I'd like to call uh the meeting of the labor committee to order.

Madam Secretary, uh, can you please um call the roll?

Thank you, ma'am.

Commissioner Aguilar, Commissioner Degnan.

Commissioner Laurie.

Present.

Commissioner Miller.

Commissioner Moore is excused.

Commissioner Kevin Morrison.

Thank you, sir.

Vice Chair Stamps is excused.

Commissioner Vasquez.

And Madam Chair is present.

You do have a quorum.

The following members have excused absences.

Commissioner Moore and Vice Chair Stamps.

You do have a quorum.

Okay.

We do not have remote participation for this meeting.

I have no requests for remote participation.

Thank you.

We'll begin with public speakers.

Are there any registered public speakers for we don't have any speakers for this meeting?

Any changes to the agenda?

And I don't see any changes either.

Okay.

Um, so we'll begin with the first um item.

This is the approval of the minutes from the meeting held on September 17, 2025.

It's been moved by Commissioner Vasque, second by Commissioner Kevin Morrison.

Any questions?

All those in favor signify by saying aye.

All those opposed, nays, ayes have it.

Our following item is um uh 26-1249.

This is a proposed resolution requesting a public hearing regarding Cook County government state of our labor.

Um this is uh been moved by um Commissioner Dagman, second by Commissioner Dagnan.

I'm sorry, Miller.

She's uh moved by Dagnan, second by Miller.

Um so at this uh meeting we are going to be hearing from different entities regarding general uh updates on our workforce and labor.

Um these are going to be very general.

We'll take questions uh at the end.

Uh we will uh begin with uh Bureau Chief for uh Bureau of Human Resources, Felicia Haddocks.

Welcome.

Good morning.

Okay.

Good morning, commissioners.

Thank you, madam chair, for giving us the opportunity to provide an update of the state of the workforce, um, particularly with respect to offices under the president.

Okay, next slide, please.

So pursuant to your resolution, uh, we will walk through workforce trends and hiring metrics, our success with retention, workforce demographics, our partnerships with the union, and then workforce pathway efforts moving forward.

So an office is under the president to date, we have just over 2700 full-time employees.

Our vacancy rate now at the to date, the end of uh based on the end of April of this year is about 14 percent.

So that reflects about 423 vacancies across bureaus and departments in our hiring jurisdiction.

As we've worked with the departments this year, working through strategic hiring plans, we expect departments to fill about 350 vacancies.

Um as we calculate turnover, we may end up closer to 400 hires by the end of this fiscal year.

Our average recruiting cycle is still at about 60 days, and our onboarding cycle is less than 30 days.

Our turnover rate to date is about 8.44 percent, uh, which is lower than both the national public sector benchmark of 18 percent and the countywide turnover rate as well.

The average employee tenure has remained consistent over the last few years at about 10 years.

So, as we look at our success with retention, of course, a lot of this is actually countywide.

We look at compensation and benefits.

Benefits packages are countywide, so hopefully that helps retention across all offices.

Um we and in the uh office under the president, make sure that we have market um competitive salaries.

Of course, we always highlight our flexible uh hybrid work options, uh, the pension plan, the pay time off as we've done a lot of work this year on in the past few years actually on vacation benefits, uh, which we advertise broadly uh and employees are very pleased with.

It also helps us attract new talent, and then we always highlight our health and wellness perks.

Of course, though we have had success with retention, we're always looking at ways to improve.

So we took the opportunity to introduce an engagement survey for the first time in Cook County.

And that went very well.

We had a record level of engagement for our first survey, and this offers us an opportunity to collect more data so we understand what employees like and don't like about where they work so that we can target different ways to improve retention further.

We also implemented our new employee performance review process, which offers managers tools and a different additional opportunities to work directly with their teams and have those discussions to keep them here longer and possibly increase that average employee tenure.

And then we've looked at our offboarding process to add exit surveys consistently across all departments so that we have additional data for the people who do leave the county.

We of course want to know why they're leaving so that we can make additional improvements there.

When we look at our workforce demographics, our team manages the EEO report and the EEO data countywide.

And as we look at the workforce demographics for OUP, you can see that we have a relatively balanced population across across male and female employees.

And then as we look at our racial and ethnic composition, we have diversity across all groups as well.

Next slide.

So as we look at the role our union partners play in hiring, um managers, of course, manage their own hiring.

So they do partner with labor unions to the extent that they're having trouble hiring for union covered positions.

Certainly in our process, the unions have the right to review changes to job descriptions, and sometimes they bargain the impact of those changes so they participate there.

And then if we have critical positions or hard to fill positions, management teams have invited unions to share ideas about recruiting efforts.

The other partnerships we have to increase our talent pipelines are with multiple organizations and colleges and universities.

So we have one-year fellowship programs that we offer where we've partnered with Northwestern and University of Chicago, summer fellowship programs where we've partnered with uh CPS as well as other colleges and universities locally.

And then in order to bolster the talent pipeline and actually create positions for them, entry-level positions.

We've worked with departments to create those associate level jobs through our job architecture framework so that we actually have positions that our interns may qualify for after they finish their internship experience here at Cook County.

So that talent pipeline continues to increase, and so do the opportunities with the county.

Okay.

Thank you so much.

I'll take any questions.

Yeah, thank you so much.

Commissioner Dugna, followed by Commissioner Larry.

Thank you, Felicia, for being here.

And thank you, Commissioner Anaya, for filing this resolution to have a state of labor across the county.

We do hear from a lot of different folks that are in, say, the building trades or are in various collective bargaining agreements, or just employees that may not want to tell us exactly where they work, but have some sort of comment or sometimes a complaint about the county.

So it's good, I think, to do this and have this be a discussion point for all of us to hear more about the strengths and weaknesses of our hiring.

It's really important.

The job you do is really important, Felicia.

Um I hope that we will see this as an annual meeting that we'll have to talk about labor and really this committee can be more fulsome.

So thank you so much for Commissioner Naya for filing this and for uh Valicia for you to be here.

Okay, so this is a question you may not have the answer to, but as you're kind of going through your slides, I thought about the data on this, so I'd like you to look it up if you don't have it and maybe provide it a later date.

Um a couple of years ago, I had filed a resolution to do a um economic analysis of how much starting an extended maternity and paternity leave would cost the county.

And we went from four to six weeks to 12 weeks for maternity and paternity leave.

So I was curious about what the actual economic impact of that was.

At the time, we did a forecast and an assessment of what we thought it would be.

It was somewhere around $3.3 million as a benchmark annually.

It was expected to probably be a little bit above that because productivity is a little bit lower for some other folks that are now taking on work that was not on their workload to accommodate for that.

So I'm curious about what the actual economic impact of that was.

Okay, we can certainly look at that.

Thank you for the question.

For sure.

And then you had mentioned that you had seen an improved level of engagement when you did the employment survey.

So two questions are what was the level of engagement that you did see, and what do you think was different about this survey that got you a higher level of engagement?

So this was the county's first engagement survey.

Oh, okay.

I thought so.

This sets the the baseline.

Okay.

So in terms of participation, we had about 76% participation across our first survey, which was great.

And we're looking now at the aggregate data and starting to share that with uh some of the departments.

So we can certainly prepare a report for the board as well.

Sounds great.

Okay.

Something specific about our building trades.

Um over the last couple of years, really since COVID, we've heard a lot about the increase in building materials.

Um, and I think with the war in Iran, the increase in petroleum.

So over time, there's building materials increase.

We have uh a COOP agreement with our building trades, and that really says that if there's a project that is under 250,000, our building trades are allowed to bid on that project and do that work.

If it's over that amount of money, um the county can decide whether to give that building or give that building project to the folks internally or find an external vendor to do that work.

There's always a lot of work to be done at the county, so it's really just like how do we allocate um that from a personal perspective.

So the COP agreement was entered into many years ago.

So my question is are you or will you work to increase that 250,000 or kind of look at whether or not that should be increased because of the cost of building materials and personnel has increased over the last five years?

To the extent that that's something that the trades ask for, we'd have to consider it in bargaining.

Okay.

Well, I'm I would like to ask for it.

So is that possible for me to ask for it and increase to that COP agreement?

We'll um note the concern and uh see if it is addressed in bargaining.

Okay.

The last question I have is we had talked about internships for commissioners.

You know, if you are an alderman, a state rep, a state senator, um, a congress a US Congressperson or U.S.

senator, all levels of uh elected officials in the state of Illinois uh are allowed to bring on interns.

The county board historically has not been able to do that by choosing an intern of our choosing.

We have gone through kind of a process that I have found personally, I'm not gonna speak for the rest of the commissioners to be administratively burdensome, and we're not always able to get interns based on the process and the way that it is metered out.

So is there a pipeline to kind of change that to allow us to to pull in interns underneath our umbrella?

Yes, we talked about this last year, I recall, and just uh recently I sent communication to all commissioners saying that that process has been updated, and commissioners have a brand new process specific to you to identify your interns, and it mirrors the SHACMA exempt process.

So certainly you have the um autonomy to do that.

Fantastic.

That's the best news I've heard all day.

Thank you.

Those are all my questions, and thank you for being here.

You're welcome.

Thank you.

Sorry.

Thank you, Chair.

Chief Addocks, you um you won't speak to this, so I'm gonna force you to speak to this.

I thought that your article in um SHREM Society for Human Resource Management uh inside Cook County's HR makeover was was very, very stellar.

And I'd like you just to share uh for those in the chamber and those who are listening outside of the chamber.

Just give us a synopsis of that piece because I think it's a great marketing tool tool for Cook County.

Thank you, Commissioner.

So Cook County over the last few years, of course, has done a lot of uh redesign, I would say, to HR.

So we've positioned ourselves as strategic partners with all of the departments.

We went through an HR makeover, really updating our compensation, updating classification and compensation systems, uh job architecture through which we have modernized HR and the way we look at strategic partnerships.

And that work was highlighted recently in uh SHERMS magazine.

They also featured us in a podcast and recognized us as an employer of choice.

So we're really proud of that work.

We're proud of our our team for all the updates that we've made and hopefully uh to the benefit, of course, of the county, and it has helped us attract additional talent as well.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Wonderful, and congratulations.

Commissioner Vasquez.

Thank you, Chair.

Hello, Chief Haddock.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Uh, wanted to also thank you for the changes to the internship process.

Um, I know that uh previously we had an intern from the original process, and they did a fantastic job.

But it really is good to be able to look within our districts, you know, give youth who perhaps don't have opportunities in different ways, an opportunity to learn, you know, their local government.

So I'm very grateful for the changes to the process.

Um, and excited to see um our interns start soon.

Good um, but uh I had a question for you about the entry-level job creation.

Um, I think it's incredibly important that we're moving in this direction, especially uh because we know you know, education, higher education has become extremely expensive, especially for minority communities.

A lot of our young people are looking at taking gap years.

There's just I think a lot going on.

Um there does seem to be uh a need to build you know these pipelines.

So could you speak to these associate level positions?

You know, where in which departments are they?

Have these been easier to fill?

Is there a high demand in terms of people applying for these positions?

Yeah.

Certainly.

So through our job architecture process, we created a framework and leveling guide.

So we do have a series of entry-level positions that are our associate titles.

And we typically have a good number of talent, uh talented people applying for those jobs.

So the talent pool has not been a challenge.

I think the challenge generally for the departments and creating these uh lower level positions is making sure they have the training in place.

And so we partnered with them over the last year to create about 37 entry-level positions across departments, and they've ensured they have the training in place to really bring on new talent and do a lot of on-the-job training to prepare them for for the work.

I think it would be great, and perhaps this is already in the works to kind of track and see how these positions grow internally.

You know, I would love this not to just be uh a foot in the door, but a first step as well.

Um, and then seeing, you know, kind of where the talent moves within our respective departments, I think would be really helpful.

Um it I do feel um the generation before mine is having a really hard time um finding um a good paying job.

Um, and I'm excited to see you know uh more efforts to bring people in.

Thank you.

I agree, and we certainly will track that.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Bureau Chief.

We truly appreciate uh you being here and answering our questions.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Congratulations on all of course the hard work and the achievements of the Bureau.

Thank you so much.

Um next, we'll have Cook County Health.

We have uh Winburn and Nick Shields.

If you can introduce yourself and then we will project the slides.

All right, my name is Wendyron, Chief Human Resource Officer, Cook County Health.

All right, good morning, Madam Chair and members of the labor committee.

I'm Win Beer and Chief Human Resource Officer for Cook County Health.

With me today is Nick Shields, our Chief External Affairs and Civic Engagement Officer.

Today we are responding to uh item 26-1249.

We'll cover each of the five areas Commissioner and I identified uh vacancy reduction turnover, workforce demographics, our work with our labor partners, and our pathway programs.

The next few slides walk through where we stand as a system, our workforce demographics, our hiring activity and our efforts to reduce vacancies and turnover.

Next slide, please.

As of April 2026, Cook County Health employs 6,620 individuals across our system.

By race, the majority of our employees identify as black or African American, followed by white, Asian, and Hispanic or Latino employees.

By gender, our workforce is predominantly female.

That reflects the communities we serve, and we want to keep it that way as we grow.

The average tenure is 10 years, and we believe that's a reflection of the work and the mission.

Next slide, please.

I want to walk through, I want to walk through a few of the numbers here because context matters.

Year to date, we've extended 847 offers.

We brought on 443 external new hires and 237 separations over the same period.

That leaves us with a net gain of 206 employees this physical year.

We're adding to the workforce, not just replacing the people who leave.

Cook County Health entered FY25 with a vacancy rate of 26.2%, more than one in four positions.

By November, we had reduced that to 20.7%.

It's a five and a half point uh improvement and hundreds of positions filled.

In December, 219 positions were added to the budget that pushed our vacancy rate back to 22.3%.

But I want to be clear about what that means.

We did not lose ground on hiring, we were able to grow.

And since December, we brought the rate back down to 19.8% as of April 2026.

That's the lowest point in our data, and it counts for those new positions.

Our overall time to fill in Q1 2026 was 92 days against a goal of 90.

We are close, and the initiatives I will describe in a moment are designed to help close that gap for nursing specifically, our most in-demand clinical category.

Time to fill was 89 days in Q1.

To put that in context, the 2026 NSI National Healthcare Retention and RN staffing report placed the national average time to fill for an experienced registered nurse at 78 days.

We're 11 days above that benchmark.

The gap reflects the competitive labor market for clinical talent and a national nursing shortage.

Uh challenges that every major health system is navigating.

For context, in FY25, our overall time to fill was 105 days, and nursing was 99.

We're down to 92 and 89 respectively in Q1 of this fiscal year, 13 days faster overall, and 10 days faster for nursing.

We're moving to the right direction, and I'll walk us through the strategy behind uh that improvement now.

Next slide, please.

We've implemented docusign to cut down on paper based delays in onboarding, and we're building communication templates into Toleo, our applicant tracking system, so candidates can hear us uh hear from us faster and more consistently.

Our recruitment marketing efforts include a rebuilt LinkedIn company page, targeted advertising campaigns, and the development of employee testimonials and career growth stories to people uh to help people understand what it is like to work here.

