A rare moment in Chicago politics unfolded recently when Cook County commissioners stepped into the boardroom for a final budget showdown.
The 17-member panel was deadlocked. President John Stroger lacked support to raise taxes to balance his budget and his foes didn’t have the votes in hand for the necessary spending cuts.
Was this Chicago? Home of the Boss and Son of Boss whose string of unanimous budget votes was only broken recently with the defection of three aldermen?
Stroger’s struggles in the shadow of Mayor Richard M. Daley’s success clearly irked the board president. Stroger often asked rhetorically whether Daley met similar resistance when he raised a host of taxes.
Stroger charged the debate by hinting that race played a factor, although he later clarified that he believed politics, and not skin color, motivated his opponents.
The question that vexed Stroger: How could the mayor, his longtime ally, breeze a laundry list of tax increases through the City Council yet when Stroger tried something similar he ran into a brick wall?
Lesson No. 1
One reason, county commissioners say, is communication.
The mayor often mentions publicly how hard he works at winning over aldermen, seemingly trying to dispel the perception that he rules by fiat.
Before issuing his proposed budget, Daley floated a platter of potential tax increases while essentially letting aldermen pick their poison. Furthermore, the mayor limited the hikes–sales, cigarette and others–to incremental levels.
Stroger, on the other hand, kept his tax plans largely under wraps until he sprang them on the County Board during his budget address the first week in January.
The taxes–2 percent each on restaurant meals and hotel rooms–were substantial and stirred a firestorm among business leaders.
Stroger frequently stressed that he had an open-door policy with board members, but some of them complained that when they arrived in his office Stroger did all of the talking.
Perhaps no level of negotiation or idea-floating could have helped Stroger avoid his ultimate defeat on the taxes, which came as commissioners painstakingly approved spending cuts by narrow margins.
Lesson No. 2
But Stroger’s struggles with the County Board go deeper than communication. For one, there’s simple mathematics.
Five of the County Board’s 17 members are Republicans. That’s roughly equivalent to having 15 GOP aldermen on the City Council instead of one.
If those County Board Republicans stick together, a defection of just one-third of the Democrats can create a majority bloc.
With that wavemaking potential, and with the City Council tamed, the County Board has become an attractive venue for young, ambitious politicians.
The advent of single-member districts on the County Board (supported by Stroger) in the early 1990s allows fiery upstarts to push narrowly tailored issue-oriented campaigns.
For example, in 2002, Forrest Claypool, Daley’s former chief of staff and Park District superintendent, waged a blistering anti-tax assault on incumbent Ted Lechowicz, a staunch Stroger ally.
Claypool toppled Lechowicz with a narrow margin in the Democratic primary and hasn’t looked back since.
As a commissioner, Claypool has aggressively campaigned against what he calls waste and bloat in county government and has proven instrumental in blocking Stroger’s proposed taxes over the last two budget cycles.
A resident of the 47th Ward on the North Side, Claypool has likely earned a much higher profile on the County Board than he could have in his first term on the City Council.
At age 47, Claypool is widely considered a potential candidate for County Board president in next year’s election.
Another city Democrat who has given Stroger trouble is Mike Quigley.
An aide to former Ald. Bernard Hansen, Quigley ran unsuccessfully for alderman of the 46th Ward in 1991. In 1998, he won a seat on the County Board representing the lakefront.
When Hansen announced his retirement in 2002, Quigley, 46, did not seek to replace him. Instead, he hopes to parlay his county successes into a run for the board presidency in 2006.
In Stroger, these younger politicians see a board leader with an uncertain future. Stroger, 75, has yet to announce whether he’ll seek a fourth term as board president next year.
Even if he does run, Stroger is expected to face vigorous challenges from both sides of the aisle.
Some of that campaigning is clearly already under way in the boardroom, where some commissioners are honing their arguments.
And in dealing with recalcitrant commissioners, Stroger has fewer weapons at his disposal for co-opting his opponents than Daley does.
Unlike a municipal government that provides services ranging from police and fire protection to street repairs and garbage collection, the county is more limited in its effect on everyday life.
While it offers some of those services in the dwindling unincorporated areas, Cook County by and large runs five things: public hospitals, the jail, courts, elections and the property tax system.
Of those, property taxes–which amount to a curse word among constituents–are alone in striking a chord with the masses on a regular basis.
Stroger likes to call his a “government of last resort.” It’s the place where the sick poor turn for health care and where the criminals are locked up.
Still, few pay attention to its existence on a daily basis, making it something of an invisible entity. No one really perks up until a rare significant shift from the status quo is afoot, usually a major tax hike.
In evaluating Stroger’s defeat in the latest budget fight, Quigley said the president overestimated the public’s view of the importance of the county.
“People don’t feel connected to this government,” Quigley said. “If you threaten to shut it down, a lot of people wouldn’t care.”
In the end, that perception of county government may be Stroger’s biggest battle.
