Last County Board Meeting Coming For Stroger
CHICAGO (CBS) - The Cook County Board meets this coming Wednesday, and it is the last time Todd Stroger will preside.
Incoming president Toni Preckwinkle will be sworn in next week. Stroger's last meeting at the helm begins at 10 a.m. Wednesday, Dec. 1.
The transition from Stroger's administration to Preckwinkle's has been rocky. Commissioners asked Stroger if he had threatened to hold back his cooperation unless Preckwinkle kept some of Stroger's aides in their county jobs.
But a disgusted Stroger simply said Preckwinkle has to stop playing politics.
The dispute led Cook County Commissioner William Beavers (D-4th), a Stroger ally, to tell Preckwinkle to "shut up and get over here and try to do some work."
Stroger is concluding a single term as president of the board, which controls funding for the county hospital system, courts, jail, sheriff's office, and Forest Preserve District. His loss to Preckwinkle in the Democratic primary in February follows a long period of decline in popularity.
Todd Stroger's father, three-term incumbent John Stroger, defeated county Commissioner Forrest Claypool in the 2006 primary for board president, despite being incapacitated by a stroke. When it became clear that the elder Stroger would not recover enough to return, slatemakers placed Todd Stroger on the ballot, and he went on to defeat Republican Commissioner Tony Peraica in the general election.
But Todd Stroger was bogged down by the unpopular tax hike, which brought the sales tax in Chicago to the highest level in America.
He was also dragged down by scandals involving his staff. In 2009, he fired his cousin and chief financial officer Donna Dunnings, after finding out she had twice bailed another county staffer, Tony Cole, out of jail. Cole was hired despite a felony conviction for writing bad checks, and fired when Stroger found out about the conviction.
And last month, well after Stroger had already lost the Democratic primary, Stroger deputy chief of staff Carla Oglesby was charged with felony public corruption for allegedly handing no-work contracts to businesses that included her own PR company.
In February, Stroger came in dead last in a four-way race with Preckwinkle, county Circuit Court Clerk Dorothy Brown, and Metropolitan Water Reclamation District President Terrence O'Brien. Preckwinkle won handily with 49 percent of the vote, compared with a mere 14 percent for Stroger.