We've implemented what we call accelerated hiring process, a streamlined approach that reduces administrative lag between application and offer, particularly for high rule high volume roles like nursing, medical assistance, and building service workers.

We have also leveraged LinkedIn recruiter system wide to expand our sourcing search and strengthen our employer brand.

I want to speak directly to our collaboration with our labor partners.

We've worked with our labor partners to update job descriptions, removing language that created unnecessary barriers and was limiting to our qualified applicant pool.

That work has meaningfully increased the number of candidates we were able to consider for key roles.

We've also worked collaboratively with our labor partners to create a structured pathway for converting agency staff to permanent CCH employees.

Since FY25, approximately 300 agency staff have made that transition.

That benefits the employees, it benefits the union, and it reduces our dependency on agency staffing costs.

Next slide, please.

One of our most effective tools for reducing vacancy has been our hiring event strategy.

Since December 2025, we have participated, participated in 14 events focused on our highest need clinical areas, including nursing, the emergency department, the operating room, and medical surge units.

Four of those were Cook County Health's own dedicated hiring fairs.

The remaining 10 were external events, university career fairs, community job fairs, and professional association events, where we had a presence and were actively sourcing candidates.

The results have been significant across our nursing focused hiring affairs held between December 2025 and April 2026.

We've extended 142 offers.

Of those, 101 candidates were confirmed as external new hires, and 65 have already completed orientation, with 36 beginning orientation this month.

Our offer acceptance rate across these nursing hiring events was 71%.

These are not one-time events.

As you can see on the slide, we have a robust calendar of hiring events scheduled through the remainder of 2026 with monthly fairs at CCH facilities and continued partnerships with institutions like Chamberlain University, Malcolm X College, and UI Health.

The goal is to make this a permanent part of how we recruit, not a one-time response to a staffing gap.

Turning now to employee turnover.

Cook County Health's annualized turnover rate for FY26 is 8.4%, well below the national hospital average of 18.5%, as reported in the 2026 NSI retention and staffing report.

What the chart shows is a four-year trend of consistent improvement in FY23, we're at 11.2%.

FY24 brought us a 9.8, and FY25 was 8.9, and this year at 8.4%.

It's the lowest we've seen in recent years.

Next slide, please.

Our retention work focuses on four areas onboarding, leadership development, workplace learning, and culture.

Employees who have more touch points in their first year are more likely to stay as well established in the research.

We've expanded orientation, built out on-demand videos in our learning management system.

And next month we're launching graduate office hours, virtual sessions for new graduate nurses who tend to have the highest shownover in year one.

We've also built out a six-level leadership competency framework.

50 CCH leaders graduated from our 18 month frontline leadership program in April with measurable improvements and engagement scores.

A new cohort has launched in Provident.

And on Culture, we offer employee assistance programs, uh critical incident counseling for teams that deal with trauma on the job and organizational development support for teams that need it.

And next slide, please.

So I want to close out my portion by talking about pipeline building the next generation of healthcare leaders.

In FY26, 46 students came through our internship fellowship and externship programs.

Up from 33 the year before.

We have 26 active apprentices across EMTB and medical assistant programs, and we held our first healthcare career expo with 98 students from 17 departments.

We are also awarded the Pritzker Foundation Talent Challenge in partnership with the City College of Chicago supporting medical assistant and patient uh care technician certifications.

So my colleague Nick will take over from here.

Thank you, Wynne.

Good morning, commissioners.

Good morning.

And thank you, Madam Chair, for this opportunity.

As we look to our current and future pipeline from placing medical professionals in Chicago and suburban cook uh elementary schools so children can see their future and beyond right in front of them to developing a medical assistant program with city colleges.

I want to dive deeper into three key pathway initiatives.

Uh, first is our Providence Scholarship Fund.

It's now in its fourth year, and as you can see from our most recent photo, this is a direct investment in the next generation of healthcare professionals.

In the 2025-2026 cycle, we awarded 106 scholarships.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

In the 2025-2026 cycle, we awarded 106 scholarships.

Uh, but we also offer more than just financial support.

Uh scholars received wraparound programming, including a six-part mentorship series with Cook County Health staff.

In fact, just yesterday I met one of the scholars in our office.

Uh his name was Lon Hutchinson.

He's from the city's Marquette Park neighborhood, and he told me thanks in part to being a Providence scholar, which funded him for three full years.

He is headed to fall, uh he is headed to Yale in the fall to become an occupational therapist.

He was at Stroger yesterday for a monthly check-in, uh, this time in person with his CCH mentor.

See, our employees benefit just as much from pay paying it forward from driving incredible pride and engagement across our health system.

And to date, we've supported more than 200 students with more than four million dollars in scholarships awarded.

Uh, in this next slide, this quote you see here captures our ultimate goal.

Not just fulfilling uh today's vacancies, but building something that lasts.

And with the U.S.

facing a projected shortage of over 100,000 healthcare uh workers by 2028, we need sustainable solutions.

So when we talk about solutions, in March, we were proud to announce Cook County Health won the five million dollar Chicago talent challenge grant from the Pritzker Traubert Foundation.

And through a collaboration with city colleges, we are launching Health Catalyst Chicago.

In the next slide, you'll see starting in January of 27, City College instructors from Malcolm X College in particular, will be coming directly to Provident Hospital to train future medical assistants, med techs, and phlebotomists.

We are creating a clear one-year pathway.

So you'll see in January of 27, we'll start classrooms and virtual learning.

By the summer of 27, it will be a hands-on externship at CCH clinics.

And then in the fall and winter, fall of 27, early 28, advanced class work will continue, followed by additional on-the-job training that will take you to about February or March of 28.

The goal is to hire these students immediately after they receive their MA certification.

This pipeline is expected to save CCH roughly 1 million annually, money that we can reinvest directly into patient care.

It's a real win.

It's a real win for our health system and for taxpayers.

Now, finally, I want to share some additional exciting updates regarding our project rainbow initiative and partnership with Google, which was first announced last year with President in President Preckwinkle's budget address.

Through Project Rainbow and a Google collaboration, we will providing, we will be providing 500 no cost Google's career certificates in high-demand fields like cybersecurity, marketing, and data analytics.

Much like Health Catalyst Chicago, this program recognizes that the talent already exists in our communities and it just needs the right access points.

And for the breaking news, we're thrilled to share today that Google has recently selected our collaboration as one of the few in the nation to highlight as an upcoming marketing campaign.

So what you see on this slide right here is a sneak peek of the ads that will be distributed all throughout Chicagoland and beyond very soon.

So initiatives like the Providence Scholarship Fund, Health Catalyst Chicago, and our Project Rainbow partnership with Google remind us one core truth.

When we invest in our neighbors and give them the tools to build their careers, we aren't just filling jobs, we are building a stronger and healthier Cook County.

Madam Chair and members of the labor committee, thank you for the time, and we are happy to take any questions.

Wonderful.

Any questions?

Commissioner Larry.

Thank you very much for the report.

It was fabulous.

A couple things.

Wynn, if you could just double down and just share with everyone what's going on with our accelerated hiring program.

Yeah, I think we've discussed this in the past when we were building it out.

There was a test about a year ago of certain positions.

Could we move them faster and remove some of the roadblocks and barriers?

We use that test, and I think what we've found is that positions that are in the accelerated hiring process, you heard me talk about it taking 90 days or so, maybe a little more to hire most positions.

And Ardick can correct me if I'm wrong, but we're looking and seeing numbers as low as 45 days to uh be able to hire folks.

So that's a significant uh ramp up in speed for us to be able to onboard folks, especially with the vacancies we have.

And then the uh reliance on agency, that's been reduced by about 50 percent.

That has.

So we'll we'll talk about it a little bit today, but we've gone from close to 14 or 1500 agency employees down to below 700.

Right.

And then Nick, relative to the Providence Scholarship uh cohort um over the course of the last month or so.

I noted 106 scholarships.

106 scholarships.

And what's the fiscal impact of that?

How much have we resourced in scholarships?

Uh more than four million uh that we have given out to students, and we uh anticipate giving another 1.5 this year.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Any other questions?

Seeing none, um, I I have one regarding um you mentioned the nurse uh time to hire, you said it we're at 89, and we want to get down 11 days.

78 days.

Okay, seven eight, so that's the reduce it by 11 days.

Okay.

Um, so I know you all participated in the uh recruitment and retainment bonus um a few years back.

Um is that a strategy you all are looking into as we move forward to try to maybe um not only reduce the time and we do on hires, but knowing that that is a position that needs a little bit more help.

And can you walk us through your efforts there?

I I think what we've we what we're looking at right now is the data from before, which if we need to get into that, I think Arjun can share a little bit of that, but we want to analyze what roles we would need from a recruitment bonus standpoint.

Our retention is pretty good.

Um we we again we have a 10 average tenure is 10 years.

We have not seen a spike in turnover.

Um, but to help us with these positions, we're looking at accelerated hiring, but we're also thinking would these be the positions we'd wanted to take on with uh recruitment bonuses?

So that would be something we would have to cost out and then obviously work with our labor partners on.

To budget uh being primary, okay.

Perfect, thank you.

Um, I don't see any other questions, so I appreciate again you all uh and all your hard work that you're doing.

I know you had a lot of revamping to do, especially with agency, so we're very appreciative.

Thank you.

Um we will um now have the assessor's office.

We have Scott Smith.

Hello, welcome.

Just make sure to introduce yourselves.

Okay.

If you could just introduce yourself and we'll begin to project the absolutely.

Good morning.

My name is Janita Davis.

And this is um, well, I'm the chief HR officer for the Cook County Assessors Office, and this is Tasha Gibbons, she's the chief legal officer for the Cook County SSA's office.

Good morning.

So, first I'd like to thank you for the opportunity to highlight some of the work that we've been doing here at the assessor's office.

We've been spending a lot of intentional time looking at the same things that you guys are asking us about.

So I really welcome the opportunity for any feedback, collaboration, or questions that you may have.

Next slide.

So first we're going to talk about the staff demographics within the office.

We currently have FTE of 273 employees.

There on the chart, you can see the breakdown, the racial makeup, as well as gender.

So what you'll want to highlight is that our demographics, we have a diverse workforce that uh reflects the demographics of Cook County.

Uh, we also have a majority woman workforce.

We do too on the board of commissioners.

Uh next slide, please.

So our vacancy rates and hiring efforts.

Um, one thing that's important to note is that the Cook County Assessor's Office was under uh SHACMAN federal monitoring from roughly uh 2011 to November 1st, 2022.

We're very excited to have gotten from underneath that.

Um, that was definitely a drain on a lot of our resources.

Um, and at that time, hiring was as high as 200 plus days due to all the coordination that had to be done.

Um, since then, we've grown our HR team, we've professionalized the team as well.

Um, we have uh we added a director of recruitment, an HR director, um, and we've added four additional senior HR generalists.

Um I want to shout out my team.

They've definitely been um expedient, they've been um eyes on the prize, and we've been on a hiring frenzy since then.

Um we've also added some enhancements to the hiring to the hiring uh process overall.

One of the major things that we did was we've added skills assessments to make sure that the staff that are coming in have the skills to do the job effectively and efficiently.

We've added criminal background checks to all new hires to ensure that taxpayer uh information is protected.

Uh some examples of those skills assessments include uh Excel, Word, all of office.

We've added language proficiency for those roles that depend on um different spoken languages.

Uh our hiring timelines.

So when the SHACMAN monitor was around, our hiring process took about 200 days.

Since then, we've been able to greatly reduce that, and we're still looking to reduce it even more through other efficiencies.

So currently we're looking at about 63 days, and that's from the time of interview to the time the person is in the office and in front of their computers.

All right.

So you guys also asked about vacancy rates.

One of the important things to note about the assessor's office is that we have a very strong culture of promoting from within.

So it doesn't actually help our vacancy rates in the way that you would uh think because it actually creates when we hire from within, it creates a vacancy elsewhere within the organization that we then have to fill.

Um so that's important um background information to know.

Uh and I should also add that it's also supported by our union membership.

They definitely like that we promote from within.

Employees are encouraged to apply for promotional opportunities when they're posted, and typically they do.

Um, and so the following chart reflects both the rate of promotion and the effect on uh vacancies.

So there is the information there.

I think the important thing to note on that chart is that for 2026, um, that's as of May 8th.

So we're we're still working to reduce that vacancy rate even more.

We're about half of the year through, and so uh we have a lot of more positions that we're gonna pose.

Next slide.

Okay, and the other thing that we are looking at internally is the union and management relations.

And the assessor's office has been very intentional over um the last years to address this.

And some of the things we're doing is um having monthly or almost monthly labor management meetings so that issues can be raised and adequately addressed, and and I think that also has helped with um reducing the number of grievances we see because we have that opportunity for some discussion and remedial work.

Um, there's also a quarterly classification review subcommittee.

That too has been has proven effective.

That came out of uh bargaining a few years ago or a couple of years ago, and it's really been a helpful effort to discuss if employees or the union uh or management thinks that there's some room for change in in the positions based on the work being done and and the potential, and so that has helped with um some of the efforts to promote as well or to reclass appropriately.

There's also um discussions about collaboration, career pathways, people that have been with the office for a while.

What can we do to promote um either the promotion or additional hiring, and then also, of course, the collaboration on job descriptions, either about the changes or the impact of those changes.

Next slide, please.

Since 2021, the office has um, as I mentioned, strategically work to improve the relations with our staff with the union bargaining um members, and we have reclassified closer to 2021.

We reclassified about 40 employees into higher grade positions, including that higher wage rate.

And then since then, we have also promoted or reclassified 50 additional bargaining unit members into higher grade positions.

That's either through competitive hiring or through the reclassification from that committee that I mentioned that meets quarterly.

So we're um pleased to see people have the opportunity to advance and then more likely stay with the office as a result.

And we've also worked to uh have those communication avenues and reduce the number of grievances that we're seeing as a result.

I think that matters because it affects the culture and the retention rate within the office.

And so currently the last arbitration was in fact a little over a year ago, and so that's on our radar as well, working to continue to keep those uh avenues open for discussion and improve relations.

Next slide.

All right, so reducing employee turnover.

Um, one of the main avenues that we found to keep employees is the continuation of the post-pandemic hybrid uh work opportunities.

Um we've taken COVID and turned it into policy, right?

Um workable solutions that allow employees to have that flexibility to work from home and also main sure that we are able to uh track deliverables and ensure that performance isn't being affected.

Umil to what some of the other agencies have said earlier.

We've been doing exit interviews to learn why employees are departing.

We've been doing new hire surveys to get more information about the onboarding process, both within HR and within the departments.

Um we've also been doing internal transfer surveys, so those employees that are moving from uh one position to another within the office, we're learning more information and getting feedback on why they wanted to leave their former position.

Um, and it gives a great deal of information about any deficiencies that man upper management may not see that uh line staff certainly do.

So we use that as an educational tool uh across the office, and we also do uh new cohort meetings.

Uh that way we can introduce employees that were hired around the same time to increase some uh feedback to get for them to get an opportunity to know each other, and we use that as a collaborative networking opportunity as well.

