Don’t just take my word for it. https://twitter.com/cookcountyasa/status/1311315076830441476

Fun fact: it turns out that furloughs actually aren’t the preferred method of addressing budget shortfalls; layoffs really are the only way to go.

KF says she learned this from her former job as Toni Preckwinkle’s chief of staff.

Kudos for being honest, I guess.

Despite that harsh reality, KF says she really appreciates working with the finance committee “to come up with creative solutions that will continue to allow us to meet our mandate, which is public safety for the community.”

“...we cannot afford to lose any attorneys and we are really doing our part to do everything to have shared sacrifice to take the furlough days.”

KF then clarifies that the “shared sacrifice” to avoid layoffs is only for FY20. No word yet on whether it’ll carry over to FY21....

Per KF, layoffs are unavoidable despite, for ex, the in the travel & office supply budgets bc those savings have been offset by how much we’re personally spending on our cellphones & internet bills.

Wait. What? We can seek reimbursement for those costs?

That’s news to me.

“Some of those resources will have to shift because [we’re asking people to use their home internet and cellphones more], so we’re seeing shifts in how we’re using the non-personnel resources, but there’s very little we can cut in our office other than human resources.”

Setting aside this purported shift in resource expenditures, which really is a whopper unto itself, KF has clearly mastered the political skill of talking out of both sides of your mouth, something else I suspect she learned from her old boss.

OTOH, KF uses all the right words to talk about how much she doesn’t want to layoff 100+ prosecutors/staff and how problematic it would be to do so amidst the record violence we’ve experienced this year.

“Creative solutions”
“Shared sacrifice”
“Threat to public safety”

OTHO, she *repeatedly* says that layoffs are really the only option—the preferred one, in fact—to address a budget shortfall like this because her ability to “trim the budget” outside of layoffs is “relatively small.”

Here’s the thing.

When it comes to those “creative solutions” allegedly rooted in “shared sacrifice”, I’ll bet all my dollars against all your dollars that when the time comes for layoffs, not one of them will come from her executive staff, each of whom easily makes $150K+.

Not. A. Single. One.

It’ll be the line ASAs, the rank-and-file staff, the career prosecutors who’ve been around since before KF and would like to still be around after she leaves offices.

We’ll bear the majority of the sacrifice, as will our families.

It’s worth pointing out that as prosecutors we have no leverage, no bargaining chip, no union standing behind us willing to go the mattresses with the higher-ups to avoid even a single layoff.....and the office knows that.

The only thing we have is public opinion/pressure.

So if you find yourself concerned by how KF has performed when it comes to fulfilling our mandate to keep the community safe, you should be equally concerned by her professed inability to devise ways to avoid, as she put it, “the decimation of entire units” within the office.

Maybe it’s just me, but this all sounds an awful lot like a failure of leadership, especially for an incumbent seeking re-election, which is why I feel like KF should be forced to reconcile these contradictory statements and offer up something more than meaningless platitudes.

To be clear, this is NOT at all an endorsement of Pat O’Brien; he’s unqualified for the office.

The question of how well KF has performed in her role is an entirely separate matter and, at the end of the day, it’s up to you, the voting public, to decide how much any of this matters, if at all.

My only real hope here is that those of you who took the time to read this thread will know before you cast your ballot what KF has said about how things look going forward for those of us who work for her and what that means for the citizens of Cook County.

/end