Wednesday Committee meetings

@CHIdocumenters apologies, I was having a bit of technical difficulties so showed up a bit late to the meeting but it seems like they just finished taking roll at the Forest Preserve Board Finance Committee meeting

Comm. Morrisson moved to approve workers comp claims, now a few of Commissioners are going over the financial report (overall positive variance) and voting on the motion, all in favor with Comm. Sims absent

Comm. Suffredin moves the approval for an ordinance for a bridge loan program, is intended to provide short term cash relief by issuing a 0-interest line of credit up to 500 mil, target is local tax jurisdictions who have a lower credit than average

Comm. Suffredin clarifies that if loans are made later, payments also will and the funds will be coming out of the general fund

Also moved two more items issuing general obligation refunding bonds and sales tax revenue bonds

Chair Daley is the only one who votes present on the financial chain on 3523, the general obligation refunding bonds, otherwise unanimous

an item (i didn’t catch the number) was moved to the next meeting because they didn’t have everything prepared, unanimous except Anaya excused absent from both this and last vote thanks to connection issues, Sims is still coming in and out

meeting adjourned at 8:03, the last motion was for item 3021 which was an amendment to an article of the Finance committee

Audit Committee is now taking roll, everyone is here

Bundled all of the motions together, moved to defer the last item on the agenda

Presenting now on the various audit reports, the largest portions of liability are workers compensation, law enforcement, and medical

*medical malpractice

someone asks about the increase in estimated losses from previous years, answers that it is mostly due to the addition of 2021 fiscal liabilities

Comm Sean Morrison asks if the reserves are sitting in an interest bearing account, it’s clarified that it’s not an interest bearing account but a budget account, asks how much is in the self insurance fund

He also notices that from 2015 on there are increasingly more unpaid payments, they say it’s because most liabilities are not paid the year the claim is made for example workers comp has an average 3 year tail for payments

Audit report of Cook County Treasurers office is moved and we are now watching a presentation on it

“no findings of significant material weaknesses or deficiencies”

slightly more payouts, small overall deficiency but this financial report was only for one year whereas previous years were two years

going forward they will continue with the two year report

next report is the audit of the clerk of circuit court of Cook County

55 to 59 million revenues from last to this year, total receipts 111mil now 117mil

hiring more accountants and upgrading the accounting system to to do all of this work more efficiently

apparently there were some findings in this audit that “are being addressed” but they’re not gone into detail

annual comprehensive financial report includes Cook County Health and Hospitals System, the treasurers office, and more

Emphasis of matter paragraph addresses the implementation of an ordinance that was also addressed in the last two reports that seems to have made the general auditing and accounting process a bit longer and harder

increase in CountyCare membership this year

pretty universal increases in spending mostly used to COVID-19 related expenses, but also pensions and retirement significantly increased, CCH in general thanks to the increase in CountyCare membership

Chair says that the increase in pension liabilities should be looked into further, Comm. Daley asks to confirm that the audit errors are being corrected and that none of the errors are repeats, this was confirmed

Last item is getting deferred, Comm Wilson started explaining why the single audit is being deferred to September–apparently there was an omission due to some identification numbers being reported incorrectly

Comm. Gaynor votes present on the first item, the rest are unanimous ayes, meeting is adjourned

Next meeting is Busniess and Economic Development Committee

Chair *Gainer moves to approves a bundle–a few property tax incentive requests

unanimously approved, meeting is adjourned and the commissioners are taking a quick break to be back at 11:00

Legislation and Intergovernmental Relations Committee begins at 11 with roll, Comm Sims seems to be having more connection issues

7 (!) public speakers on the agenda, Dinesh McKoy is a staff attorney at Just Futures Law, he’s speaking in support of efforts to stop data sharing with ICE with LexisNexus, through a FOIA he said ICE ran tens of thousands of searches in Cook County

https://twitter.com/ConMijente/status/1512201710311157760?s=20&t=25Q-cb5EHRiGFAeI0NMcRA