Uh next slide.

Um of the other things that we've done, uh the next few slides will kind of talk more about that is the engagement committee.

Um, and us being a smaller agency, we've been able to spend a little bit more time kind of thinking these things through.

Uh, research shows that younger staff, especially Gen Z, they value inclusivity uh and diversity when working in the office.

So it's in line with our strategic plan.

We've started an engagement committee that has several um facets to it.

I should also note that uh it's an award uh award-winning um endeavor, and that we got a NAGO award in 2024 based on our efforts within this organization.

Uh next slide, please.

Uh, this highlights some of the um subcommittees that we have within the engagement committee.

The other thing to note is that this is employee-led, employee-driven.

Um so we have coffee and convos, we have lunch and learns, and then we also have the recognition committee.

Out of that recognition committee, we've included uh peer cheer awards.

That's an opportunity for employees to nominate their co-workers that best exemplifies um the strategic plan initiatives.

Um, it's been extremely successful.

There's a picture of um the most current, the the quarter one um peer cheer employees.

Next slide, please.

We also have the celebration committee.

Um they will put on events such as Black History Month, Hispanic Heritage Month.

Uh we do a joint event for Mothers and Fathers Day.

Next slide, please.

Um, and then pathways to a sustainable workforce.

So as mentioned previously, we hired a director of recruitment in 2023.

Uh that director of recruitment focuses on internships, uh, networking partnership development.

Um so there you see some of our current um partnerships that we have in 2026.

So so far this year, we've been at 11 different job fairs and events.

Um what Thursday, um, we're going to have a public service panel in partnership with DePaul University, where we're going to have some business students come in, come on site.

We will have a panel to support and encourage employees to apply for positions within the Cook County Assessor's Office.

Okay, all right.

Any any questions by any of the members?

Yes, Commissioner Larry, Commissioner Stamps.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you for the report.

You've hit it, but let's just get into it a little bit more.

Uh hiring is important, but so too is retention.

So for those who are leaving, well, first question are you seeing a lower retention rate year to year?

Is it steady or is it increasing?

And then for those who are leaving, what are you hearing more more than what are the common themes?

So um one of the things that I found very surprising when I joined the assessor's office was how many long-time employees they've had.

Um when I say long time, I mean 45 years uh type tenure.

So we're not seeing a lot of employees that are leaving our office.

Um I would say quite the opposite.

Uh we have employees that are eligible for retirement that don't.

Um, and I attribute that to the culture within the office and the fact that they just love what they do.

Um, for the employees that are leaving compensation um is one of the drivers.

Um, so there are quite a few that are leaving for higher paid positions.

Thank you.

Sure.

Does that conclude your questions, Grisha?

Okay, thank you.

Uh Commissioner uh Stamps.

Good morning, everyone.

Thank you.

Um I think you just asked, did you just answer what have you learned from the exit interviews?

Yes.

Essentially, in well, his his question was more about why employees are leaving and if there are any trends that we're noticing.

So, yeah.

That's essentially the same thing.

So you're saying really when employees leave, it's really just for higher paid positions.

When they leave the office, yes.

Okay.

And then um, right, so I was asking that and how you applied it, but also um I heard a lot of um really cool things, but I was um about how you build community, but I want you to describe the flexible flexible schedule.

Um, you said you took COVID and made it policy.

So if you could just describe the flexible schedule, and then also how are you building recognition within um that seven-day window per the training that we received uh last week that was saying based on the studies that employees kind of need that on a more regular basis, a more consistent basis.

So I was just curious as how you built that into building community within the office.

Okay.

Um so to answer the first question, um with our hybrid schedule, it's kind of dependent on the department and the operations within that department.

So for our public-facing offices, um, we call that taxpayer services, those are the ones that are going to uh directly interact with taxpayers when they have questions about their tax bills.

Uh, those employees typically work seven days in the office and seven days out of the office.

For the HR team, our schedule is uh two days in the office, three days out of the office.

For our evaluations team, it uh they're in the office every Tuesday and Thursday.

So it really depends on the operations of that actual department and the level of collaboration that uh operations require.

Um yes, yeah.

So so folks don't find that um typically, especially within a public agency.

So I think that that's a big driver for wanting for employees wanting to stay.

Most people have to have the work now.

Yes, they have.

Thank you.

Sure.

Okay, see no additional questions?

Thank you so much.

Appreciate it.

All right, thank you.

We will next hear from the secretary to the board of review, Liliana Scarpita.

And as she's coming up, the next office that will be up that is getting ready, would be the clerk of the circuit court's office, followed by the Cook County Clerk, the Sheriff, State Attorney, and the Treasurer's Office.

Welcome.

Okay.

Yeah.

What time is it?

All right.

Uh good morning, uh, Chairwoman Anaya, Vice Chair Stamps, and members of the committee.

My name is Liliana Scarpita, and I am the Secretary of the Cook County Board of Review.

Uh, with me today is our Chief Deputy Commissioner Willie Mulchild.

He's to my right.

Thank you again for the opportunity to appear before you today to provide a workforce update on the board.

In carrying out the mission of the board, our workforce remains central to ensuring fairness, maintaining operational continuity, and supporting the timely processing of appeals.

Today's presentation will provide a high-level overview of several ongoing workforce initiatives, including aggregate demographic information, efforts to reduce vacancy rates, and improve hiring timelines, strategies focused on employee retention, and sustaining a qualified future workforce, collaborative efforts with organized labor on hiring and workforce development initiatives, and more.

Span across operational and administrative and leadership functions, and of course, the majority of our workforce processes appeals and uh engages in taxpayer services.

Leadership and supervisory staff provide operational oversight, policy direction, and continuity of operations.

Our administrative and support personnel ensures scheduling, records management, constituent support, and agency agency coordination across the board.

Our workforce investments remain tied directly to maintaining service delivery and operational effectiveness.

Effectiveness.

Next slide, please.

The board uh remains committed to maintaining a workforce reflective of the communities we serve throughout Cook County.

Recruitment and retention efforts continue to be focused on equitable hiring practices and of course broad outreach.

The agency continues to work uh to foster an inclusive and professional workplace environment.

Next slide, please.

In 2025, the board, along with our partners in the Bureau of Technology and ERP, implemented the uh TalEo applicant tracking system to modernize and standardize our recruitment processes.

This has automated and centralized workflows and improved consistency, compliance, and candidate tracking.

The board reduced average time to start from approximately 32 days to just over 15 days, cutting hiring timelines by more than half.

Faster hiring timelines has helped reduce operational strain on existing staff and improves continuity of operations.

Continued refinement of hiring workflows has remained a priority for the board.

Next slide, please.

The board's turnover rate remains low.

It was 4% in 2025, reflecting workforce stability and retention of institutional knowledge.

To support recruitment, competitiveness, and long-term retention, the board continues evaluating compensation structures and market alignment.

We also strategically backfill positions, which remains important to operational continuity and employee workload management.

Next slide, please.

The board recognizes that workforce stability is driven by investing in our employees, which contributes directly to service delivery.

Our work, our commissioners have invested strategically in professional development opportunities for our agency and for our analysts, particularly.

We place a strong emphasis on continued investment in supporting employee growth and operational effectiveness.

Next slide, please.

As mentioned, the board has prioritized investing in professional education through uh agencies like IPAI, IAAO, and initiatives that support employees pursuing the certified Illinois assessing officer credential.

Professional certifications of sorts, strengthened technical expertise and valuation, assessment, and property tax administration.

Expanding these professional development opportunities continues to support workforce quality, retention, and succession planning.

By the end of 2026, the board anticipates significant increase in certified staff across operational areas.

Next slide, please.

Labor partnership and workforce stability stability efforts.

The board uh is embarking on a historic milestone actually this week.

Um, as we have reached a tentative collective bargaining agreement with ASME Local 3696.

This tentative agreement represent represents a historic milestone as mentioned, making uh marking the agency's first collective bargaining agreement.

This is again a significant step in stabilizing our workforce uh and engaging in labor management that is consistent across our three districts.

This agreement again reflects continued efforts to support recruitment, retention, workforce sustainability, and employee development with our new partner AFSME.

Our focus moving forward is engaging in a collaborative implementation process with AFSME.

Uh this uh collective bargaining agreement is scheduled for your consideration uh actually tomorrow, May 14th.

So we are uh looking for your favorable consideration so we can transition into the implementation phase.

Thank you once again, Commissioner Anaya, uh Vice Chair Stamps and members of the committee.

We continue committed to maintaining a stable and qualified workforce that supports operational effectiveness.

And we appreciate any opportunity to answer anything.

Thank you so much.

Any questions?

Um, just on my end, in regards to your analyst and taxpayer services.

60 you you mentioned 65 percent of the workforce in the department.

How many are bilingual?

Do you have those tests?

We do.

Um we don't we don't need the answer now, but if you can get that to our office, that would be really helpful.

Um I think uh you know you play very critical role uh specifically in some of our our districts, so I think it'd be important to to know what that looks like.

We'll get that to you.

Thank you so much, Chair.

Could we also get uh what languages as well?

Sure, absolutely.

Thank you.

All right, well, thank you very, very much.

Um we will now ask Chad Gearing, the Chief Human Uh Resource Officer from the Clerk of the Circuit Court to come up.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good morning.

Anne, you may begin.

All right.

Thank you, Commissioners and Madam Chair, for the opportunity to present to you.

My name is Chad Gehrig, the Chief Human Resources Officer for the Clerk of the Circuit Court, the Honorable Mariana Sparopoulos.

Next slide, please.

What we will view for you today is our overview of reducing the vacancy rate and the hiring timelines for the clerk's office, uh, how we've been able to reduce our employee turnover, workforce demographics, our collaboration with our union, Teamsters Local 700, and then the workforce pathways forward that the clerk's office has put into place.

Current state, our vacancy rate is at 8.6%, which is well below.

Um, however, in the next 60 days, we do plan to reduce that to 2.8%.

We are currently in the middle of a massive hiring effort for a lot of our uh entry-level positions.

So, given our collective bargaining agreement, there is a timeline where we have to do a lot of promotions first in laterals, and then we can move on to new uh new offers for new entry-level employees.

Prior to 2026, our timeline for to hire was 45 to 200 days, and this is across the board, whether that's union or not union.

And we've been able to reduce that to 45 to 60 days, and that's from posting to hiring.

Uh a lot of that 200 days was, I believe, us getting used to the employment plan that we have in place.

Uh, every location has their own employment plan, so once we got our handle on that, we're really able to reduce that number.

Or when you from posting to their first day of work?

Yes.

And the key initiatives that we've done with hiring and vacancy are again to streamline those workflows.

So looking at our employment plan, looking at the CBA and how can we use those both together and most efficiently.

Enhanced screening, we've developed uh new standardized testing, basic math, uh, English reading comprehension, and then again, following the current CBA and the employment plan, as well as working on those to make them more efficient.

Next slide, please.

Yep.

There.

Uh for our hiring process improvements.

In 2025, we attended 39 job fairs, and so far in 2026, we've attended 20 job fairs across Cook County.

We've standardized our interviewing process, and what that looks like is within our employment plan and within the SHACMAN process.

We are reviewing with each hiring manager the questions that they're going to ask specific candidates.

Are they related to the job description?

Are they relevant to the job description?

As well as monitoring those interviews to make sure that they are compliant with both the employment plan and the Shaqman decree.

As I stated previously, we've initiated and implemented a skills-based assessment, a standardized test that all potential candidates come downtown to take.

So we aren't requiring that a candidate has their own computer or their own internet access.

We are offering multiple days for them to come down and take this standardized test.

And then again, we're reviewing our current employment plan to look for any redundancies and to how can we increase in fish efficiencies within the hiring process.

Next slide, please.

For our turnover rate, uh in 2025, we were at an 8.8% turnover rate, and so far in 2026, we are at 1.8%.

As you can see, the main drivers, pretty standard across the board.

We have resignations.

A lot of those we're seeing as other agencies are employees leaving for higher paying positions.

We have about a three point set uh three percent retirement rate uh in 2025 and about a 0.5% so far in 2026, and then a 2.3% termination rate.

Our retention efforts are vast.

We are included uh increasing the onboarding and improving that.

So making sure the employees have a lot of training in the onboarding, what their jobs are going to be, what all that entails, and making sure they're prepared when they go out into the customer service arena.

Our training and development team have utilized not only our EAP services, but we've created new training at the annual budget hearing.

We mentioned we've been doing a customer service training.

We're about to launch our second annual customer service training, and that goes from the clerk down, absolutely every employee takes that customer service training.

And in 2025, we we administered 45,500 training hours across our agency.

So whether that was the customer service training, preventing sexual harassment, employment plan training, uh job training, whatever that might be, it was 45,500 hours of training.

And as I said previously, and uh we were we're doing the employment plan updates, uh, we're writing MOUs with our uh director of compliance so that we can again make sure that the employment plan is efficient uh but also not redundant.

Next slide, please.

Our workforce demographics, we are approximately 75% female identifying and 25% male identifying.

And our racial and ethnic composition, you can see the breakdown there.

Our majority of our employees identify as black or African American, followed by Hispanic, Asian, or excuse me, followed by white, Hispanic, Asian, and then two or more races.

Next slide, please.

As I stated in the opening, uh our teamster, our union is uh Teamsters Local 700.

Uh, we recently in 2026 uh had brought on a new business agent with the Teamsters.

Our collaboration with the union is very active.

We have bi-monthly annual labor meetings or excuse me, bi-monthly labor meetings with our union representatives, so the business agent and the chief stewards, so that we can hopefully head off problems before they start.

Uh, see what the employees' concerns have been if they brought them to the union before it gets to a grievance.

Additionally, we negotiated two contracts, as I'm sure you all are aware, the extension for the large contract.

Also, though in 2025, we had eight of our MIS uh employees uh decide to join the union.

So we negotiated that new contract to mirror the current contract extension so that they will both be renegotiated in at the end of 2027.

We also work with the union to collaborate and educate so that they're aware of the hiring process.

It is very detailed with the employment plan, so there's often a lot of education that has to happen.

And again, with our union, we work to make sure that all of our laterals and promotions that we can identify are filled quickly and efficiently.

So right now we are currently working on our court clerk promotions.

So a lot of the union employees, excuse me, not a lot, all of the union employees have to go through the promotional process.

So they start as office clerks or financial clerks, the next level is a court clerk, and the next level is a court clerk trainer.

So we often we have to go through two steps for each of those that I mentioned.

Laterals first, then promotions for trainers, laterals first, then promotions for court clerks, and laterals first, and then promotion uh no promotions, but new hires for office clerks and financial clerks.

Workforce pathway programs.

This is the second year that the clerk's office has initiated an intern program, and we saw a 500% increase in participation and interest from students.

Last year, I believe we had eight interns, eight or ten interns, and this year we're going upwards of 35 interns within the office.

So a lot of interest.

I think there's a lot of students who are interested in learning what the judicial system is behind the scenes, and that's what we're seeing it.

We're seeing law students, we're seeing graduate students, we're seeing undergraduate students all join the office for an internship opportunity, which will be June 1st through the end of August.

