Update on Cook County, America's worst governmental body

Last month the Cook County Board of Commissioners, led by the man Barack Obama enthusiastically endorsed in the fall of 2006, Todd Stroger--defecated on the five million residents of Cook and slapped an unneeded 1 percent sales tax on most purchases in the county. Because of that new levy, dubbed the "corruption tax," Chicagoans now pay the nation's highest sales tax--10.25 percent. Suburban Cook residents--that includes me--pay "only" 10 percent.

And look who just got a big raise: The Chicago Sun-Times tells us it's the employees of Cook County. Surprised? You shouldn't be.

At a time when folks are being laid off, losing their homes to foreclosure and paying the highest sales taxes in the country, Cook County employee paychecks are getting fatter.

County workers who were not promoted to higher paying jobs received an average pay increase of about 8 percent between July 2007 and July 2008, an analysis of the county payroll shows.

That's more than triple the 2.5 percent average pay hike workers in Illinois and four surrounding states received between June 2007 and June 2008, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That's also more than double the 3.8 percent cost-of-living pay hike top state officials received in July.

While much of county's wage increases were due to union contract negotiations, nonunion workers in mostly white collar jobs saw their pay increase, too.

The raises were approved last year--then the tax increase followed. Some pay hikes were mandated by union contracts, which is crony capitalism (or is it socialism?) at its worst. Cook has been run by the Democrats for decades, public service employee unions are major donors--and sources of campaign volunteers--for the Democrats.

But non-union employees ended up getting pretty much the same raises.

Audacity!

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