The end of an era, thank heaven

Someday, as mom always said, we'll look back at this and laugh.

We'll chuckle at Cook County President Todd Stroger's snubs and broken promises that had Northwest suburban residents so apoplectic that people in Barrington, Palatine and Hanover townships voted (in nonbinding referendums) to secede from Cook County.

At the threat to booby-trap the suburbs with red-light cameras, with Cook County getting all the revenue and the towns getting no say unless they agreed to take over ownership and maintenance of the intersections involved.

At the new 11-member Cook County hospital board, featuring not a single soul from the Northwest suburbs.

At the sales tax increase. Oh, yes, the sales tax increase that put rates above 10 percent in some towns and drove business over the borders to Lake, McHenry, Kane and DuPage counties. Might be awhile before we laugh about that one.

Stroger presides over his last Cook County Board meeting today, and we can't say we're at all sorry to see him go. Like a bad cold, he robbed the suburbs of our voice during his four-year reign, disdaining our efforts to be heard, ignoring our outrage and our needs. To quote mom again, Todd, you just don't listen.

All of this leaves a lot of baggage for his successor, Chicago Alderman Toni Preckwinkle, who will be sworn in Monday.

Now that we've had our fingers burned with Stroger, we can't help but note that Preckwinkle was among the Chicago Democrats who maneuvered him into his dad's seat as former Cook County President John Stroger lay dying of a stroke.

And it's hard to swallow her political support for new Assessor Joseph Berrios, whose massive property assessment cuts for businesses when he was with the Board of Review saddled suburban Cook County homeowners with hefty tax increases last month.

Still, we're eager to give Preckwinkle a chance. She wooed the suburbs during the campaign, with plenty of local electioneering and a warm visit with the Schaumburg Business Association. She needs to make plenty more visits and really get to know the outlook from the suburbs.

We'll look for evidence of her promised county government housecleaning and other reforms to come. We expect her to work with real urgency toward identifying savings that will allow for a sales tax rollback sooner than 2012, the earliest she now predicts.

And we'll hold Preckwinkle to her promise: “I'm going to treat everybody in the county the same,” she said. “I'm going to work for people all across the county, and that means in the suburbs as well as the city.”

No playing favorites? Mom would be proud.