We're also focusing, as I said, on training for a lot of our employees and rotation, making sure that those court clerks are rotating courtrooms so they're not with the same judge every time so that they're learning new new things, new information.

Same with our our laterals for court clerks and for office clerks, that they don't get stuck or they don't feel stuck in the same area all the time.

And Clerksporopolis made an initiative this year that we've been adamant about is a work life balance.

So we employ our EAP program Compsych, and we are doing every month a lunch and learn uh that's related to work life balance.

So things like uh desk or size, you know, things that you can do at your desk to revitalize yourself in the afternoon, uh breathing for stress relief, those kinds of things that we have to do on the daily to make sure that we aren't getting tired, we aren't getting frustrated.

Uh so we are doing one of those every single month through the end of the year, and they're very well received.

I think the first one we ever did was nutritional eating on a budget.

I I employ, you know, if you haven't looked at those things, they're in our EAP catalog, they're amazing, they're free for our employees to use.

So we're just setting them up so that they know that they're there and they have the opportunity to do those classes.

And for our future workforce strategy, again, our internal mobility, making sure that all of our employees know that these promotional opportunities are available to them, training them within that so that they can be successful, making sure that we post them in a timely manner and we fill them in a timely manner, and increase accuracy and processing of those laterals with our hiring manager management, making sure we know where those openings are, and do they do the managers have the employees that they need?

And if they don't, how can we assist them?

And again, the training expansion that this clerk has taken very seriously and continues to uh utilize.

So the key takeaways here for the clerk's office, we're working on hiring efficiency, making sure that that timeline gets reduced, focusing on retention and work-life balance, our DEI commitment to reaching out to the community to make sure that the clerk's office looks like the public that we serve, working with our union partners, and then finally the workforce pipeline to make sure that retention is high.

And with that, I'm happy to take your questions.

Thank you, Commissioner Vice Chair stamps.

Would you look at there?

Um to your question about a couple of things.

What is on the standardized test?

What is it testing for?

It's testing basic math, verbal and reading comprehension.

How do you test for verbal?

Uh so it's kind of like uh a basic uh ACT LSAT where it's this word means this, does this word mean what?

And it gives them four options.

It's all multiple choice.

Vocabulary or is that verbal skills?

Vocabulary, yes, verbal vocabulary.

Okay.

Um, and what do you attribute to the turnover rates?

The low turnover rates, because you said yours is like eight something, and in the not too distant future, it'll be one point something.

So what do you attribute to your so I think that is for the vacancy rate was 8.8 to 2.

Yep.

Um I I think that it's there's a lot of interest in the clerk's office.

Uh just for example, we had uh in our most recent posting for office clerk, we had a thousand applications that we had to review.

Uh all of my of the workforce team, and I have an amazing workforce team.

They have to look through each one of those applications to see that they meet the minimum qualifications, which brought that down to about 430, and then from 430 it goes on to the skills test.

So I think a lot of people look at the this the entry level positions as a great opportunity to get into the clerk's office for that upward mobility.

What is the is the starting salaries for those um starting?

I believe entry level is right now at 48,000 around there.

Okay.

And relative to this work-life balance that you spoke of, do you have anything like the flexible scheduling that the assessor's office enjoys where some people can still work from home?

We do for certain positions.

In the clerk's office, however, our entry level of the office clerks, the financial clerks, the court clerks, their everyday is working with customers.

So it's really difficult to get that work from home for those positions.

But if we do have a uh one day a week work from home policy, if when we review the job description, if that job can function and work well from home, we do allow one-day remote policy.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Commissioner.

Commissioner Vasquez.

Thank you, Chair.

Um, I would like to compliment you on an extremely thorough report.

Um, thank you for sharing all of this information.

Um also wanted to thank your your IGA staff who um I think have the unfortunate experience of hearing from me on the weekends sometimes.

Um, but you're incredibly responsive, and I'm excited to see um the reduction in uh hiring time that it takes as well as sort of the intentional, you know, like we saw um in some other departments, the intentional um hiring of entry-level positions, uh, which I think is incredibly important.

Is there a breakdown in terms of age as well in terms of your hires?

I don't know that I saw that in this in terms of new hires.

Uh-huh.

I can get you exact numbers, but we definitely I mean it it it's across the board.

I think we definitely are seeing a lot of you know the Gen Z people coming on board, but like other agencies, you know, our average uh work life right now is 18 plus years per employee.

So we aren't seeing a huge number of retirements or turnovers right now.

We're seeing some, obviously.

Uh but yeah, I can get you definitely get you some numbers if you would like.

Yeah, no, I think that'd be fantastic.

And you know, the uh pipelines that different departments are trying to build with our high schools and our colleges are great as well.

Definitely want to see um you know more job opportunities, not just for Gen Z, but for my fellow millennials who might be struggling out there as well.

Um for folks that you know are unemployed looking for opportunities, you know, Cook County government.

I think is uh a pathway to stability and a pathway out of poverty for a lot of folks.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Well, thanks, Chad.

I truly appreciate it.

Thank you.

Thank you, manager.

Um we will have representatives from the Cook County Clerk's office.

And on deck, we have the sheriff's office.

Hi, how are you?

How are you?

Good, how are you?

Good to see you.

Good to see you too.

Okay.

You may uh proceed whenever you're ready.

Sure, thank you.

Uh good morning, everybody.

My name is Jim Gleffey.

I'm the deputy chief of staff and chief legal counsel for the Cook County Clerk's office.

Uh, we have some other folks from our office here as well.

We have Christina Seldana, who's our uh deputy clerk of operations.

She's handing out copies of our PowerPoint presentation for everybody uh to review.

And we also have our deputy clerk of human resources, Michael Simpkins here.

He's in the gallery and he's gonna be available in case there's any questions that I am unable to answer for you today.

So um with that said, um, we can begin and uh we can transition next slide.

So the first uh area we'd like to tackle is the efforts to reduce the vacancy rate and decrease the hiring timeline.

Um as of as some of the other offices have said, um the hiring timelines have uh decreased over the years.

Uh we had Shaqman Oversight for a long time, uh going from the recorder deeds office and when we merged with the clerk's office, and even then several years with the clerk's office until that uh overview uh oversight sunset.

Um from that time we've been able to continue to streamline operations and in our hiring timeline has reduced from roughly about 200 days uh to about let's just say 60 days from posting to to hiring.

Um some of the things that we we look at to try and reduce our vacancy rates and decrease our timeline.

Uh first of all, our vacancy rate is about 13.6 percent.

Um we have 47 vacant positions out of uh 344 FTEs that are in the budget, and uh that's that's pretty good.

And uh that's that's pretty good.

And we have several um positions that have been posted that we're in the process of filling, uh specifically in our elections division, and we're also about to post several positions within our real estate and tax services division is as that division is had a little bit of turnover, but um mostly natural turnover that are positions that we just need to fill.

Um in order to reduce that hiring timeline.

Some of the things that we've tried to do is review all of our current job descriptions for positions for positions to determine if any changes are needed.

One of the parts of the SHACMAN policies that were implemented uh for hiring include making sure the first step is always making sure you have a uh complete and accurate job description, and our team has been working uh diligently to make sure that every position in this office, uh whether it's filled or not, will have a accurate job description.

So when the time comes to fill that position, we won't have to go through the process of uh putting that together.

It will already be together for us to utilize in the in the hiring process.

Um another uh thing that we can do is to draft review or update interview questions as the positions are posted.

Um I think historically there's been a lot of you know fragmentization in the hiring process.

So you know, when the positions posted, they wait for the posting to come down and they're validating applicants, and then that's when the interview questions were starting to be drafted by the division heads.

What we really want to have is a repository for these types of questions, so that when we do want to post a position, we don't have to wait for busy uh division heads to to draft interview questions to send to us for our review before we could get them posted.

Because we all want to make sure that any questions that are asked during the interview process are approved and um compliant with our with our SHACMAN uh hiring processes.

Um we've also went through an uh exercise of identifying and filling critical positions uh that impact our operational needs while establishing time frames to fill other positions that uh may not be uh urgent urgent hires.

Um next slide, please.

Uh next, I'd like to touch on a little bit uh the efforts to reduce employee turnover rate, and I think our overall our employee turnover rate has been relatively low.

Um I don't have that information uh in terms of what the rate is, but um it is significantly low.

We don't have a lot of employees that resign from the clerk's office.

So other things that we've done to reduce turnover rate.

Um we've worked to establish a path of upward mobility for rank and file employees or employees with high levels of seniority.

Um we'd like to provide cross-training uh within divisions and also uh provide other training opportunities for uh employees so that they can develop their skills that can be used in a workplace or even to apply to higher level positions so that they can apply to and and get offered positions with higher salary grades and supervisory responsibilities.

Um every workplace is always gonna have concerns and issues raised by the by employees and responding to those questions and concerns in a timely manner and and meeting to discuss those uh issues with them really do alleviate some of the the you know the discontent that does result in a higher turnover rate and any time there's a need to change any operational procedure or policy, um we do have you know training and uh communications with our employees so that everyone understands how these changes will impact them in their daily uh daily work day.

Um we also have other programs that aren't referenced on the slide, but uh we're in the process of developing an employee recognition program, which is kind of that peer-to-peer uh recognition of good a good job well done by uh clerk employees, um, and we're also engaging in other levels of training, such as conflict resolution training, um sexual harassment training things where if those things aren't addressed and they're left to fester in the office, or if they're not there, if they if they start to occur in the office, that can really bring down morale and make folks think about leaving their employment.

So we're doing those things, and I think uh it's it's impacting our turnover rate.

Next slide, please.

So the aggregate demographics of our workforce.

Um, in terms of gender identity, um, roughly 40% of our workforce identifies as male, 60% identify as female, um, and then and the racial demographics is also listed here on on the slide.

Um, and then and the racial demographics is also listed here on the slide.

But at the end of the day, I'd like to just point out that our office does have a very diverse workforce, um, not just by by gender, not just by race, but also by age, uh, religion, ethnicity, um, socioeconomic background.

So we we take pride in that, and uh, we do have a uh new deputy clerk over diversity equity inclusion that is going to be analyzing these stats and making proposals on how we can continue to uh maintain a diverse workforce while maybe um providing ways of of maybe increasing the numbers where uh the total numbers are not as high as maybe they should be.

Um next slide, please.

So, how do we work with our labor unions on hiring initiatives?

Our office currently is two collective bargaining units.

Um one is our administrative support staff unit, another one is our supervisor unit.

Both of those units are uh represented by SCIU Local 73.

Um we have a fantastic working relationship uh with President Palmer and her team over at SCIU Local 73.

And um through our collaboration, we've accomplished a number of different things.

Um we've established an internal candidate preference for all SHACMAN non-exempt positions, meaning that all entry-level positions.

Well, this wouldn't be in entry level, but for any promotional opportunities, if you're an employee of the clerk's office, you will get uh internal candidate preference on those hiring processes, which will basically guarantee you'll get an interview for supervisory or other higher level positions.

Uh we've also worked with SCIU to recently add seasonal election workers to our administrative support staff bargaining unit, which is which has not been done before in the clerk's office, and we look forward to once that uh is officially ratified by the department of labor engaging in bargaining with the union to set out the different uh work work rules for those employees.

We've all we've also engaged in initial discussions regarding how to create a path of upward mobility for longtime employees, including development of lead worker positions, um, and also potentially finding uh ways to reward employees that have maybe reached the higher end of the salary uh step and grade schedule that have a lot of institutional knowledge that may have other ways that they can contribute to uh the office other than the position that they're currently in.

Um we've developed additional skills-based training for when employees would um like I said, it will assist when applying to higher grader positions, um, established processes for employees to apply for reclassifications of their position when the duties at our position may have increased or otherwise changed.

Um this has actually happened quite a bit over the last several years where employees have let's for example moved from grade 13 to a grade 14 based on changes of the positions that have come just over the course of time due to you know changes of workflows and and asking uh different um skill sets for employees to be utilized.

So that has been a very successful program, and then continuing to have our quarterly labor management meetings to discuss ongoing workplace issues involving our union staff.

Uh next slide, please.

So efforts to establish and expand pathway programs to expand and uh sustain a future workforce.

Uh we are participating in job fairs and other programs to ensure that job seekers learn about the work that is done at the clerk's office and uh available employment opportunities at the office.

Uh additionally, our outreach, government affairs, stakeholder engagement, and communications teams provide information about job opportunities and programs when interacting with the public.

Um so on behalf of Clerk Gordon, I I thank you for your attention and uh be happy to answer any questions that you may have today.

Commissioner Stamps.

Yes, Vice Chair Stamps.

Good afternoon, thank you.

Um thank you for the job fairs.

Do you guys do any on-site hiring when you do job fairs?

And if you don't do on-site hiring, do you have a um a mechanism upon which you can say, okay, we interviewed or we took this many uh resumes, applications or whatever at this job fair, and as a result, we've hired this many people from this job fair.

I'm always interested in the effectiveness of the job fair because if it's not resulting in actual people hired, I'm not I'm missing it.

And that's not always shared, right?

That information.

So I'm asking.

Sure.

Um, our deputy clerk of human resources, Michael Simpkins, who usually um participates in these job fairs will uh be able to answer your question.

Good afternoon, commissioners.

Uh yes, we do.

Um based on our uh SHACMI decree and and how we go about uh interviewing, we are not able to uh collect or receive resumes or any of uh from uh candidates when they attend job fairs.

We do take attendants having to write their names down, and once the positions are posted, if they apply for them, uh that way we know that they did go through the um through a job fair and there was some level of communication.

I will say this we did participate uh with the Cook County job fair last year, and and of the applicants that did apply, one actually did get uh hired and selected, so that was uh uh a good turnaround.

Again, uh Mr.

Glady spoke earlier, we still had to adhere to the union um steps in terms of how we uh hire and select people, but but yeah, that's how we obtain information from people with job fairs.

You said one was hired, and you said that was a good turnaround, but how many then how many people signed in um at the job fair for the one person that was hired?

So, okay, we don't have to we I don't have to take you through all of this.

This is what I'm trying to get at.

How do you all assess the effectiveness of your participation in a job fair as it pertains to people actually being hired?

That being said, yes.

We only have one position that was posted uh after we did the job fair because of the time of the year when a job fair took place.

Uh we only had four people from the job fair that actually applied for that uh vacant position.

We know that there's a job fair coming uh up in a couple of weeks, so what we have some positions and vacancies that we're gonna post immediately after the job fair, which would be more uh positions, more titles would then uh give an opportunity for those people that have attended the job fair to be able to apply and uh hopefully or possibly uh be employed with the county clerk office.

And one of the things that that also come out of the job fair is it's another it's another avenue for community outreach and and touching the folks that attend the job fair to give them information about the clerk's office.

And I think going forward, I think if we have folks that attend the job fair that express an interest in working for the clerk's office, uh maybe there are other things that we could do, such as you know, collecting their information and and sending them emails when jobs get posted live on our on our website that they can apply to.

Uh just making sure that the folks that have expressed an interest in working for us actually are informed of opportunities as they come along.

Because they're there because they want to work, so I don't necessarily think you that's not a surprise.

