Cook County agency pays $10,000 to dress employees for success

The Cook County President's Office of Employment Training has a professional new look, but critics say the new attire comes at too high a cost.

The office recently spent nearly $10,000 to outfit every one of 73 employees in new, custom-embroidered sport coats or vests, county records show.

The expenditure comes the same year the Cook County Board and President Todd H. Stroger raised the county sales tax by $426 million. But county officials emphasized that no county money was used to pay for the $9,774.50 clothing tab.

Instead, said the office's director, Karen Crawford, the jackets were purchased with a federal "incentive grant" given by the state of Illinois to the county in recognition of the department meeting 100 percent of its job-training, job-placement and education goals in 2005, Crawford said. The office has met those goals for seven years running, she added.

While the county is allowed to use up to 10 percent of the grant on "administrative" costs such as the jackets, Crawford said, it used only 3 percent of this particular grant and passed the other 97 percent along to subcontractors who provide education and job training services to county residents.

The jackets are needed because the office, POET for short, works alongside other job-training and education agencies at "one-stop" centers around the city and suburbs, and the county employees needed to be distinguished from other agencies, Crawford said.

Critics aren't buying it.

"Other agencies use badges and other simple identification forms to give the public a clue (of which agency they're with). I think that's a much more judicious use (of taxpayer money) than fancy jackets," said Cook County Commissioner Forrest Claypool, a Chicago Democrat.

Although contacted repeatedly over several days for comment, County Board President Todd Stroger's spokesmen would not say if the president thought the blazer purchase was worthwhile.

"If you want an example why taxpayers do not trust government - I'm hard-pressed to think of a better example than this," said Jay Stewart, president of the Better Government Association.

He acknowledged there are government offices that need uniforms so their employees are readily recognizable, but they're typically emergency services departments like police, fire and rescue workers.

"You don't need that for employment training," Stewart said.

But Crawford was staunch in her defense of the blazers.

Beside the identification benefits, the jackets instill an aura of professionalism in government unemployment offices that can sometimes be drab, she said. They impress a sense of professionalism in the job-seekers they're counseling, Crawford said.

"We want to represent the type of professional we want to place," she said.

The jackets also lift the morale and build a team spirit for employees of POET, an agency that has had its share of problems over the past few years, Crawford acknowledged.

"Internally, I think it helps our staff feel better about what they do," she said.

The problems Crawford was referring to include the indictment of its fiscal manager, Shirley Glover, in 2005 and the indictments last year and arrest of its former executive director Rudolph Sanchez, its former regional deputy director Roberto Rivera, and another former regional director, Ronald Harper.

Glover was charged with embezzling nearly $200,000 and the others were accused of conspiring with a phony employment agency, United Front, to split the $4,500 per person the agency got for "placing" employees.

Cook County prosecutors allege United Front did little or no job placement or training and that more than $2 million in taxpayer money was stolen.

All have pleaded innocent and are awaiting trial. Glover has a Sept. 3 court date before Judge Arthur Hill while the others will appear Sept. 23 before Judge Bertina Lampkin.

"Maybe training the employees to do a better job auditing their programs would be a better investment than buying vests and sportcoats," said Cook County Commissioner Tim Schneider, a Bartlett Republican.

Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas understands instilling a sense of pride in a troubled office.

When she took over her office, she did the same thing, requiring her male employees to wear shirts and ties and requiring women to wear county-purchased smocks to instill a sense of professionalism.

But Pappas, who has consistently reduced her office's budget and staff levels year over year, pays just $23 to $30 per smock - far less than the $140 to $230 POET is spending.

But POET's expenditure of funds pales in comparison to the Cook County Circuit Court Clerk's office, which outfitted all 1,900 union employees with uniforms in 2004. File clerks were given smocks to protect them "from court files which might be dusty," according to a statement issued by the office.

A spot check of clerk's offices in the Daley Center Friday, however, showed only a handful of clerks actually wearing the smocks. The smocks cost $32,340. Additionally, blazers were purchased for court clerks to give them "a professional and uniform appearance" and for easy identification "by the judiciary and the public." Those outfits cost $81,210. Court clerks in the federal courts, by contrast, wear no uniforms.

Besides being a controversial purchase in and of themselves, the POET jackets selected were from the second-most expensive vendor of three companies solicited for bids. Chicago Uniform Co.'s $140 to $230 per jacket dwarfed Blazer Depot of Florida's $49 unit price.

Crawford said an employee committee selected Chicago Uniform Co. for reasons of quality and quick turnaround times. The Chicago company, which also supplies uniforms to the sheriff's department and the circuit court clerk's office, already had the county seal in its computers, she said. Additionally, county vendors usually receive preference over non-county vendors, she said.

"It appears that we are in the business of creating scripts for the new season of 'The Office,'" said Cook County Commissioner Michael Quigley, a Chicago Democrat. "This is a Michael (Scott) decision through and through."

Quigley was referring to the popular sitcom "The Office" and its main character, Michael Scott, played by Steve Carell.

Scott is known for making ill-conceived, disproportionate responses, such as throwing a hated colleague a going-away party that escalates into a full-blown carnival, complete with fireworks and a Ferris wheel.