A community organizer comes on to address the ICE issues as well, talks about mass deportations and incarceration in our community, asks the Commissioners to close this loophole that allows data brokers to make millions off their data and ICE to use personal data to deport

Another speaker talks about how LexisNexis was specifically used to skirt sanctuary policies to deport people, “knowingly allowing this to continue would be a disgrace to our communities”

Another speaker on the LexisNexis ICE ordinance, a Chicago resident says ICE makes 62 searches per day on LexisNexis and LexisNexis is making millions off of the deportation of Chicagoans

A woman says that she has seen the LexisNexis data that was on her–43 pages of information about her family and acquaintances, addresses, phone numbers, list of 27 neighbors and their social security numbers. She is a citizen but this puts so many people in such serious danger.

Here is another article with background on LexisNexis’ communication with ICE: https://theintercept.com/2021/04/02/ice-database-surveillance-lexisnexis/

https://thehill.com/policy/technology/3564893-lexisnexis-under-growing-pressure-to-sever-ties-with-ice/

A speaker says “what is the point of being a sanctuary city” if we’re giving information like this straight to ICE? She also points out that it’s not only about LexisNexis, it’s about minimizing any contracts with data brokers, limiting any access that ICE has to data like this

Comm. Anaya explains that a document made public in July 2021 showed that ICE was using $100m to purchase documents with information on 3 million individuals, including but not limited to GPS information, vehicle registration, social media, social security numbers, etc.

Comm. Anaya says that this isn’t just an immigration issue though they feel it the hardest, it’s a violation of the rights and privacy of all residents in Cook County

Someone named Julie Mao is attempting to share a presentation, technical difficulties

Deputy Director of Just Futures Law is giving her presentation on how this data is used nationally to make deportations

Emphasizes the way community organizers have pushed the issue of limiting local government collaboration with ICE

Just Futures and Migente found that ICE was secretly collaborating with these data brokers to get around the sanctuary policies in place to protect immigrants in our communities

LexisNexis had real time incarceration data that localities were refusing to share with ICE, so that’s one of the main reasons they had this contract

Oftentimes local officials are shocked to hear that data is making its way to places like LexisNexis and ICE

Address, rental/property data, court dates, utilities, Apriss jail booking are all data being purchased by LexisNexis and ICE

She now puts forward some policy considerations for the commissioners to consider: modify or clarify detainer ordinances or other data privacy laws, cancel contract with specifically LexisNexis, review all gov contracts with data brokers and assess and restrict them

Another researcher is here to share some information on how this data is being used

Appriss* obtains data from county jails around the country and has had $2.6 million in contracts with Cook County since 2013

The contract doesn’t really reveal unless you know how they work and read the fine print that it repackages and resells this information, notably to ICE

ICE is paying $4.2 billion for this particular dataset, he’s showing a screenshot of how this information shows up to ICE agents, I would share it here but it’s so small on the live stream you can’t really make any sense of it

Cook County has sanctuary policies that specify no direct collaboration with ICE, the presenter says though that it’s very likely that there is information in other sectors of the government that is being purchased by ICE

Sometimes its a purchase of data from one of these companies, sometimes they can just get on government websites and take the info from there, sometimes it’s public records requests

LexisNexis is also the largest purchaser by a very large margin of driver data, paid upwards of $2 mil for this information in Illinois including driver’s home address, physical characteristics, accident history, and what kind of license they have

If ICE has access to a list of drivers holding Temporary Visitor Drivers Licenses, they can have a list of drivers to target

Another presenter from a national refugee and immigrants rights law office (apologies the names flew past me) starts by reminding of the last time he was here urging the Cook County Board of Commissioners to enact sanctuary policies

He advocated for tighter auditing policies, reviewing data collection policies, and other things already suggested

Someone is now on to present on data privacy protections. Wants to clarify that the county can’t prevent the use of public data, but they can control how private data gets used

There is a general provision that says that vendors must comply with data protection laws and must not share County data with third parties for sale and they have to notify the County of any unauthorized access of County data

there’s an Internet Security Working Group that has created data security policies that addresses data privacy and they operate around the following pillars: data minimization, use limitation, authority/purpose to collect, privacy notices, and individual participation and redress

