Newly elected Cook County Board President said her first order of business will be to find good people.
“I think in the past when people thought about public service they thought about the city or state government,” she said mere hours after winning in a landslide. “But we’ve got to persuade good people that they should come work in county government.”
The statement belies a persistent problem at the county board. The man Preckwinkle will replace, Todd Stroger, has consistently and continuously been accused of shady hiring practices.
But Preckwinkle might not be able to fix another of Stroger’s messes all that quickly. After campaigning on a platform to repeal the county’s high sales tax rate, Preckwinkle said she won't be able to do it this year.
“I’ve promised from the very beginning that one of my first tasks would be to look at how we could eliminate the rest of that sales tax increase,” she said. “We’ll do that walking in the door. Although I’m not committing to do that the first year because we’re already in a big hole and I’m not going to dig it deeper.”
