Better government does not need invention as much as more common sense. So we have nothing but a positive reaction to a plan by Cook County Commissioner John Fritchey (D-Chicago).

His plan, unveiled last week, to use five acres at the former Oak Forest Hospital grounds as a county cemetery for the poor is timely and proper. It will likely save the county a lot of money, it’s a duty that the county should not contract out to private cemeteries and it returns control to the county in preserving respect for those who die often without much dignity.

As with all government proposals, the plan must meet the financial test and using the former hospital property fulfills that goal. Fritchey estimates that the cemetery could accommodate indigent burials for 100 years and save the county millions. Sheriff Tom Dart backs the plan and says county jail inmates should be tasked with helping build pauper caskets and managing the grounds.

But the underlying issue with burying the poor in Cook County has come to be nearly as much morality as efficiency.

Eventually the land might have been used for something more profitable, but we can’t think of many uses more necessary. In light of periodic and embarrassing problems at the county’s current contractor, Homewood Memorial Gardens in Thornton Township, and a disturbing mess with bodies piling up at the county morgue, it’s time for restoration of order and competence.

Cook County has stumbled in its responsibility to make sure the poor exit this world with dignity. It didn’t occur suddenly last year It has been building for years with ever-decreasing resources and rising indifference.

Fritchey has stepped forward with a sound plan, but the county still must fund the service adequately and commit to sufficient management and oversight of the pauper cemetery.

The county board should move quickly to approve the new cemetery so it can begin handling burials as of January. Competence in government is just common sense.

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In this Intelligence Report: New legislation will be proposed that would shift some responsibility for the handling of unidentified bodies and indigent remains in Cook County.

The restructuring comes almost four months after a series of I-Team reports uncovered management problems at the county morgue.

Under an ordinance to be unveiled Thursday, the Cook County Sheriff would take over some indigent burial duties from the county morgue. This comes after the I-Team obtained photos in January that depicted hundreds of bodies left in the morgue for months or in some cases more than a year.

The proposal that will be announced Thursday is among several plans still in the making to prevent such a horrific backlog from happening again.

The I-Team revealed the photos of hundreds of bodies that were unceremoniously piled up at the county morgue, some of the remains uncovered and left to rot, stacked on wooden caskets and even on the floor.

Since then, medical examiner Nancy Jones has avoided talking to the public, and Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle asked for a review of morgue management. And county commissioners have demanded answers.

Nearly three months ago, Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart said he wanted to help.
“I’ll be quite honest with you, we care, we care,” Dart said. “We can make all these excuses for people and say this or say that, bottom line, if you care, you won’t let things get this way. You are very comfortable with what is being done with someone’s child, at one point, someone’s father maybe, someone’s mother, aunt or uncle and you treat it with respect.”

Thursday, Cook County Commissioner John Fritchey will announce new legislation that would require burial of indigent and unidentified remains on a piece of property near an old county cemetery in Markham.

For more than a century, until 1971, the county maintained its own indigent cemeteries. Since then, the county has contracted with a privately owned cemetery that handled mass burials of the poor and unidentified.

Last February, Sheriff Dart said that his experience investigating the Burr Oak grave-selling scandal and his success identifying the remains of John Wayne Gacy’s unknown victims is what the medical examiner’s office needed to move forward.

“Our office is uniquely qualified to work in that area,” said Dart, “to see if one of these many missing persons cases filed throughout the city, state or country, whether their loved ones are sitting right there in the ME’s office– and unfortunately those things could occur– if you do the proper work you can try to bring that to closure.”
Fritchey also proposed the sheriff have Cook County inmates construct caskets for indigent remains and assist with their burials, something Dart offered to the I-Team months ago.

Commissioner Fritchey says the ME’s office has failed to include the characteristics of hundreds of unidentified persons they have buried into the National Crime Information Center, a database to help law enforcement track crimes. He hopes the matter will be brought in front of the board before the end of the summer.

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Fritchey to go to new heights for charity

Commissioner to join others in rappel down downtown hotel

CHICAGO – Cook County Commissioner John Fritchey (D-12th) will be joined by nearly 100 other adventurous Chicagoans this weekend when he rappels down the side of the 27-story exterior facade of theWit Hotel, located at the corner of State and Lake streets.

