04/27/10
Cook County: Taxpayer-funded "fresh rolls and pastries"
by John Reynolds
Do you prefer fresh rolls or pastries with your morning cup of coffee?
Last week, The Prairie Stater uncovered more than $78,000 paid out by Cook County taxpayers to a local coffee company during the first three months of the current fiscal year.
It appears county taxpayers are also spending tens of thousands of month for a local company to provide the county with "fresh bread, rolls and pastries."
According to the county's publicly-available online check register, the county paid out $19,404.03 to Chicago-based Alpha Baking Company during the month of January 2010.
According to an agenda for the Cook County Board Finance Committee dated April 16, 2009, Alpha was on track to receive a one year contract with the county "for the purchase of fresh break, rolls and pastries for John H. Stroger, Jr. Hospital of Cook County and Oak Forest Hospital of Cook County (Contract No. 09-83-30)."
The total value of that contract was $233,506.34.
Interestingly, the payments to the company did not appear to be paid in bulk. Instead, there were seven pages worth of payments listed from the county to Alpha — some as large as $945, some as low as $15.
According to Kate Campaigne Piercy, director of government reform at the Illinois Policy Institute, "overburdened" taxpayers may not have the appetite for these kind of government expenditures.
"Families must tighten their budgets and cut unnecessary spending. Government should do the same and work hard to find areas where they can cut, rather than always reverting to the easy way out: raising taxes on the people already struggling with their own personal budgets," said Campaigne. "I think overburdened taxpayers would rather see Cook County cut its spending on coffee, fresh rolls and pastries instead of seeing their taxes go up."
Campaign also credited Cook County for putting its check register online — an initiative made possible by a resolution sponsored last summer by Cook County Commissioner Tony Peraica (R-16).
“Transparency allows people to connect the dots and see who is asking for money, who authorizes what spending, and who benefits from the funding — which is crucial for exposing waste, corruption and pay-to-play politics," said Campaigne. "The public and media need to take advantage of this tool, look into the details of the check registry, and hold their government accountable for its spending decisions."
