dorothy Brown -- and her e-filing project supervisor, Bridget Dancy -- with campaign contributions.Dorothy Brown can claim that Steve Windom gives her money -- and her deputy money -- because he likes her politics. However, that seems unlikely given Windom is a Republican lobbyist from Alabama, the former Republican Lieutenant Governor of Alabama, the head of Alabama Bush-Cheney 2004, and an ally of Mitch McConnell, who wants to make President Obama a one-term President. In fact, the only major contributions Windom and OLIS make in Illinois are to Dorothy Brown and her deputy. This is pay-to-play politics on the level that would make Rod Blagojevich blush.While DuPage County moved forward with electronic filing using commercial vendors to acquire a system that was pre-tested and ready to go, Dorothy Brown saddled Cook County with the proprietary system owned and operated by her campaign contributors. As she accepted more than $20,000 in campaign cash from these vendors -- cash she passed along to her family on her campaign payroll -- Cook County fell further and further behind. That is why replacing Dorothy Brown is the critical first step to creating electronic filing in Cook County.I want to reboot the electronic filing debacle and bringthe Clerk's Office up the high standards set by the federal government's PACER system. The Cook County contract is potentially worth millions of dollars; there is no reason to award any single company a monopoly, especially not one that is a campaign contributor. I will work with the Illinois Supreme Court and the state's legal community to choose new vendors who will deliver the kind of professional system we deserve. I will work with President Preckwinkle, who has endorsed my campaign, to weed out corruption and eliminate waste. We can make this happen, and the time to start is today!How do you propose to improve access to records by the public and transparency of office management?I strongly support the reforms instituted by Cook County President Toni Preckwinkle, and I'm proud to have her support for my campaign. Transparency is essential to providing taxpayers with the government we deserve. That is why I appreciate the quarterly performance review, or STAR report, initiated by President Preckwinkle. We should have more metrics in government to hold ourselves to the highest standards.As Clerk, I will publish court efficiency measures on the internet for the public to view. This will allow taxpayers to decide for themselves whether our court system is moving as quickly as it should. This will also help identify bottlenecks in court procedures.We are a nation of laws, and a nation of laws cannot function without an efficient court system. As Clerk of the Court, I will make sure our courts run smoothly so single parents waiting for child support payments get their money on time, so defendants accused ofcrimes getspeedy trials and so corporate litigation doesn't languish for years.What is your view of the clerk of the circuit court's web site? What, if any, changes would you recommend and how would you fund them?Service should be the focus of the Clerk's Office and service should be the focus of the web site. As an elected official, I provide two essential services to my constituents over the internet. If they need city services -- a tree removed, etc. -- they can visit our city web page at www.cityofchicago.org/city/en/svcs/iwantto.request.html and if they want to see what legislation I've passed recently, they can visit http://chicago.legistar.com/Legislation.aspx. I invite everyone to take full advantage of these resources.The main problem with the Clerk's website is not the fact it's poorly designed, crowded and cumbersome, although it is all of those things. The main problem with the web site is that it does provide the most important service her office should be offering: it does not allow for 99.9% of all documents to be filed electronically over the internet. That is because the Supreme Court has blocked Clerk Brown from awarding a $30 million, no-bid contract for electronic filing to one of her top 10 campaign contributors. Because of her pay to play politics, last year, less than one tenth of one percent of all case activities were electronically filed documents. We deserve better!What improvements should be made to the office's and the county's ethics rules' What is your view of whether employees should be able to donate to the clerk? What should the office's policy be on nepotism and why?I have never accepted contributions from my employees, and I never will. I believe taking contributions from employees is unfair to them, since they will naturally feel pressured to give. Just as importantly, I believe it is unfair to the public we serve, since government employees cannot be held to the highest standards if elected officials are personally dependent on their contributions.This is another area where I disagree strongly with the incumbent, Dorothy Brown. Brown has raised tens of thousands of dollars from employees for her Friends of Dorothy Brown campaign fund. One news report identified 33 Clerk employees who had contributed a combined total of $34,000 to Brown.Allegations that employees of the clerk's office have felt pressure to sell political fundraising tickets have surfaced repeatedly.In February 2004, Barbara Nicosia, the former President of the Clerk's office employees union, claimed that Brown's managers were given the choice to sell political fund-raising tickets or to purchase the tickets themselves. Another former employee told a similar story. Ellen Krebs, a former Chief Clerk, claimed that twice she had been given 10 fund-raising tickets by her superior. Krebs said she was never ordered to buy or sell tickets, but said, "We knew what we had to do. We had to sell them. I knew what I had to do, and I did it." On July 9, 2004 Benjamin Zomaya, who had been fired two years earlier from the Purchasing Department, filed a federal lawsuit. In the suit, he