I mean, if you're gonna take the time to go to a job fair, it's because you're looking for a job, and I think it's incumbent upon us to have some way of gauging the effectiveness of the time and the resources that we are putting into these job fairs.

If which I mean, you know, outreach is for something if if as a result um of the job fair that expands the outreach, that's great.

But as to me, the outcome is to make sure that people are getting hired.

Um the other question I have is you said of you have four hundred, and that's the other thing, you guys, these vacancies are like in the hundreds.

This this one, well, this one says our vacancy rate is let me make sure I'm looking at the right one before I say some crazy, and then I'm looking at the wrong because I am looking at the wrong hand now because that one was a lot higher.

So I was about to say something crazy, and then I would have had to be corrected live.

Um, so I can't even use that one.

How do you get let me ask you this?

How when when the jobs are posted, and thank you for that time because I'm gonna be honest with you, the times that I'm hearing now from these different departments is a lot shorter than what we've heard in the past, like cut by half.

So that's really impressive.

So, you know, you all are setting kind of like a new standard, a new pace in terms of from application to hire, because we were hearing numbers like 100 and something days and a hundred and so I'm hearing like 60 days was a which is a lot more reasonable.

So um, with everything that's going on, I know this office deals with the elections, and I'm just curious.

Um, is there any different requirement or training that's necessary as we look at um you know just the just all of the different things that's happening in elections?

Yeah, um our uh our deputy clerk of elections, Ed Michelowski was here, I think presenting in the previous committee would have more information about what he's specifically doing in the elections division.

But I could tell you that a lot of the folks that have worked on elections, um, even some of our seasonal workers have worked in in our department for a long time and have been there as the technology has advanced and have also um changed with the times to make themselves adaptable and available to run that technology.

And um I think since I've been with the clerk's office, I've seen issues with election-related complaints dropping dramatically.

I think the confidence of our elections, uh confidence in our elections is increasing.

Um, the quicker turnaround times, bailout um counting and posting of results, um and just answering questions from the public and and from elected officials shows that what we're doing is uh making sure that our workforce is is educated and and and trained on how to handle all of these situations.

But I agree that um there might be some more information that I could get you from from our elections division that tells you specifically how we're doing that.

Thank you so much.

Just like you know, everything that we know is happening around elections.

I'm just know we're all at a kind of heightened level of awareness uh relative to to how elections might play out, and we know that your office is responsible for uh suburban cook in executing elections.

So I was just curious about the professional development that might be necessary to meet the to meet this this different kind of demand that we're gonna run into.

But thank you and thank you for the access and thank you to the clerk.

Thank you.

Great.

Uh I don't see any other questions.

Thank you both very, very much.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Um for coming before this body.

Um we have the sheriff's office up next, Jason Hernandez, followed by the state attorney, and finally the treasurer's office.

Hi.

That's probably like my side.

Thank you so much.

Oh, that might not be it.

That's okay.

Is it still a we don't have great office furniture at the sheriff's office?

Okay.

Good morning.

Morning.

Morning, morning.

Um, thank you, Chairwoman.

Afternoon already.

Afternoon.

Uh thank you, Chairwoman, Vice Chair, esteemed members of the county board.

I am joined by many of my colleagues here today.

We are rolling deep for this hearing.

Um, this is an extraordinary place to work.

So we have a number of guests here that are prepared to answer any question you might have.

Um executive director Jason Hernandez.

Wanna go ahead?

Uh Michael Shesper, I'm the chief of administration.

Peter Kramer, special counsel for labor affairs.

Good afternoon, Dr.

Colleen Rainey, um, executive director of engagement in learning and development.

And we have some colleagues uh that are on virtually.

Would you mind introducing yourself?

Uh good afternoon.

Uh, this is Sue Choi, uh, the executive director of human resources.

Good afternoon.

This is Tammy Leal, Director of Recruitment and Internships.

Hi, this is Annie Chambers, Director of Data Science and Analytics.

Richard Diver, Deputy Director of Talent Acquisition and Human Resources.

I think that might be it.

Okay.

So we have about 20% of the office ready to answer questions.

Um, thank you again, executive director Hernandez.

Um, it's a real pleasure to be here before this board.

Um, you know, before we get to our carefully crafted presentation, I would be remiss if I didn't use this opportunity in a very public setting to talk about how much I enjoy being a member of the Cook County Sheriff's Office and working under Sheriff Dart and his leadership.

Um this has been the highlight of my career, the things I have been able to experience and have just been remarkable.

And um going to the academy um was the experience of a lifetime.

Um it's not very often that an agency affords you the opportunity of making a shift in your career.

Um and I'm forever grateful to Sheriff Dart and uh the men and women of our great executive team for all of the opportunities that have been presented to me.

So again, before the presentation, you know, I have the privilege of working with some remarkable people who wake up every day trying to come up with a new way to advocate for the people of Cook County and to put in place measures that will save lives.

They do it even under the most difficult of circumstances.

They don't let that deter them.

They wake up every day and try to come up with new ways to serve the people of Cook County, and that's something we should all be proud of.

So my point is if you're interested in working for the government of Cook County and interested in exploring a career in law enforcement, there's a place for you.

If you're interested in working as uh operator in the most cutting-edge 911 center, that is the marvel of the region, there's a place for you.

If you're a clinician or social worker or case manager and you're interested in advocating for those individuals in our custody, or maybe people facing an eviction, there's a place for you.

If you're a clinician, counselor, case worker, and you're interested in advocating for those who have experienced the horrors of domestic violence, there's a place for you.

If you're interested in being a part of the most cutting-edge treatment response team, which has set the gold standard for working in law enforcement and creating an exceptional co-responder model that is, I believe, as of today, being replicated in over 43 different places, there's a place for you.

If you're interested in exploring a career in corrections, um, there is certainly a place for you.

That is where most careers start at the sheriff's office.

You will receive the kind of training that no other law enforcement agency can provide in the state of Illinois.

It is the gold standard.

Um I'm surrounded here today by folks who have carefully crafted training policies and procedures that are uh are, if not adopted by other areas, they seek to be part of our training systems.

If you want to work in patrols and have the pleasure of being out in the street in the community uh that we're proud to serve, and you're interested in being out there and keeping the people of Cook County safe, there's a space for you.

If you're interested in hostage negotiation, there's a space for you.

If you're interested in serving orders of protection and advocating for the most vulnerable among us, there's a place for you.

If you're interested in human resources, technologies that can save lives, some of the most amazing programs within corrections.

If you're interested in public policy, vehicles, community engagement, budget, legal IT, there's a place for you.

There's even a place for you in intergovernmental relations, but I would ask you to talk to me first.

With that, prepare to go into our presentation.

So today, what we hope to accomplish is demonstrate that we are dedicated to attracting and retaining a workforce to ensure that everyday functions of the Cook County Sheriff's Office are met.

The presentation will discuss our efforts to get a handle on vacancy rates and and decrease the hiring timeline, address the issue of turnover, which is a real problem in law enforcement throughout the nation.

Um we're ready to provide some demographic information on our current workforce, how we work collaboratively with labor unions on hiring initiatives, um, and some of the amazing pathways uh to create and sustain a future workforce.

All right, next slide, there you go.

We average about 41 new hires a month at the sheriff's office, and we also average about 43 staff who decide to end their career at the sheriff's office.

Therein lies the challenge for our agency that exists everywhere in county government, but certainly in law enforcement is how to keep up that balance of our attrition rate with our hiring.

It's something that we work diligently to address, and we throw the kitchen sink at it.

Um we have an all of the above approach to recruitment and retaining uh our employees, and we're really proud of the work we've made in recent years to uh um convince people that this is a place to stay to grow their career.

Um our workforce increased by 26 in March of 2026.

Of the 57 new members of our workforce in March, 93% joined the Department of Corrections, as I mentioned, where most sworn staff start their career.

In fact, I think all sworn staff start their career.

Um they all joined through a CCSO funded position.

Of the 31 staff who left the sheriff's office in March, 48% left from the Department of Corrections, and 97% worked in a CCSO funded position.

Of the 16 staff members who resigned in March of 2026, 38% resigned due to other employment, and 69% resided from the Department of Corrections.

We have an average tenure of 13.5 years.

So to discuss some of our key operational needs and the impact on our hiring process.

Um the Sheriff's Office does this job extraordinarily well, especially it's it's garnered the attention of um stakeholders throughout Springfield as such.

Um the state of Spring State of Illinois and Springfield tasked the Chicago um the Cook County Sheriff's Office with leading an expansive initiative to reimagine public safety on our major transit systems.

We are leading that task force, but that only illustrates a greater need for us to continue recruiting so that we can ensure that we have the staff in place at the Department of Corrections to conduct that important work.

Our merit board is close to procuring background investigation software that's going to reduce the process for an applicant that is past the merit board written examinations and you know reduce that timeline from application to the beginning of the trading academy.

As of July of 2025, our HR department oversees coordination of our physical agility test, and then we collaborate with the Merit Board directly on other processes for the correction officer hiring process.

And the physical agility test is a really important function in this office to make sure that our staff understand best practices and remaining healthy and in shape.

And that is a wonderful program that is extended not just to the SOARN staff, but even our civilian employees can benefit from that kind of rigorous testing.

Our HR department has broadened its role in the initial screening of candidate resumes and experience, and within the last year, our HR department has reduced the overall number of correctional officer classes from eight to six, but increased the size of each of those classes.

Our total workforce as of May 16th of this year is 5,025.

We currently have 148 open sworn positions and 96 open civilian positions.

The average hiring timeline of 93 days from the merit board to our official offer.

So it's about 93 days to the official offer, forgive me.

For the period for the year, May 25 to May 26, we cut down that average to 73 days, which is significant.

20 days is a is good measurable progress.

Really proud of the efforts that we put in place around recruitment on social media.

We have made dramatic improvements in the number of impressions we generate on social media.

We have a great team in place to come up with creative ways to engage the next generation of workers.

We average more than 20 career fairs a month.

And we're in colleges and high schools regularly.

We even advertise in the 2026 White Sox baseball program.

And our recruitment team is made up of two full-time and about 30 as needed members across the office.

But I can tell you as an executive director, I've worked in a recruitment capacity, and it's something I'm happy to do because I'm as vested in recruiting the next generation of workers for our agency.

And I think most of my employ my colleagues would say the same.

So our efforts to reduce employee turnover.

Um in the summer of 2025, we implemented an employee retention initiative that I know my colleagues can go into a little bit more detail about.

And we standardized and continuous improvement of our HR orientation and department onboarding.

I have personally observed the inroads that we have made in that respect.

And I can tell you that new employees who are coming to work at the sheriff's office oftentimes are struggling to make sense of a very big, very complicated justice system.

And what we we do everything we can to help educate them on you know all the many moving parts and where our office lies in this you know important system.

Um I think those have been very, very fruitful.

Um we have learning and development workshops for managers and leaders at the sheriff's office.

Um we're all very busy at the sheriff's office, but I can tell you we always look forward to those opportunities for us to improve on our skills and abilities.

Um you think you know it all when you come to work at a place, and then you you meet some of your colleagues who have a real specific expertise in getting you to see look at things differently and how to improve your managerial skills and how to be uh just a better employee all around.

Um I find that to be extraordinarily helpful.

Um we have annual performance evaluations via a software called benchmark.

You'll be learning more about that next month, uh, but it's really streamlined and um operationalized the process of making sure that our employees receive good feedback and that they know what skills need to be addressed in order to grow in their career.

We also have increased staff engagement through peer support, recruitment, and retention.

Um I can tell you that working in law enforcement, unfortunately, you see some pretty traumatic things on a regular basis from the sheriff's police inside the jail, out on the communities that we serve.

Um it's hard to describe the uh trauma that our officers experience on a daily basis, um, but it should bring this county comfort to know that we have systems in place to make sure that those employees receive really meaningful intervention and support systems at very shortly after something occurs.

Um I've personally observed this, and it can make all the difference when an individual who's experienced trauma is struggling to make sense of what they've experienced.

Um it's an incredibly important initiative, and um it's can't say enough good things about our peer support.

So next slide.

I'm gonna keep this up here for a little bit because I'm not gonna go over all these numbers, but what I can say broadly is that our workforce reflects the diversity of the county that we serve across all departments.

Um I have worked with some really talented individuals across all faiths, all genders, all race.

Um they all have unique life experiences and all of that um factors into the culture that we we're proud to have built at the sheriff's office and um the vision that Sheriff Dart has for this agency.

So I'll keep that up there for a second, but we can go back to it later if anybody has any questions.

So the sheriff's office has 15 bargaining units um and we work very closely with labor unions on hiring initiatives.

You know, we communicate to our union partners on a regular basis, asking for assistance and recruiting and retention ideas.

We share information on what other agencies are doing, best practices to enhance our recruitment and to solicit input and buy-in from similar initiatives.

Um we value our relationship with our union partners, and um we have some staff here that can go into that detail a little bit more.

Here at the sheriff's office, we are committed to establish and expand pathway programs to create and sustain a future workforce.

We have a great internship program.

Um I think we get upwards of 150 internship applications every semester.

The challenge for us is finding places to put them.

Um it's really rewarding work, and um this isn't an internship where you go get coffee and um make copies.

We walk you through the process and we and I know that I personally have brought interns here to the county board.

I make sure they have tours of the jail in most cases, um, and I really want them to experience what it's like to work in law enforcement so they have a realistic understanding of the challenges that we face, but also the tremendous rewards that coming come with a career here.

Um most of our interns walk away with a much greater understanding of the the county.

Um we have really good relationships with colleges and universities to establish really robust pathways.

Um and we're also working on measures in Springfield to uh improve our ability to create direct pipelines from high schools and from younger applicants before they decide on a career.

Maybe they're interested in ROTC program, maybe they have a public service mindset, and we're always looking for ways to incentivize and recruit that generation to come work for us at the sheriff's office.

It's a lot of information, but with that, I'm happy to take any questions, and so will my colleagues.

Good afternoon, and thank you.

Thank you so much, Mr.

Hernandez.

I appreciate your report.

I'm just curious, were you reading from something that wasn't up there?

Because I was trying to follow and they were um in the beginning.

I made comments that were off the cuffs, yeah.

Yeah, you were freestyling.

Okay.

That was some numbers that you said that I was like, where are those?

Okay.

So really quick.

So it looks like you're breaking even per month.

You get in 41 and 43 leave.

So what do you attribute the high attrition rates to relative to the fact that you said you have meaningful interventions for the trauma that officers are receiving?

And what does meaningful interventions look like?

What is that?

So I'll let my colleagues talk about the the balance between the hiring and um you know the retention issue.

But are you talking about the meaningful interventions that we provide to people during their traumas?

Um we provide access to counseling services.

Um we, in some cases, try to put place people in a very quiet room so they can have some time and space to reflect on the trauma that they've experienced.

Um we can make connections to family if that's something they think would be helpful.

Um we let them know about well-being initiatives that exist in our office.

Um there's no shortage of ways, and they can be tailored to the individual for us to connect people to services that um you know are are critically important during their moment of need.

Talk about them.