Representatives from both the office of the clerk of the circuit court and the states attorney speak one after the other

(got a very ill timed phone call that I had to take)

The current presenter is breaking down which data is public and private in the bond courts, they do have a contract with LexisNexis and they use it for legal research but don’t give them any information but provided the information that is coming up they are looking to switch

Now moving to questions, first Comm. Anaya asks the states attorney office about whether Aprriss is in direct contact with the Cook County Jail system, states attorney office says they don’t know but will get back

Chair Anaya also asks if they can confirm that incarceration information is no longer being shared, someone from the Sherriff’s office says they use LexisNexis for limited searching but they don’t provide any data–if they’re getting it its from a source we don’t know about

Both Chair Anaya and Comm Suffredin are concerned about the increase in public access terminals for court records, they say that these are for individual searches and you can’t really scrape personal information from it

They said that Appriss gets personal criminal information, but the bulk data LexisNexis is getting from the office of the circuit court isn’t personal info (?)

Comm Suffredin is saying that all the experts expressed some concern of data obviously getting into the hands of third parties in violation of the data privacy policies somewhere downstream, so that should be looked into

All commissioners vote aye and want to be added as cosponsors, Comm Morrisson confirms that they’re essentially just voting on the fact that they had a hearing and discussion today but no actual ordinance. Comms Sims, Silvestre and Gainer are absent

Adjourned at 12:39, the next meeting is Committee of the Subcommittee on Workers Comp

don’t know what happened to the last tweet, the Subcommittee on Workers Comp started at 12:39, they approved all the motions and adjourned by 12:42

Next meeting is Cook County Health and Hospitals at 1:30

@CHIdocumenters Roll is being called, some technical difficulties and people not yet back from lunch 😁

There is one registered public speaker, but they seem to not have shown up

Comm Miller says thanks to all the healthcare workers, we see the light at the end of the tunnel but are not there yet

Now in addition to COVID, we are talking about monkeypox https://abc7chicago.com/monkeypox-chicago-vaccine-public-health-department-cook-county-jail/12074740/

Variant update: Omicron BA4 and BA5 are spreading quickly, 70% of all new cases, better able to resist antibodies. However, people who are vaccinated continue to have lower rates of vaccination and death

http://myshotcookcounty.com for latest vaccination information–all people 6 mo and older are recommended to get vaccines, all people 5 years and older are recommended to get boosters

Now we are seeing a presentation on the monkeypox vaccine. There are some educational campaigns that they’ve started–their websites have been updated and they’re talking about setting up a hotline

Treatment is rare and only suggested for people with very severe cases or who are at risk for complications

Priority is getting people who have had contact with a positive case vaccinated

Everyone is at some amount of risk for monkeypox but only some people are eligible for a monkeypox vaccine–close physical contact with someone diagnosed or (next tweet)

they said that high risk behaviors that also make you eligible for a vaccine include being a man who has sex with men or being a sex worker or someone who has sex with many partners

a motion was put forward to approve the previous report on the contact tracing project before we discuss the new one, but first Comm Miller asks for an update on COVID vaccination rate. They say it’s really low for young kids, “parents are fairly reticent”

Comm. Miller then asks if the vaccination rate has gone up for the targeted communities that were more at risk in accordance to the increased efforts of the board, it’s answered that it hasn’t increased much

Comm Miller then asks about the monkeypox WHO designation. It’s a global public health emergency, one step below a pandemic status because it is spreading quickly around the world

Comm Daley asks how we can reach people who haven’t gotten vaccinated yet, is it a lost cause at this point? Also asks if the ambulatory centers are available to South suburbs especially anticipating monkeypox

“All we can do is continue that educational work”

for every vaccine there’s 30% early adopters, people who will always get it. 20% will never ever get it. they want to focus their work on that middle 50%

A question was asked about how many of the 700 monkeypox vaccines that Cook County has have been administered, apparently its like ~20ish.