claimed that he had been harassed about his repeated refusal to sell fund-raising tickets. After writing a letter to Brown about the harassment, he was fired. On November 20, 2006, a similar lawsuit was filed against the Clerk of the Circuit Court. Donna Hammond claimed that she was dismissed from her job as Supervisor in the Domestic Relations Division after she refused to buy tickets to Dorothy Brown's political fund raisers. Hammond also claimed that she was denied a termination hearing.Dorothy Brown has also admitted receiving cash gifts from her employees. Current and former employees said Brown accepted the gifts, which sometimes total thousands of dollars, for many years as presents at birthday parties organized by top-level employees and her campaign fund "If you didn't contribute, you were treated differently than other people who did," said a former employee.Cash gifts and campaign contributions are relics of Illinois' political patronage system that belong in our past. Federal prosecutors condemned both practices when they prosecuted former Governor George H. Ryan for racketeering and fraud.Dorothy Brown says she sees nothing wrong with either practice, but she did agree to stop taking cash when the press questioned her about the issue.You can't fight corruption if you cannot see it. Dorothy Brown does not see anything coercive about taking money from the people she supervises, but I do. As Clerk, I will issue an ethics code stating that campaign contributions will not be accepted from vendors and employees of the office.The code must ban cash gifts from employees to supervisors. And, there can be no repeat of the so-called Jeans Day program in which employees were required to pay for permission to wear casual dress.Can this office meet budget goals set forth by Cook County President Toni Preckwinkle without compromising services' Is so, how? If not, what alternative do you propose?As everyone who followed the Daily Herald's excellent coverage of the County budget battle this year knows, Dorothy Brown fought against President Preckwinkle's budget balancing measures tooth and nail. That's another reason that President Preckwinkle has endorsed my campaign for reform. She knows I will be an equal partner in her effort to move Cook County forward.Defending her budget before Cook County lawmakers last fall, Circuit Court Clerk Dorothy Brown boasted she has a group of people in her office that do nothing but look for ways to bring in new revenue. She then proceeded to rattle off a long list of fees she hopes to increase on local taxpayers, businesses, lawyers and even on the indigent. This approach is wrongheaded and symbolic of an office with a reputation for corruption and inefficiency.The new fees proposed by Clerk Brown would make it more expensive for businesses to operate in Cook County, which is precisely the wrong thing to do as our civic leaders work to convince new companies to move here.The current filing fee to initiate a civil case in Cook County is already $303. Brown proposed adding a $1 processing fee to every document filed in the case subsequently, including so called 'no fee filings.'With more than 15 million case activities logged each year, many document submissions, the amount of money involved for local law firms and the businesses they serve is potentially enormous. When County Commissioners complained about the $1 increase, Brown resorted to negotiation, "How about 50 cents'" she offered.Even more troubling are the new fees law firms will soon face for electronic filing. Cook County is about 5 years behind DuPage County and 16 years behind the federal government when it comes to allowing legal documents to be conveniently filed online. As a result, of the hundreds of thousands of court cases filed in Cook County last year, only 2,647 of them were filed electronically, according to Brown.Thanks to an overly generous contract Brown's Office awarded for electronic filing, it will soon cost Cook County users $4.95 every time they file a document. Those using a credit card will be subject to an additional 4% convenience fee. (plus an additional 4% convenience fee if they use a credit card.)One third of that money will leave the state and go to an Alabama company called Online Systems. Fortunately, the Supreme Court has put the brakes on the electronic filing deal, at least for the time being.Even more disturbing than the new fees Brown proposed for the business and legal community is the money she wants to raise from the indigent. She called for tacking on a $5 court user fee for each individual using the court system, regardless of whether it was his or her choice to use the system or was unfortunate enough to have been caught up in a foreclosure, for example.Clerk Brown then proposed requiring everyone who claims to be too poor to pay their court fees to submit documentation proving their indigence. Should that person prove to be indigent but then win a court settlement, Brown says her office would like a cut of that settlement. Simply put, these new fees raise very real concerns about access to justice for all people. Cutting service in response to tight budgets as Clerk Brown has threatened to do, is not the answer.Browntold the Commissioners she considers her office already understaffed and would have to reduce service to meet lower budget targets. This argument does not hold up. Despite the fact that the volume of court cases in Cook County have dropped by 28 percent in recent years, staffing is down only 12 percent.After a decade of free spending, Court Clerk Brown is now under tremendous pressure from President Toni Preckwinkle to cut her office down to a size taxpayers can sustain. President Preckwinkle forced Brown to accept a 7.4 percent cut in spending, more than $1.5 million less than Brown requested. Leadership begins by example. Brown could start demonstrating her commitment to fiscal discipline by getting rid of her taxpayer funded security detail, car and driver.