I wasn't clear on this.

Um, can you tell me again how many vacancies do you currently have?

Really quick.

I I believe that they were gonna respond a little bit to them.

Oh, were you?

Yeah.

Okay, thank you.

Yeah, we were gonna respond to the 43 versus 41 and 10.

Thank you so much.

Um, Mike Shasberger, chief of administration.

Um the jail is a tough place to work.

I think we can all concede that.

Um we have although our um tenure average is 13.5, we have a very young staff, and we have uh an older staff.

And so we're seeing a lot of retirements.

Um you know it's a climate where people want to retire if they can and they take advantage of it.

And so we do our best to fill those positions with um uh our ability to to hire in.

Um that always doesn't reach the mark.

We get that, we understand that.

Um we're dealing in law enforcement where even for our younger staff, sometimes that number they leave suddenly because they're coveted here.

We we put them through a robust training program and other agencies come in and they poach them, they give them more money.

Um so we're always dealing with those battles, but um I think we're in a good spot that sometimes we see numbers higher, you know, where we we're bringing in higher than versus what's going out.

It just happened to be the numbers lately have shown the other way, but um it it's on our radar, and then we're doing everything that we can to backfill those positions.

You uh just said you think we're in a good spot.

Please elaborate.

Why do you think we're in a good spot?

We've seen lower numbers coming in prior, and we've seen higher numbers going out.

Those numbers have kind of balanced now.

Okay.

Thank you for sharing that.

I appreciate it.

What's the total number of vacancies?

And you can do it based on I think you said um civilians, and then you said another category.

I wasn't able to make that complete.

Yeah, as of today, uh, we have 148 open positions for sworn members, and we have 96 open positions for civilian members.

How many civilians?

96.

96, I think.

Okay.

Then you said there's increased staff engagement through peer support, recruitment, and retention efforts.

What are those specifically?

Why I just discussed the peer support initiatives, but um I'll have my colleague here, executive director Rini talk about the rest of the hi, good afternoon, Dr.

Rainey.

Um, executive director of employee engagement and development.

And so part of those retention efforts that we have, we are doing like a women's leadership summit where we have all our women that are in law enforcement, whether they're sworn or civilian, come together and learn about ways that they can support each other.

We also have um it's law enforcement correction week last week as well as this week is police um police department support.

So then what we do is we're making sure everybody knows how appreciative they are at the work that they're doing for us.

And then we also have, as Jason mentioned, our learning and development initiative.

So what we're doing is we're making sure people have the skills and abilities to work, whether they're learning about emotional intelligence, whether they're learning about how to have difficult conversations with staff members.

So there's a variety of approaches that we are taking to make sure people feel engaged and involved in the workforce.

I see.

Thank you so much for that.

Uh Jason, you also mentioned um that there's a real equitable representation.

Does that include upper management?

That that uh that diversity, both of ethnicities and genders are reflected in upper management, because you know today.

From the command level in each of the districts we serve, yes.

At our under sheriff level, yes, our chief of police, the executive office, several leadership positions within the department of corrections, yes.

Our diversity of our workforces is significant, and it's a tremendous strength for us.

Um yeah.

You know, just for me, maybe not anyone else, but um, I would like to see that reflection of that diversity when you come to these meeting these sessions because it's not reflected today.

And so I would like to see the diversity that you're you're you're mentioning and that you're saying is reflective in all of these departments when you present to us.

Um so if you're having African Americans, Latinos, and upper management, I think it's important to commission Atra stamps to see them reflected in these reports when they're sharing out.

So that's just that's just Tara.

And um say more to me about the internships.

You said there are not enough positions, so how many positions are there?

What did the internship program include?

How can people find out about them?

That's one, and then two, uh, relative to Senate Bill 1700, uh developing this pipeline with CPS, which applaud applaud.

I think I've been saying since I arrived that we got to build what we need now and into the future.

And so should that pass, could you tell me what that pipeline would look like?

I'm gonna let my colleagues on the line talk a little bit about the first part of that question, then we can revisit the um measures that we're trying to advance in Springfield.

Hello, this is Director Leal, um, director of recruitment and internships.

And I'm I'm thinking Jason is referring to me.

Um, in regards to these pipe uh pipelines, pathways, we're looking to create these relationships with the colleges as we already have relationships with them, but to build on them as well as high schools um to kind of set the pace for them in their careers, um building awareness of the career opportunities, um, creating a an environment for them so that that their processes are a little less stressful.

Um we tend to see, you know, some have testing anxieties.

So if we have a test in an environment that they're familiar with, um it might ease them and we'll have more passing uh the the test portions, um, providing mock interviews for them to prepare them for for the career, and um, you know, application assistance, jail tours, panel discussions, things like that just to prepare them for what the career is um what is involved in the career.

Which population are we talking about?

The the college one?

The college pipeline or the the high school?

So the the college pipeline as well as we would like to do something with the high schools.

Okay, and so what I was asking is that if you're able to do something with the high schools, were you describing what that would look like?

That what you just shared, is that what it would look like from the high school perspective?

Correct, the high school and the college, we can incorporate those items that I suggested.

So there's no is there any kind of curriculum built around what you're proposing that is more comprehensive than what than what you just shared.

So um I would defer to Dr.

Rainey on um we have discussions on curriculum and that would require MLEs with specific colleges, and she can expand on that as they've been working on it.

So, what Dr.

Leal is referencing is the we don't have a standardized curriculum as of yet that we are working on with colleges and universities.

What we are working on is we have about 10 universities in the area that we are working on MOUs to get discounted tuition for our staff then to attend those universities so that way they can continue on their higher educational experience to then fulfill additional positions within the sheriff's office.

Okay, that's a little bit different than a pipeline.

And so, as an as an educator, um, I'm gonna really encourage that when we're talking about universities and specifically when we're talking about any kind of relationship with CPS, that we are also speaking about curriculum, something that is comprehensive that is measurable, that we say we have this many young people that got into this program, and as a result, this is what they will learn, and this is what they will be able to do, and these are the careers that they will be able to apply for.

I think being very, very specific for again, Commissioner Tower stamps, especially when we're talking about education, it's important for me for to hear that there's been some real intention and some thoughtfulness put into it and not just you know, buzzwords like pipeline and comprehensive and no, I want to hear substance and and substance begins with saying we have spent time talking with educators and people in this field to build out a curriculum and this is what it would look like, so on and so forth.

Um, lastly, I think it was Jason said you guys are doing like 20 job fairs per month.

So if you're doing 20 job fairs per month and you still have a 200 plus vacancies, where is the disconnect happening between the people that's showing up at the job fairs and actually hiring people and what metrics, mechanism, whatever you want to call it, do you have that demonstrates the effectiveness of the job fair?

And the reason that this is so important to me is because we we sit here and we hear job fare and it sounds good.

We had a job fair, we attended the job fair.

But if the job fair is not actually resulting in people hired, then I'm questioning the effectiveness of the job fair beyond just the outreach measure.

So, how are you all assessing the effectiveness of the job fairs relative to people being hired in the vacancies?

Tammy Leal, Director of Recruitment and Internships.

In regards to your camera, please.

Um I'm sorry.

Is it possible to come your camera on?

Sure.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I'm sorry, Lynn.

Okay.

Uh Tammy Leal, Director of Recruitment and Internships.

In regards to the job fair, how do we quantify is um we have an iPad that we collect data?

And so when we speak to individuals that come to our tables or booth areas, we collect their information so that we can follow up with them via an email and keep that connection with them, letting them know of future in events or webinars or things like that that we can answer more questions and also we take that information that's provided in the iPad and then I compare that to our applicants.

And so great.

When you compare that information, how does that information rate with people actually being hired from the job fair?

Right.

So for my information, I base basically because of our merit board, I don't have all that detail.

And so someone else from our team might be able to provide that.

Wait a minute, wait a minute, one a minute.

I'm sorry, repeat what you just said because I got I didn't understand it.

Sorry.

So the information that I collect is merely on the applicants and not on the hiring side because I only do the recruitment portion.

So our plans are to connect that information to get who are the applicants versus who are actually hired.

So whose responsibility is it to find out if you're actually hiring people from the job fair?

And how are you tracking the information?

So this is my thing.

If I cannot demonstrate that the job fairs are effective with actually hiring people, why are we doing 20 a month?

If you cannot tell me, we've done 20 job fairs a month, and as a result of doing these job fairs, we've hired X amount of people that actually attended the job fair.

That's a real that's a lot of job fairs to attend in a month to sponsor, host, co-host, however, you're doing it, to not be able to come here.

You mention it on a piece of paper that we did the job fair, and then when I say, Well, how many people got hired from the job fair?

You all don't have that information, and you're doing the 20 a month.

Sorry, Peter Kramer, special counsel for labor affairs.

Um, I know we do keep metrics of how much engagement we get at each job fair.

I can follow up with you on data.

Okay, we're gonna stop this.

We're gonna stop following up with me.

Okay.

When you all come here, it's called homework, and you knew when you were coming, you knew what was in your report, you knew in your report that you wrote that it said we do this many job fairs, and this is how we're engaging, and all your other buzzwords.

What I want to see from you is the actual result of the work that you're doing, not the buzzwords, not engagement, not my matrix, not my no.

I want you all to be able to report out when you come here with your beautiful reports.

We've had 20 job fairs.

At 20 of the job fairs that we had, we hired we had this many people, we had this many engagements.

From those engagements, we hired this many people in these positions.

That's comprehensive to me.

That speaks to the issues of these vacancies, and it also speaks to the issue of when people are calling out my office.

I'll just leave it on me, Tara.

I don't know if they're calling other people's office.

But I know that when I'm out at events, people are saying, constituents are saying, I applied for this job, I applied for the sheriff's office, I apply for this, I went to the job fair, but I haven't heard from anybody I didn't get the job.

And so, what would be helpful for me is to hear your side to say, no, this is the process, and not just we took their name, put them in an iPad, and we keep them engaged.

People are unemployed and they need work and they're coming to these 20 plus job fairs that you're hiring in the hopes that they will secure employment.

And I think minimally you should be able to say how that effort has resulted in people hired.

I don't think that's too much to ask, Mr.

Hernandez.

Commissioner Stance.

Yes, I don't appreciate your tone.

Oh, versus hold on one second.

When you say stuff like that, Mr.

Hernandez, that's like particularly to women of my descent when you say your I don't like your tone, I don't appreciate your tone.

That's not the best use of language because it becomes more inflammatory.

And my and and this is not about my tone.

This is about me saying, I get it, you've done 20 job fairs.

How many people have you hired?

How does my tone, how does my tone get factored into me just asking, can you tell me how many people are getting hired as a result of these job fairs?

We were asked six days ago to come up with a deck to explain our efforts as an agency with over 5,000 employees.

I apologize that the amount of information that we're ready to share today doesn't suit your needs.

I truly do care about that.

We've been very forthcoming with this board.

I'm very, very accessible.

We encourage you to hold a hiring fair in your district if you'd like.

Job fairs are complicated places.

There's might be 30 places there seeking to recreate recruit individuals.

We go there with our teams, we make our best case for the services that we have to provide.

We walk them through the process.

It's not as easy as coming to work as an administrative assistant where there's a degree of background, yes, but these are complicated roles that require significant background checks.

Um, you know, uh a commitment uh to spend a great deal of your life in training.

It's complicated.

And we came to this board in an attempt to show that we take these issues very seriously.

We can't answer every single question that a commissioner might have.

We've demonstrated that we're always willing to follow up with you if you have additional questions that weren't addressed.

But the Cook County Sheriff's is an independently elected office holder who sets up systems, his own HR department, his own recruitment systems, and we do our best.

And these are difficult circumstances.

We want to talk about challenges around recruitment.

We should have a conversation about how law enforcement has been disparaged and how it's difficult to recruit because people have varying degrees of appreciation and understanding for the role that law enforcement has.

We do everything we can to recruit people to work here, and I have demonstrated time and time again, as has the sheriff, that we were willing to come back to you and answer any question you have.

I I think we have 10 people on the line.

We don't have all that information in front of us.

I apologize.

Okay, so I'm gonna say first and foremost, Jason, thank you for always following up with me.

So we'll get that out the way.

I don't think we're questioning your accessibility.

I don't even think I'm questioning the office.

My question was really specific for the 10 people that you got on this line and for the however many people you have on that day, is real simple.

Without all of the background of how difficult the job is, I have a son that's the U.S.

Capitol Police Officer.

I have all the deference in the world for law enforcement.

There's and we don't have to get into that right now because my question remains really simple.

Of the job fairs that you're doing, of the engagement that you're tracking, whose responsibility is it to say as a result of the work that we're putting forward in this particular effort, however difficult it may be.

How do we know how many people got hired from this job there?

It is really quite simple without all of the largess and in the the extras about how difficult law enforcement is and people disparaging law enforcement and all of that.

My question really remains quite simple.

I have no new information since the last time you asked me that question, but I will follow up with you.

Can you please send that to my office and then we'll do we'll also disperse it to the remainder of the uh commissioners?

And I will say um this is not the first time Commissioner Stamps has asked for these numbers in the past, so I know um we'll do our due diligence as you know, chair of the labor committee to just um we were trying to narrow down the uh specific uh things that we were discussing about just because there's so many departments, so we wanted to make the presentations as concise as possible.

But if there is additional complexities, I know my team um is taking note of that, and we're gonna be uh following up with the appropriate offices to ensure that we um close some of those you know uh gaps in in um in the questions that are uh raised.

So, Commissioner Vice Chair Sam's thank you for that, and we'll be sure to um follow up with the sheriff's office in regards to that um because I I know that this has been a recurring question that you have had regarding uh job fairs and the effectiveness of job fairs, and it has not been targeted towards the sheriff's office or anybody's target in any way that's reporting out that they have a job.

These have been questions that Commissioner Stamps has even has raised of Cook County Health and other agencies.

So I just wanted to clear clearly.

But going forward, Mr.

Hernandez, it is highly unvisable to say to a Cook County Commissioner, and particularly to me, I don't appreciate your tone.

I don't appreciate you all not having the information that I requested several times as a Cook County Commissioner.

Thank you so much.

Understood.

Uh Commissioner Vasquez, you had raised your hand.

Thank you, Chair.

Um, I did have a question or a couple of questions rather.

The first one is what are the civilian positions that are open.

Sue, can you answer that question, please?

I'm sorry, I deferred to Rich uh Director uh Richard Diver.

He has that information available.

Oh, hello.

So I want to make my sure my camera was on.

Richard Diver, Deputy Director of Talent at the Sheriff's Office, Department of Human Resources.

The current positions right now that are posted.

I don't have the budget in front of me, the exact line items, but we do have two assistant general counsel positions open.

Um we have a security systems technician and compliance specialist within our Bureau of Information Technology.

A behavioral health specialist that's a mental health specialist within our community resource center.

You don't have to have to give me all 96.

No, I I wasn't, I was just trying to uh update you on current active postings that my recruiters are working in right now.

Yeah, no, thank you.

Go ahead, ma'am.

I'm oh hi, uh Commissioner.