“When I heard about the Skyline Plunge, I simply couldn’t resist getting involved,” said Commissioner Fritchey.  “A few months ago, I jumped into a frigid Lake Michigan to raise money for Special Olympics, so in the spirit of adventure and fundraising for an exceptional organization, I’m plunging once again, only this time I’m starting 280 feet in the air.”

The Skyline Plunge! is hosted by Respiratory Health Association of Metropolitan Chicago, and is an urban rappelling adventure to raise funds and awareness for local lung disease research and programs.  Many of the participants are personally affected by lung diseases and rappel in honor or memory of someone touched by asthma, COPD, or lung cancer.  This year’s Skyline Plunge! aims to raise over $100,000 for lung disease research and programs.

“Commissioner Fritchey has been a longtime supporter of Respiratory Health Association’s lung health policies,” said Joel Africk, president and CEO. “By rappelling off theWit Hotel as part of our Skyline Plunge event, he is taking his support for healthy lungs to new heights.”

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You might’ve missed it amid the political controversy over the Cook County morgue’s operation, but county commissioners last week denied voters the chance to eliminate an unnecessary county office.

By a 9 to 8 vote, with Commissioner John Daley (D-Chicago) casting the deciding vote, the county board decided against holding a referendum in November on whether to abolish the recorder of deeds office as of 2016. A close call, and not a good one.

Commissioner John Fritchey (D-Chicago) pushed the plan, contending that folding the recorder’s office into the county clerk’s office would save taxpayers at least $1 million per year. Fritchey said that in this computer age the recorder’s office, which keeps records of property transactions in the county, is no longer needed, and its responsibilities easily could be handled by the clerk’s office.

He argued sensibly that the timing was right politically to abolish the office, in light of Recorder Eugene Moore not seeking re-election, and told his fellow commissioners that “if we don’t do this now, it’s never going to get done.” Apparently it’s not going to get done, and that’s too bad.

With government at the state and local levels facing serious budget shortfalls and taxpayers starting to rebel after getting hit with tax and fee increases at every turn, public officials must do all they can to eliminate duplicative services and offices.

In opposing Fritchey’s plan, some commissioners doubted that the consolidation would save as much as $1 million, but they didn’t offer any evidence to refute Fritchey’s estimate.

His idea isn’t novel. Former Commissioner Mike Quigley, now a congressman, proposed it in 2003 and the Civic Federation, a Chicago-based government research group, did so last year. And most of Illinois’ 102 counties don’t have a recorder’s office.

But in Cook County apparently it’s a must, according to a county board that’s overpaid and overfunded — and like most local governments in Illinois, more worried about protecting itself than serving the public.

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The Cook County Board on Thursday voted against giving voters the option of doing away with the recorder of deeds office.

The measure to include a referendum on the November ballot asking voters if the recorder’s office should be folded into the county clerk’s office in 2016 failed to clear the Finance Committee by a 9-8 vote. Committee Chairman John Daley, D-Chicago, cast the deciding vote against the plan.

The bill’s sponsor, Commissioner John Fritchey, D-Chicago, said combining the offices would save taxpayers at least $1 million annually. Fritchey said the recorder’s office, which is responsible for administering records for Cook County properties, including notices of mortgages, sales and foreclosures, is no longer needed.

But several commissioners expressed skepticism at the amount of money that would be saved.

And state Rep. Karen Yarbrough, D-Maywood, a candidate for recorder, testified that the office is important to safeguard real estate documents.

Noting that Recorder Eugene Moore, whose term expires this year, isn’t running for re-election, Fritchey said the political planets are currently aligned to phase out the office. “If we don’t do this now, it’s never going to get done,” Fritchey said.

County Board President Toni Preckwinkle didn’t take a public position on the matter but said she believes some kind of consolidation of county real estate functions needs to take place.

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Cook County commissioners Thursday abolished the medical examiner’s open-ended term of office and laid out exactly how the morgue chief could be fired.

