{"id":144,"date":"2008-02-20T18:04:48","date_gmt":"2008-02-21T00:04:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cookcountypd.org\/blog\/2008\/02\/20\/only-a-week-left-to-solve-the-countys-budget-mess\/"},"modified":"2008-02-20T22:54:20","modified_gmt":"2008-02-21T04:54:20","slug":"only-a-week-left-to-solve-the-countys-budget-mess","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/local3315.org\/blog\/index.php\/2008\/02\/20\/only-a-week-left-to-solve-the-countys-budget-mess\/","title":{"rendered":"Only A Week Left To Solve the County’s Budget Mess"},"content":{"rendered":"

By law, the county needs to pass its budget ordinance by the 29th of February and as we have seen in recent days, they are still a vote shy of getting\u00a0additonal revenue\u00a0through a tax increase.Efforts were made by your local leadership to get a meeting with the Editorial Board of the Chicago Tribune so we could explain to them the dire straits our office is in — but the requests apparently fell on deaf ears at the ivory tower on Michigan Avenue.Brothers and sisters, you know that things today are more expensive then they were a few years ago whether it be your mortgage payment, the cost of a gallon of gasoline, or a gallon of milk in your fridge.\u00a0 In a Sun Times\u00a0article<\/a>\u00a0by Cheryl Jackson\u00a0today, it was reported that from 12\/06 to 12\/07 the cost of milk went up 22% and eggs 32.6%.\u00a0Yet some people (like the folks at the civic federation) just don’t understand why a county that ran just fine in 1998 dollars can’t do so ten years later.True, there is some waste in County government.\u00a0 When a\u00a0 hospital system fails to\u00a0pursue federal reimbursement for care and treatment of patients, the system begins to fail itself.\u00a0\u00a0 Everyone knows of the tens of millions of dollars the hospital system has lost because of incompetence in billing.\u00a0 We lost anywhere between $40 million and $120 mililon from inept billing practices, according to a\u00a0report issued last September by the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability<\/a>.\u00a0 That report went on to predict that cuts in Medicare funding will total more than $500 million over the next five years.So what do we need?\u00a0 We need two things.\u00a0 First, we need a modest\u00a0tax increase.\u00a0 If 1.25% is too much maybe it’s a good idea to try something a bit less.\u00a0 But commissioners who are categorically\u00a0opposed to any new taxes need to face the reality that more revenue is not just a want, but a need.\u00a0 Secondly, we need to\u00a0take the Cook County Bureau of\u00a0Health Services away from\u00a0the politicians and into the hands of a competent\u00a0and professional\u00a0Board of\u00a0Trustees.\u00a0 This was exactly what\u00a0was\u00a0recommended\u00a0in another report<\/a> commissioned by the County.\u00a0Those two things. increasing revenue and reforming the hospital system, are what you should ask your commissioner<\/u> to do.\u00a0 Who is your commissioner<\/a>? And which district <\/a>do you live in?\u00a0 Just click and find out.\u00a0 And then make the phone call<\/u>.\u00a0 Leave a message if they aren’t in. \u00a0Real revenue<\/em> and real reform<\/em>.\u00a0 By law, it’s what this county needs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By law, the county needs to pass its budget ordinance by the 29th of February and as we have seen in recent days, they are still a vote shy of getting\u00a0additonal revenue\u00a0through a tax increase.Efforts were made by your local leadership to get a meeting with the Editorial Board of the Chicago Tribune so we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/local3315.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/local3315.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/local3315.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/local3315.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/local3315.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/local3315.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/local3315.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/local3315.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/local3315.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}