Um, this is Sue Choi, I'm the executive director of human resources, and um so while we do have 90 something um open positions, uh depending on the budget and and sort of depending on the ebb and flow of our hiring, uh I think that what director Diver is um referring to or ones that are say currently on our website, but we are in a we're on constant motion posting positions.

So uh the number of vacancies may not reflect that the number of positions you would see on our website.

Um I just wanted to clarify that.

Thank you.

It does sound like it's uh a mixed um assortment of types of positions.

I do think it would be helpful to understand what that breakdown is if these are you know administrative roles, legal counsel, things of that nature.

I think it'd be helpful.

I know that um as Commissioner Stamps was mentioning, uh, we do, my office likes to put in some vacancies in our newsletter, let folks know what's available.

Absolutely.

I think we can we can provide a breakdown of the uh civilian positions that we have vacancies for.

Uh and yes, as you indicated, they're going to be a wide range of things.

We have everything from administrative, legal, uh, community service positions.

So I'm sure we can provide a breakdown for you.

And um, yes, absolutely happy to if we're posting positions to communicate with your office so that you can communicate with your constituents.

Thank you.

Um and then on page three of the presentation, uh, there was a discussion around um turnover, and I think it was largely categorized as uh people who have left.

Is there a breakdown in terms of retirees versus termination?

I did see there was uh some number around resignations, but uh we did talk about how there's a retiring workforce.

Also curious to see if there were any folks that were um terminated.

Thank you.

Thank you, Commissioner.

I do have a breakdown.

This was as of May 11th.

Uh 27 sought other employment.

Uh 26 job dissatisfaction, eight personnel uh personal reasons, seven not specified, six relocation, five left to attend school, uh, four in lieu of discharge, meaning that they left um before they were terminated, uh, three health reasons, two internal investigations, two leave of absence, um, one failed out of the academy.

Oh, thank you for that breakdown.

Um catch up.

Would it be all right if you could also send that to the chair?

Absolutely.

Thank you so much.

Um, and then uh, you know, I guess related to this, there was also a mention of uh learning and development workshops um that are utilized to um I guess skill build skills within the workforce.

If I could get some details around those.

Hi.

So last year what we ended up doing is part of the in-service training that we have for all of our sworn personnel.

They went through and did like a leadership day where they learned how to coach their staff more effectively within the workforce.

Um they learned about effective communication skills with four different generations working in the workforce, and then the um other workshops that we're doing are more like a lunch and learn type one-hour team session where we're learning about um and they're highly engaging as sessions.

It's not just a lecture session.

What we're doing is learning about um emotional intelligence skills, um, communicational effectiveness skills, um, difficult conversations, um, managing staff, managing up conversations within the workforce.

So really a lot of the soft skills to help our leaders managers and we explain that everybody leads from every seat that you sit in within the sheriff's office so they're accessible to everybody.

What about a skill sharing and um competency for our new recruits, especially if we are going to have a change in state law where younger people are able to come in to serve as correction officers.

What is the sort of development that we're doing there because although it seems like most folks are leaving for different reasons, you know, we want to make sure we have quality um folks at the uh Cook County jail and we don't have more people who are leaving in lieu of discharge or because there's an internal investigation.

Yeah great question do you want Mike do you want to talk about the training the account thank you commissioner I as part of my duties I oversee both the police academy and the DOC Academy.

The curriculum of both academies uh in my opinion is extremely tough so we're we're definitely putting the recruits through their paces on both sides um as far as going younger nothing is gonna change in that curriculum other than their ability to say carry a firearm they won't be able to do that.

What's unique about working in the jail is we're the only jail in the state that doesn't allow 18 year olds to work in so it's it's around the state it's proven that curriculum that we follow by the state is developed for those that are age 18 and above so it's already developed for that and we feel that we're gonna have a direct pipeline into these schools.

We're gonna get kids that want to jump into law enforcement right away and they don't want to waste those three years whether it's going to school or or doing something they want to get right in and we're gonna be able to get them in.

We're gonna be able to get them on their career path we're gonna be able to get them into a position where their wildest law enforcement dreams will be fulfilled and they'll be able to do it here at the sheriff's office so by the time they're 21 they've got all that ex real world experience inside the jail the best training ground there is and then they'll be able to go and transition into our police department or our courts so we're really excited about this bill and uh we're we're hoping it it passes but I don't think there's gonna be a drop off in in like the level of maturity or experience the the the academy is built for those those kids and we're excited to have that direct pipeline from the school I um are you around a lot of 18 year olds I I I have a uh senior myself so um I I do think you know especially some of these kids who have been through the pandemic um there is I think some um social emotional learning uh that they would benefit from and you know um I do think that um the younger generation would do better with additional you know intentional workshops and skill sharing um and so while I understand that you know this um it sounds like the training and the programming behind it is set by the state and it's predetermined I do think it's a worthy investment and looking at this you know should the state law pass incoming class is younger um the way in which they have been uh raised and engaged and socialized is you know different from you know my age group and certainly others um and so I I do think that there needs to be some you know intentional guidance um for that cohort um should they um be um um admitted um yeah commissioner I I'll say this um I agree with you um the the curriculum is set by the state but each individual academy is able to expand on what the curriculum is and introduce our own program so I will commit to you as this is new to all of us that we will look into um a bridge program into the academy for for a lot of those life skills that maybe they haven't had or um we will commit to that and we'll put together a plan and I'm happy to share that plan when this becomes a reality.

I mean, if you have suggestions again, we're able to take our time in the academy and from what we're supposed to, you know, our required hours, 320 in the academy for corrections.

We're able to use all the other time to to do what we need to do.

So I'd be happy to work with you.

Thank you.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Oh, no, no, no, please.

I believe So Choi was online.

I don't know if there was additional comments that hi, I need it to be.

Um hi.

This is Sue Troy, yeah, uh executive director of human resources.

I did want to say that um, I mean, we already we already do a lot of work with universities and colleges with respect to our recruiting.

Um we go into classrooms, we do presentations, showcases, and a wide range of things that helps us with our current recruiting.

Um, we've already started to plot a lot of those strategies that work for us for the older uh applicants and have already started communicating with high schools and building those relationships.

So just to be clear, I mean, we are putting together a plan that is actually pretty well formed in many ways.

We have we know a lot of the things that um do resonate, and um, and so we are gearing up and we'll be ready to go very quickly should uh this come to pass.

Thank you.

And I, you know, just to reiterate my my uh concern isn't recruitment, it's just making sure that when these individuals are hired, that they are able to learn and grow into these positions in a way that will benefit the uh sheriff's office in the long term, they'll stay, right?

Because they're getting investments and they're learning things, but then they're also able to communicate with the residents in our Cook County jail because they're also our residents, um, and we're avoiding any issues down the road um in terms of you know um any kind of um disciplinary actions that might come from, you know, a person who is very young and perhaps didn't get more investments than they needed to for various reasons.

I just want to make sure that we are ready to ensure that we're working with these new recruits in a way that benefits everybody.

Absolutely, and just to add, I mean, we are you know, our internship program, as we've said, is continuing to grow.

I think that's a great opportunity to um to help uh future applicants learn skills, and um you know, while we also plan to go into schools, I do I do see a component of our recruiting where we're bringing um potential applicants to us to show them you know what this job entails uh so that we do ensure that uh everyone knows what you know what they're what they're getting into and making sure that they have the best skill set um and mindset going in.

Thank you.

And I know there's other folks who have questions who might be related to this.

I only have one left.

Um thank you.

Um so this I think is for you, Mr.

Kramer.

How often are you all meeting with the with the labor groups um within the county sheriff department?

Daily, I would say.

Daily.

Yeah.

Okay, fantastic.

Thank you.

Different units, different times, but regularly.

So thanks.

Vice Chair Stamps had a follow-up, uh, Commissioner Aguilar, and then Commissioner Larry.

It was mentioned that there's a pretty comprehensive um I'll use orientation for this programming.

So I was curious as to what currently exists that addresses implicit bias and cultural competency in the training.

Uh, as far as the training itself, in both the police training and the DOC training, there are state uh required hours for cultural competency, implicit bias, and a whole host of other things.

Um that's covered.

Um we go above and beyond.

I'm I I can't recall off the top of my head that the number of required hours, but we always go in excess of what the requirement is.

Um so it is addressed at the academy level for our both recruits.

Um if you have a question specific to onboarding and orientation, I'll defer to HR.

Um hi, uh C Choi again, um human resources.

Uh with with check to civilians and with all new hires, actually, um, we do new higher orientation.

So recruits coming into the Department of Corrections or civilians that we may be hiring, there's always a new higher orientation, and we touch on that.

Uh, make sure we go over the policies, and uh everyone has to complete annual training.

Um, so that's a requirement.

And in addition to that, human resources, our employee relations division often does specialized training about things like implicit bias um and similar related uh topics, sometimes because a department feels that their staff could use additional training.

We're always available on demand, so we're kind of a tackling it on multiple levels and are you know always available to um to help.

I'm just curious, is that um training in person, or is it like a module that they follow and answer some questions at the end, or is that you know person-to-person level engagement that talks about cultural competency and implicit bias, and then also who um facilitates that hi commissioner um see choy again, um human resources.

I uh we have a combination, so there we do have some online training as you described that has slides and questions, but we also do in-person training.

Oftentimes, uh maybe if it's a large department, we'll break it up into smaller groups.

But uh it's it's human resources and specifically the division of employee relations.

Um my director uh receives these requests, and we we work with the departments to schedule um face-to-face in person training.

Thank you so much.

That's that is all chair.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Commissioner Angular raised your hand, Commissioner Alari.

Thank you, Chairman.

Um, in the last five years, there's been like a low morale with uh law enforcement or law enforcement, and now when you recruits, what mechanisms are you gonna be putting in place to lift the morale when they come into the new job?

That's a great question, Commissioner.

Um so when they're in the academy, um, there is a mentor system that we utilize.

Um we we have a series of field training officers that we um kind of have um mentor our recruits, our instructors mentor our recruits.

Um we we have a whole host of different programs that we run through the academy.

Um aside from curriculum, um we we bring in third party groups to discuss with our recruits about lived experiences, lessons learned, um, just so nobody's caught off guard.

It it's a we acknowledge it's it is a very tough place to work.

Um we try to lay a foundation for them so by the time they get there, they've been exposed to difficult situations.

They have a mentor system that they can rely on.

Um we've invested in our LD program through with our supervisors to allow our supervisors uh to understand just how important having a mentor is and and being positive in the workplaces.

So it's kind of a all hands-on-deck approach um that starts at first day of the academy and then through their FTO program, and and hopefully they become those mentors at some point for the next generation.

Okay, thank you.

Okay, Commissioner Alari, did you have a question?

Did you want to call your committee to order?

Both.

Okay, great.

With which would you like me to do first?

Um whichever do you like?

Do you want to just I I believe we're waiting for quorum for the health and hospitals, so maybe we'll give it a minute, maybe you'll do your question first.

Okay, I'll do the question first.

So first I want to say um thank you to Jason and team for always getting me into the jail for my uh many visits.

And also thank you for getting me out of the jail after those visits.

Um that was a joke.

All right.

So relative to your day daily meetings with labor, uh, what are you hearing relative to the um changed and altered EM program?

I'd be interested to hear that.

And specifically, what are you hearing relative to the changes to that program from the Teamsters?

So I think the Teamsters were originally upset when they heard the news, but this was approximately over a year ago.

Um we've met with them well over 30 times since then about the transition, um, which is almost complete in terms of we know where everyone's gonna go with the two or three exceptions.

Um but we've we worked with them hand in hand to try they had a demand of us, and we didn't really concede it, but it wasn't it wasn't um overly objectionable, so we basically came to an agreement on the placement of the staff.

There were some testing and some interviews done for all of them, but um I think both sides used you know the good faith efforts to meet in the middle, and I think we've achieved it as best we could.

Um it's uh similar process with the civilian unions.

Um we uh we work through it like anything else.

Thank you.

That's it, Chair.

Okay.

Um I think I don't see any additional questions.

Um thank you for your presentation.

We will follow up uh with written questions from the committee members and any other questions that were not um asked that uh rise or that um are sent over to our office.

Um we will ask now the state attorney's office to come up followed by the treasurers.

Um just because we are over time, we're gonna ask the presentation to be shortened into a few minutes, just so that we could take questions, um, and then we will uh again any questions that we do not get to, we will formally um send them in writing and we'll expect um a response.

You may proceed.

Excuse me a second, Chairman.

We are gathering form.

We can get to Chairman.

Thank you, Chair and I uh Vice Chair Stamps.

Uh my name is John Horahan, I'm the chief financial officer for the State's attorney's office.

Um I'm here with uh my colleagues, Director of Human Resources, Jim DeSakis, and Director of Recruiting, Hollis Hanover.

Um it's our pleasure to uh discuss with you the hiring initiatives of the States attorney.

Uh while I'm hopeful I can address questions if there are some about data and numbers, I'll leave it to my colleagues to really talk about how uh the state's attorney has uh undertaken efforts to get ahead of attrition.

Uh this fiscal year alone, our office has been able to hire uh more than 40 employees greater than those who have left.

So uh we are filling vacancies, and uh we believe by the end of this year we will be functionally at uh 100 percent utilization of our staff, uh keeping up with uh regular attrition and exceeding it.

I'll turn it over to uh to Jim first and uh and Hollis.

Thank you, John.

Good afternoon, Commissioners.

Uh Jim DeSakis, Director of Human Resources, uh, along with our director of legal hiring, uh Hollis Hanover.

Um when it comes to reducing vacancy rates and improving hiring time timelines.

Um there are ongoing vacancies across attorney and support staff positions, which strain uh supervision ratios, compress uh caseload quality, and place disproportionate burden on existing staff, undermining the office's ability to deliver uh justice consistency.

For fiscal year uh 26, the office has 1452 um positions, of which uh 924 positions are uh assistant states attorney positions.

Uh 820 are filled positions.

There are 104 vacancies with accepted offers to date.

We have 103 positions uh in the investigator uh unit.

We have 97 of those positions filled with five vacancies that are available.

Uh as far as executive and administrative staff, there are 425 positions, 363 are filled, and 62 vacancies.

When it comes to recruitment, we've centralized job postings across platforms, standardized competency-based applicant screening, and tightened coordinated HR and hiring manager workflows to eliminate redundancy, reduce avoidable time to fill delays.

We have 50 paid summer interns, 7-11 interns positions, 80 unpaid interns positions.

We have 231 applicants for summer um assistant states attorney positions for 2026.

All applicants have received at least one interview.

119 applicants have received three interviews.

More than 200 of those interviews, uh more than 200 hours of interviews have taken place with those applicants.

We have 96 applicants with accepted offers for hire for this August of 2026.

When it comes to our timeline milestones, we've targeted reductions in average days to hire through accelerated offer issuance, expendited background clearance pipelines, and a structured pre-boarding program that converts accepted offers to active staff without delay.

And as you've heard in the past with the other presentations, it usually takes uh national average about 90 days to fill a position.

I believe we're somewhere around 40 days, 40 to 45 days to fill our positions.

Speed does not compromise integrity.

