{"id":315,"date":"2009-02-17T15:34:47","date_gmt":"2009-02-17T21:34:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cookcountypd.org\/blog\/?p=315"},"modified":"2009-12-20T00:31:49","modified_gmt":"2009-12-20T06:31:49","slug":"county-board-finance-committee-considers-4-buget-cut","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/local3315.org\/blog\/index.php\/2009\/02\/17\/county-board-finance-committee-considers-4-buget-cut\/","title":{"rendered":"County Board Finance Committee Considers 4% Budget Cut"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: small; font-family: Times New Roman;\">Here is how it looks currently for the 2009 budget for the Office of the Public Defender.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\"> <\/span>Edwin Burnette submitted an initial budget proposal for 2009 to Todd Stroger for $60.7 million, about $9 million more than our 2008 budget appropriation.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\"> <\/span>Todd Stroger cut Ed\u2019s initial proposal to about $54 million.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\"> <\/span>In the meantime, Stroger required Ed to present 3 alternative budgets, which included cuts of 4%, 5%, and 6%.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\"> <\/span>Ed decided to structure each of these alternative budgets so that the entire amount of cuts to the office came from <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">attorney salaries<\/span>&#8211; for instance, for the alternative 4% budget, all 4% of Ed\u2019s proposed cuts come from a reduction of the number of attorney positions in the Office.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: small; font-family: Times New Roman;\"> <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: small; font-family: Times New Roman;\">Last week, the Finance Committee of the Cook County Board rejected Stroger\u2019s bond proposal, and instead agreed on a budget with 4% cuts.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\"> <\/span>To the Public Defender budget, that means a cut from Stroger\u2019s proposed 2009 budget of about $54 million, to a budget of about $51.8 million.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\"> <\/span>This triggers Ed\u2019s alternative budget submission with cuts to attorney positions.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: small; font-family: Times New Roman;\"> <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: small; font-family: Times New Roman;\">The Union has urged Ed to alter his plan for how to cut $2.1 million (4%) from the budget of the Office and prevent the loss of attorney positions.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\"> <\/span>The following cuts in the Public Defender budget for 2009 should occur before any Assistant Public Defenders lose their jobs: $150,000 for vehicle purchases, and $750,000 for office equipment.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\"> Further, all vacant positions can be kept open and not eliminated by funding them at the $1 level. <\/span>We believe that when you combine these savings, with savings in other areas the Union has suggested to Ed, our Office can limp through this budget season without layoffs.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here is how it looks currently for the 2009 budget for the Office of the Public Defender. Edwin Burnette submitted an initial budget proposal for 2009 to Todd Stroger for $60.7 million, about $9 million more than our 2008 budget appropriation. Todd Stroger cut Ed\u2019s initial proposal to about $54 million. In the meantime, Stroger [&hellip;]<\/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-315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/local3315.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315","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=315"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/local3315.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/local3315.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/local3315.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/local3315.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}