The moves come on the heels of staff complaints about the “sacrilegious” pileup of bodies there and bodily fluid covering the floor, raising concerns about health hazards. Officials, most notably Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, have pointed the finger at management problems there and specifically at Chief Medical Examiner Nancy Jones.

At a meeting Thursday, the board approved a five-year term limit for the chief medical examiner and precise terms for firing the medical examiner, which would be initiated under the request of the board president and approved by a majority of the county board after a hearing.

A firing could come “upon a claim of negligence, malfeasance, misfeasance, immoral, illegal or unethical conduct or failure to properly execute the duties of such position,” the new ordinance states. Until now, the president could only recommend firing a sitting medical examiner for “cause” and their term of office was undefined.

Commissioner Larry Suffredin, a North suburban Democrat, said: “I don’t think that in public life anyone should get life appointments other than United States district court judges, appellate judges and Supreme Court judges, because the constitution gives them that.”

In addition, the board signed off on a measure that sets a 60-day limit on how long bodies can remain at the morgue, with some exceptions.

Commissioners passed the measures the same day they were briefed about an ongoing internal review of staff complaints about overcrowding and unsanitary conditions at morgue — first reported by the Sun-Times.

Robin Kelly, chief administrative officer, told the board she and her staffers — dispatched to look in to the issues after January news reports — recorded 363 bodies at the morgue. Just under half, or 175, qualified for public funding for burial, however there were some delays in cutting the checks to pay for them.

In her report, she steered clear of laying the blame on management.

Commissioner John Fritchey questioned why Jones wasn’t there to testify about the state of the morgue.

“It would have been reasonable to be able to ask her or hear from her — in her professional opinion, are these conditions comparable to what we’d see in other areas? Were mistakes made?” Fritchey said. “There’s an inescapable perception she’s hiding.”

Jones hasn’t returned calls for comment since January. Preckwinkle has also admitted to muzzling Jones at past events, saying it wouldn’t be appropriate for Jones to comment at this point.

Kelly said that an offer was emailed to the commissioners to meet privately with her and Jones.

County Board President Toni Preckwinkle has been critical of morgue management. But Thursday Preckwinkle was vague about Jones’ future.

“We’ve come to no conclusion about the leadership of the medical examiner’s office,” she said. “That’s still under review.”

Also Thursday, the board:

◆ approved a measure renaming the criminal courts building at 26th and California to “The Honorable George N. Leighton Criminal Court Building.” Leighton, 99, served as Cook County Circuit Court judge, the first African American to sit on the Illinois Appellate Court and a federal judge.

◆ voted down commissioner John Fritchey’s proposal to have voters on the November ballot decide whether to abolish or keep the Recorder of Deeds office, which records property deeds, liens and titles. The measure died in a 9-8 vote of the county board’s finance committee.

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Cook County Commissioner John Fritchey, Ald. Matthew O’Shea and restaurateur Phil Stefani will take the Polar Plunge into Lake Michigan this weekend to benefit Chicago Special Olympics.

The Chicago Polar Plunge will be held Sunday at North Avenue Beach.

Mr. Stefani, who rescheduled a trip just so he could be in town for the annual event, has organized top staffers to join him. Chief Financial Officer Steve Hartenstein, Vice President Claudio Ulivier and some restaurant managers and chefs will be part of the “Stefani II: Rise of the Romans” team.

Participants are collecting donations for the event, which helps fund year-round programming to some 5,000 Chicago Special Olympics athletes.

Jason Erkes, president of Chicago Sport & Social Club, is taking the plunge for the first time.

“A little shrinkage never hurt anyone,” he teased in an email.

Mr. Fritchey is another first-timer to the plunge. (Insert joke here about politicians in cold instead of hot water.)

“I’m trying to raise some money for a good cause, and I even got a couple of my staffers and other friends to join in,” Mr. Fritchey said. “And for the next few days I’ll be praying to my Tom Skilling Bobblehead for warm weather on Sunday.”

The WGN weatherman should answer his prayers — sort of.

It looks like the forecast is a balmy 36 degrees.

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