Every process improvement preserves rigorous vetting to ensure all candidates are qualified, mission aligned, and prepared to uphold the state's attorney's obligation to the people of Cook County.

When it comes to reducing uh reducing employee turnover, the challenge high turnover disrupts case and continuity.

Uh burdens supervisors and erodes the uh institutional knowledge that sustains prosecution prosecutorial quality.

Um each departure represents a loss of expertise and case history, and sustained attrition undermines public accountability accountability and trust.

We have five points for retention uh in our strategy.

It's being a competitive compensation uh strategy is number one.

There's ongoing salary benchmarking against comparable offices and public sector peers to ensure market-aligned pay structures.

Ongoing benchmarking ensures salaries uh remain competitive with peer offices.

Structured onboarding and mentorship.

Um there are first are there are formal first year mentorship pairings uh which occur 30, 60, and 90 day check-ins to integrate and retain new hires from day one.

When it comes to supervision and feedback culture, um there's regular performance conversations, stay interviews, survey for mental health advocacy, education and support, and development and developing uh transparent growth expectations at every organizational level.

When it comes to leadership development pathways, um develop a clear internal promotion criteria and skill building programs designed to retain high performers through visible advancement opportunities.

And at the exit interviews, um we review uh the departure date data to identify and I uh address any root causes of attrition before patterns become uh structural.

Retention is a professional standards issue.

Every attorney, every attorney who stays builds a stronger and more accountable office.

Okay.

I apologize for the question.

We we are gonna break for a quick second.

Um, just because we need a call quorum for a committee, we're uh uh a little tardy for that, so we want to make sure that it's on the roll.

Chairman will proceed.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Madam Secretary.

With the hour having reached one p.m.

I'd like to call to order the meeting of the Cook County Health and Hospitals Committee.

Thank you, Chairman.

Commissioner Aguilar.

Here.

Commissioner Naya.

Present.

Commissioner Britton.

Here.

Thank you, sir.

Commissioner Britton is present participating remotely.

Commissioner Daly is absent.

Commissioner Degnan is absent.

Commissioner Gaynor.

Commissioner McCaskill.

She was connected.

Are you still connected, ma'am?

Commissioner McCasco.

Here.

Commissioner Caskett.

Can you hear me?

I'm here.

There you go.

Commissioner McCasco is present and participating remotely.

Commissioner Miller.

Miller here.

Commissioner Moore is excused.

Commissioner Marita.

Commissioner Marita, I will mark as absent.

Commissioner Kevin Morrison.

Thank you, sir.

Commissioner Sean Morrison is absent.

Commissioner Scott.

Present.

Thank you, sir.

And participating remotely.

Commissioner Stamps.

Present.

Thank you.

Commissioner Trevor.

Here.

Thank you.

Commissioner Vasquez.

Mr.

Chair.

Present.

Mr.

Chair, you do have a quorum.

Let me revisit those that did not respond.

Commissioner Daly.

Dagnan, excuse for more.

Absent for Marita and absent for Sean Morrison.

We will revisit your quorum.

When we return, and you need remote participation.

Can we do that now as well, sir?

Sure.

Is there a move?

Yep.

Moved by Commissioner Vice Chair and I.

Is there a second?

Roll call.

Second is by Commissioner Trevor.

Commissioner Aguilar, your vote, sir.

Aye.

Commissioner Anaya.

Aye.

Commissioner Britton.

Aye.

Commissioner Daly.

Commissioner Daly is present.

And I will add him to the roll call.

Commissioner Dagnan is absent.

Commissioner Gaynor.

Is aye?

Thank you.

Commissioner McCaskill.

Commissioner McCaskill, your vote is aye for remote participation.

Commissioner Miller, aye.

Commissioner Moore is absent.

Excuse.

Commissioner McCasco, that's a I, correct.

Yes.

Thank you.

Commissioner Marita.

Commissioner Morita present and aye.

Commissioner Marita is present and participating remotely.

Thank you.

Commissioner Kevin Morrison.

Thank you.

Commissioner Sean Morrison is absent.

Commissioner Scott.

Commissioner Scott is aye.

And participating remotely.

Commissioner Stamps.

Thank you.

Commissioner Trevor.

Aye.

Thank you.

Commissioner Vasquez.

Aye.

Thank you.

Mr.

Chair is present.

Thank you, sir.

We have 14 ayes.

And of that one, two are permitted are participating remotely.

And then you have three absent.

They are Degnan, excuse from Moore, and Sean Morrison.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you.

I'll now recess the Health and Hospitals Committee meeting until the call of the Chair.

Thank you, ma'am.

Thank you.

We will reconvene the labor committee.

And then we'll um would you be able to summarize in the next maybe two minutes or so?

Yeah, I believe so.

A couple of slides, sure.

Okay, I believe our next slides were our demographics.

There they are.

And I won't take too long on these.

Um you'll see that we have a majority female workforce as well, um, with 62 and 37 percent uh male.

Uh our racial and ethnic composition uh is there as well, and I believe you know we have a what 47% versus 53 percent or 56 percent.

Next slide.

Um talking about our collaborative uh labor management hiring initiatives, uh we have some shared goals.

Um it's fair and transparent hiring criteria, equitable job posting and outreach, grievance informed uh process improvements, and then uh mutual accountability for uh diversity goals.

Um proposed collaboration, joint labor management hiring uh review committees, union input on competency uh based screening frameworks, collaborative review of offering classification timelines, and co-developed onboarding standards to reduce early attrition.

In establishing and expanding our pathway programs, um we have law school partnerships, partnerships formalized through existing internship pipelines, uh broader MOU-based law school uh relationships, also internship and clerkship programs.

Uh the state's attorney's uh 7-Eleven law clerk program runs uh fall, spring, uh, and summer sessions.

Uh interns are paired with ASA supervisors and criminal divisions for hands-on case experience, including legal research, motions drafting, and discovery support.

The program is highly competitive and open to uh active law students in good standing.

When it comes to the uh diversity pipeline initiatives, targeted our outreach are to um HBCUs, uh HSIs, and first generation law school or law students to broaden the candidate pool.

A proposed expansion of current recruitment efforts is uh in place as well.

Experienced lateral pathways.

Um we've streamlined entry uh for qualified lateral hires.

State's attorney's office uh actively posts experience ASA roles across civil, criminal, and juvenile divisions with competitive salary ranges.

Also um we have alumni and retention networks, uh ongoing engagement with former uh state attorney attorney state's attorney's office attorneys to support re-entry referrals and community uh reputation building.

And that pretty much concludes our presentation.

Thank you.

Are there any uh questions?

Commissioner Stampson, followed by Commissioner Vasquez?

Thank you, Chair, and thank you for your report.

I was um curious uh what was conspicuous to me was not the mention of um what I wanted to know is what efforts are being made to make the workforce more diverse.

I was looking at your racial and ethnic composition.

So my question is based on this graph.

Yeah, so at least on the ASA side.

Can you make sure to introduce your record?

Yes, I'm Hollis Hanover.

I'm the director of hiring recruitment, um, legal hiring specifically.

Um so on the ASA side, we are doing a lot in relationships with the area law schools and our laterals to be able to focus on BALSA memberships, first gen groups um within the law schools, and really cultivate the relationships with the career services offices so that we are um an employer that um various groups of students are interested in.

And we're also we've also um implemented a program this year called Prosecutor for a Day, where our director of training and curriculum, we are hosting groups of students at 26th Street and Daily Center to really give them a behind the scenes look at what it looks like to be an assistant states attorney and provide them with all the information about what the job entails and have presentations from ASAs and judges about the work that the office does.

So all of these things is resulting in increased number of applicants.

Um I can tell you just from our internship program for this summer.

We had 500 students apply for summer volunteer internships, both 250 undergrad and 250 law students.

So that's a huge increase from what we had seen in the past, and we're really excited about it.

Good stuff.

What's the ethnic makeup of those students that have applied for this volunteer opportunity?

Um great question.

I don't have the exact numbers, um, but certainly something that we can provide.

Thank you so much.

Um the other thing I noticed was this diversity pipeline, which includes HBCUs.

I was curious as to which specific HBCUs, what is that pipeline look like, what are the and um has this intentional effort to HBCUs yielded actual hires from historically black colleges and universities, and if so, how many or what percentage?

Yep, I can give you the breakdown, but um our students from Southern University Law Center, Howard University, um school in North Carolina, I'm forgetting the name at the moment.

BTNT.

Yes.

Um so we have strong relationships with the schools.

We've done on-campus interviewing and remote, uh they do on-campus interviewing now primarily remotely as well, have resulted in of our 7 Eleven's coming this summer.

We have three students coming from HBCU schools.

I appreciate the very specific number that's important to me, and I'm sorry if I'm ignorant on this, but what's 7-Eleven?

Um, under Illinois State Rule 7-11, students who have completed their second year of law school can actually step into the shoes of an attorney for most government agencies under an AS under a government um attorney's supervision.

So we have students, law students who will be in the courtroom under the supervision of an ASA, actually able to do trial motions and arguments.

Um is that just me?

Okay.

No, you didn't know either.

Okay, okay.

Thankfully, you know you are.

I would hope you know you're an attorney, so I'm I'm gonna hope you know the lingo of your discipline.

But you did you know?

No, you knew?

Is one down the black from your house at seven?

I only I only say that um to just lighten the the the spirit or the energy in the room, but also I think it's important to take in in consideration when you are um creating these reports that not everyone is uh as uh familiar with the language of the discipline.

So, in the interest to make sure that we are all having the same conversation, if you can be explicit and explain you know explicit in the language or have a glossary of terms or something so that we all know what exactly we're talking about.

So that's the reader teacher and me, the reading teacher and me showing up.

Um, but I just like to know that we treat the language before we get into the conversation so that we're all having the same conversation.

Absolutely.

Um I wanted to know uh this 80 why why do you have 80 unpaid internships?

So the county budget provided for 50 paid positions for our summer, 7, 11 supervised students.

Um and so these are additional students, both undergraduates, first year law students who aren't eligible for that supervision program, and even our rising 3L, 2L law students who wish to volunteer as opposed to be paid for the position to gain experience with the office.

There are a number of law schools that actually provide their public interest focused students with stipends that will be more um beneficial for the student than what our our hourly wage would be.

Is are those 80 positions included in when what you're describing about the stipends or separate?

Separate, yeah.

Thank you so much.

I appreciate it.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you.

Commissioner Vasquez.

Thank you, Chair.

Um, how big is your LaRue unit staffing-wise?

Commissioner, I don't have the number off the top of my head.

I apologize.

Okay, if you could please give me that number.

I would love to know how big the unit is, if it is fully staffed, and what the capacity to take on cases is for that staff size.

Certainly.

Great.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank yes, Commissioner.

Vice Chair Stamps.

Thank you.

How still will we be forward?

And could you make sure that everybody has it?

Because I I'm puzzled when you all don't have that kind of basic interview.

A number in mind, but I can't, I don't want to just give you a number and not.

I understand, but you know, we're here and we kind of knew we were coming.

And that's an important department when we're talking about your agency.

So I just think it's important to have the data to support those questions.

So I think my first question was how soon would you be forwarding that information over?

I'll be working on it as soon as I get back to the office.

Thank you very kindly.

Thank you.

And we'll forward it as soon as we receive it.

Okay.

Uh thank you.

Um we will have the treasurer's office um is the final presentation, so we should be Chair Laurie.

We'll get to your committee fairly shortly.

Um, you may begin whenever Chair Naya, Vice Chair Sims, members of the committee, David Burns, Cook County Treasurer's Office.

Um to begin our efforts to reduce our vacancy rates and improve our hiring timeline.

Um we currently have four opening uh positions that we're we're actively uh promoting that are out there.

There's three in taxpayer services and one in database uh position.

Our hiring timeline roughly we shoot for the benchmark of about 45 days.

So that's from the request to hire to the job posting to conducting the interviews, extending an offer and bringing the individual on on board.

Next slide, please.

Um our efforts to reduce employee turnover have have been effective over the years.

Um primarily focused on training in engagement.

We've had a lot of individuals within the office that have expressed an opportunity or expressed a desire to improve their skill set, and we have we have followed suit by offering um uh training to them, whether it's technical in in SQL, which is SQL database, or advanced Excel, Microsoft Excel, or uh other initiatives as what as well.

We we attempt to um keep our employees trained in an effort as well to build institutional knowledge that will help us as we do the work of the of the treasurer's office.

Next slide, our demographics, we are 58 percent white, we are 42 percent minority, and our gender demographics are 32 percent female, 68 percent male as well.

Next slide, we are uh collaborating with SEIU Local 73, our union uh shop um for all our uh employee negotiations and union representation.

Next slide, our pipeline and pathways uh program centers around working with local colleges, the university of Chicago, Chicago public schools, and various law schools as well, uh law schools in an effort to bring individuals in that that want to be lawyers or are interested in in policy as as well.

And with that, I will hopefully I covered everything that that folks.

Well, you certainly got the trophy for the the quickest presentation, so we're appreciated uh appreciative of that.

Not sure if there's any questions on the floor for the treasurer's office.

I had one specifically in the presentation.

Um we didn't have a total of how many um total employees are in the office.

70.

70, okay.

And then uh are there any vacancies uh as of for now?

The four vacancies that we're we're currently hiring into.

Those are okay.

So is it a total of 74 or is it a total of the case?

Total of 78.

There were four that are kept in reserve, commissioner.

Okay, so we will have um total of 78 FTEs with uh um seventy-four.

Okay, four vacancies.

Okay, perfect.

One thing I I didn't mention, we do have 36 individuals that are fluent in a foreign language and covered by 13 different languages.

And if you like, I can send that to your office.

Yes, if you can, please.

We'll collect that data and ensure that um all committee members receive that information.

Any other questions for the treasurer's office?

Well, thank you so very much for your patience today and for holding off.

I know we're uh a few hours late, but um, we're very appreciative of you coming before this body and presenting on this information.

No problem.

Thank you.

Have a good one.

And mayor, before you adjourn, just for the record, I wanted to restate your attendance.

All members were present with the exception of an excused absence for Commissioner Moore.

And now he's present.

Thank you.

I was looking for you.

Thank you, sir.

Full attendance.

So you do have perfect attendance.

Thank you, sir.

Yes.

Um so without any further business before this committee, uh, we will adjourn.

Um that motion is by vice chair.

Ma'am, can you move the item again and just oh yes, absolutely.

We'll take a vote on it.

Thank you for the reminders.

So this I uh item it was for uh deferral.

This is item 26-12 uh 49.

Original motioner was Commissioner Dagnan, second by Commissioner Miller.

All those in favor signify by saying aye.

Aye, all those opposed, nays, ayes have it.

Without any further business before this committee, I'll entertain a motion uh to adjourn.

That is moved by vice chair stamps, second by commissioner.

Somebody seconded.

Oh, okay.

I'm like, I heard it, but he crept up on me.

Okay, my commissioner Larry.

Thank you.

Um all those in favor signify by saying aye.

Opposed, nays, ayes have it.

Thank you, everyone.

Thank you.

All right, we're back at Health and Hospitals, Chairman.