For the most part, I agree with your analysis of the budget.

However, I do not believe that 2 “frontline” supervisors are at risk of getting the ax. If you look closely at the “Act/Sub” and “Code” columns on page 6, you can see that the commissioners intended to cut a D05 and a D03 from the “Administration” portion of the original budget. (See the original budget on the county’s website in a pdf file on pages 50-59 where “Administration” is coded 01 and “Administrative and Clerical” is coded 01.) There are D05 and D03 “supervisors” who work in the “Administration,” and I by no means would call them “frontline” supervisors.

I also believe that the ivestigators and investigator supervisors are okay. The original budget shows a total of 76 positions appropriated in 2006 and 73 positions in 2007. I believe that the 3 positions which were eliminated were unfilled positions.

Figuring out the status of our support staff is difficult. Whatever cuts were made in the original budget must stand because none of them were restored in the amendments. Complicating the matter is the fact that our office was lumped together with other offices under the Bureau of Administration on page 6. Determining what office many of those positions were cut from is difficult. Clearly, our office does not have any Environmental Control Engineer III positions, but we certainly do have Administrative Assistant V positions. That begs the question — did more support staff or lower level administrators/managers get slashed? I am now beginning to fear for our librarian because there were only 2 Librarian Vs in the county (i.e., you can see that if you go onto cookemployees.com), and the other one was in the Department of Health.

And restoring 25 Level 1 attorney positions instead of a combination of Level 1 and Level 2 attorney positions is funky. I bet our union is grappling with that issue. Maybe that is something that needs to be “fully reconciled.”

So you look at pages 6 and 7. First, it cuts 2 of the positions currently held by Furmin, Lauren, and Xavier.

Then, it cuts 2 frontline supervisors.

But pages 6 and 7 put back 15 pds (the grade 1s)

But it also cut five grade IV pd positions.

It also budgets us all full-time again.

So those changes alter cuts Strogers made and reduces the layoff number to 21 pds (grade 1) and increases the layoff number to 5 pds (grade 4).

But, in pages 69 and 70 the 5 grade 4s are restored and 10 more (grade 1) pds are put back.

That would leave a total of 11 pds cut (grade 1)(the math being 36-15-10 equals 11), 2 supervisors, and some cuts at the top. If in the intervening time some pds have left to find other jobs or retire or quit the business, we would even have less of our less senior pds “actually” cut.

That’s how I see it. So I guess after things are “fully reconciled” by the “budget officials” we may know differently. But in any event, it seems that the Board contemplated that at most 11 pd positions cut and 2 frontline supervisor positions would be cut. That’s the budget they passed.

“The public defender’s office is likely to lose only 11 lawyer positions, according to the union that represents them.”

So is that true? Or not true?

And, if true, why am I reading about it in the Sun-Times, and not here?

(http://www.dailysouthtown.com/news/279543,021NWS5.article)