Monkeypox health emergency, Sale of personal data to ICE, Racial disparities in health outcomes
@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
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
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
slightly more payouts, small overall deficiency but this financial report was only for one year whereas previous years were two years
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
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
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
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/
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
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