One of the commissioners expresses a little bit of concern over the fact that monkeypox vaccines are first come first serve, what does this mean for people who live in the suburbs? There are more opportunities to get vaccinated for people who live in Chicago

Once they get the necessary volume of vaccinations, everyone who wants one will get one but for now they have successfully been able to contact and vaccinate everyone who needs it

The same commissioner (i can’t see his name) is really intensely insisting that he has been hearing that it’s way harder for suburban residents to get the vaccine, the health officials are insisting that all of the people who need the vaccine have been able to get it

this back and forth continues for a while

to be very clear, anyone who is high risk, suburban or city is able to get vaccinated right now

Now moving on to the Asset Management Committee which was supposed to start at 2:00 (half an hour ago)

Someone calls attention to Comm. Aguilar had his hand up, he asks if this is a different strain of monkeypox, the answer is we have no idea, that has not been discussed

Comm. Sims asks if there are protocols for monkeypox, should we be telling people to use hand sanitizer? She says its confusing how the news reports it–is everyone at risk or are gay men at risk?

This is a rare disease–it’s a panic because “it shouldn’t be here,” it’s been contained in Africa for a while but now it’s here. He says it gets transmitted through intimate contact, so sometimes also bedding and towels, which he says is about the only nuance.

Comm. Sims again emphasizes that the news is confusing, can you get it if you’re not a gay man or not and what should people do? The media is confusing (her question not mine)

Pension committee is going to be called into order then deferred immediately after, presumably due to time

Now we are finally moving on to the second quarter report of the contact tracing initiative from cook county health

four major components: new staff to expand contact tracing efforts, granting funds to community orgs in high risk and impacted communities to support isolation and quarantine, worker centers got funds for education and CT, staffing to provide tech support to other entities

They think that these hyperlocal contact tracing efforts were able to help mitigate some of the COVID breakouts

What can be sustained and expanded? This network and specifically the relationships with community orgs should be maintained

It took too long to hire people and the infrastructure was lacking–some of the community orgs needed more support than they could give, however the training of the contact tracers went really well and they all do really good

They wish that more people would’ve picked up the phone and they could’ve reached more people, but considering everything they feel the program was a success

Unanimous vote to approve this report

now we’re looking at a presentation on health disparities and equity–looking at maps of social vulnerability index and medically underserved areas (south and west sides heavily represented on both)

Maps displaying numbers of insured people and poverty levels look very similar

Life expectancy is at or below 70 in some areas in the South which goes up as you move north

All of this results in poor health outcomes on the South and West sides, what is our role in moving forward?

Cook County Health knows they’re not going to single handedly fix structural racism but it’s important to address nonetheless

Comm. Miller says that we need more specific number based data for this report in the future instead of high level bullet points. She mentions that bad health outcomes for minorities happen across the whole county, not just in underserved communities

She also wants more of a delineation between the South Side of Chicago and the South suburbs, which also has different needs but it’s a different situation than the South Side

She wants to see more specifics on what they’re doing to reach these underserved communities, how are they monitoring this data what are the changes that are being put in place and are they working or having any kind of positive affect

Wants numbers to help prevent the horrific outcomes that we keep discussing

They essentially said they’ll work on it but it’s difficult and very complex with lots of moving parts

Comm. Aguilar asks how we can serve the underserved communities and make the red boxes on the maps blue ones

There is a high poverty level and lots of people who don’t have insurance. There’s a lot of people who even though they’re eligible for Medicaid or enrolled in it they avoid going into the doctor until big health events happen that are much harder to treat

They are actually making strides in getting people covered, but they still have more work to do in figuring out why people are not coming into the doctors for preventative visits and check ups

Comm. Aguilar suggests that maybe it’s a lack of education that’s responsible for not getting the care to these folks

Voting on the semi-annual health care disparities report all votes are aye, Daley adds a comment about trying to get people to exercise, the meeting is adjourned

And now asset management! Going strong on hour 6! 😵‍💫

Both motions to approve contracts for Department of Capital Planning and Policy are approved, meeting is adjourned at 3:40pm