Good morning.

The Finance Committee of the Cook County Board will reconvene on the fiscal year 2027 budget of President Tony Crackwickel.

We'll begin with the Cook County Sheriff.

The honorable time has started.

Thank you so much.

And I

um I just want to make a point of saying up front for some of the commissioners who will not be here for my next one.

I just want to thank you all for the work over the years.

It's been a pleasure working with all of you, and it's been really helpful.

So I just wanted to thank those folks who are leaving.

I'll talk to you, I'm sure before you leave, but I just wanted to thank you up front.

Um so my budget for 20 uh 7 is 799 million.

Um we worked extensively with the president's office and many of you to get there and making some changes.

Um our budget was 774 million last year, so it's an increase of about 24 million, and the vast majority of it is salary and benefit increases.

Um we cut about 10 million to cover the increases.

Uh the increases were about 34 million.

Um we made some our cuts primarily were in our IT related area to get to the amount that we needed to get.

Um I'd be happy to answer any questions you

have.

Commissioner Lowry.

Thank you, Chair.

And uh Sheriff, thank you and thanks to your team.

Um I say it every time I'm I'm with you.

I appreciate uh your work.

I appreciate your willingness always to uh be responsive when I reach out, um, take care of me when I come visit.

Um, you know, yesterday or one of the days this week before today, we were speaking with the chief judge, and I brought up EM, and I was told you guys have about a hundred cases.

Is that accurate?

What's the 109?

All right, what's the what's the path forward with that?

Good

question.

Uh the um we've had extensive conversations with the chief judge's office and the statewide um EM program um that's run throughout the rest of the state.

Uh we have everything queued up.

I mean, literally, we if they called us today, we could have everything transferred by the end of the day.

Right.

Um, and everyone's great working with them.

It's just it's been a little bit frustrating because you can imagine 109 people, it's not fiscally the best thing to be doing to have a unit that's standing up to watch 109 people.

Yeah,

yeah.

So any any help there would be greatly appreciated.

As I say, everyone's working in good faith.

It's just it's just I don't know what's taking so long, but it's certainly and everyone would agree it's not on our side, but we can turn it over today.

You know, and you do that all the time.

You know, you're always open to um you say, look, if you have ideas, let me know.

And you'd like to help.

So to that end, you know, uh, for me, uh, I'm very pleased to see the numbers relative to the reduction with violent crime, but recidivism is just as important to me.

And we've talked, you and I, uh, and in this setting,

you

know, about some of the things I've learned and heard uh when I visited uh the jail, you know, directly from individuals who are about to come home and specifically one individual who shared that uh upon um going back home, went without behavioral health care for just days and found himself back in the system.

And we spoke about the connectivity issue.

Just wondering, are there any new initiatives or things that are going on relative to that you know overall wraparound piece that all of us need to

hear?

Uh next year, I think it's in June or July, uh, there's a new uh Medicaid funding uh formula that actually is somewhat positive, believe it or not, um, which will allow for providers to get uh reimbursed for services inside the jail, which they aren't getting right now.

So we've already talked with people.

We have people that come in the jail because we try to do the warm handoff.

You know, we're working with this individual, he's doing great.

He's taking, you know, if it's medications needed, he's taking his medications, he's going to classes and things are going well, and we try to do the warm handoff, and we do it with many, but there's many we don't, and we've been led to believe that this funding change will be very helpful for the providers.

It won't really do much for us, but it'll give them the it's not the incentive, it'll give them the resources to send someone into the place so that we can make the connection better there.

We have a lot of providers who uh are doing it right now, and it's great, but is you just pointed out, Bill, it's the it's what's happening on the outside.

I mean, things have dried up so badly in the mental health um side of things.