WHAT KIND OF WORLD IS IT WHEN A MOTHER CAN’T HELP OUT THE SON OF A FRIEND?

12/15/10

Yesterday, “reform” County Board President Toni Preckwinkle selected County Commissioner Robert Steele as president pro tempore of the County Board, meaning that young Mr. Steele will fill in for President Preckwinkle when she is away. Note that Mr. Steele originally became a Commissioner way back in 2006 when his mother, Bobbie Steele, appointed him to her seat when she retired. Nothing in young Mr. Steele’s background at the time of his appointment, other than his lineage, would have indicated that he would be a candidate, let alone a good candidate, for his mother’s job.

It was just a few days ago that Ms. Preckwinkle was chastising newly elected County Assessor Joe Berrios (but in a deferential manner, befitting Mr. Berrios’s position as both Ms. Preckwinkle’s friend and Chairman of the Cook County Regular Democratic Organization) for putting his son and his sister, both of whom have experience in assessing real estate, on the payroll at the Assessor’s office. (See my 12/10 post, “WHAT IS THIS WORLD COMING TO WHEN A FATHER CAN’T HELP OUT HIS SON?”) Can the selection of young Mr. Steele, despite his ethereal resume and utter lack of seniority on the Board, mean that Ms. Preckwinkle has been convinced over in the last few days of the virtues of nepotism? Perhaps holding office in Cook County, even for the shortest of periods, does that to people.

I have few problems with Ms. Preckwinkle’s selecting Robert Steele as her pro tem Board President, just as I have few, if any, problems with Joe Berrios putting his qualified relatives on the County payroll. What I have a problem with is Ms. Preckwinkle’s transparent hypocrisy in this matter…and the local press’s unabashed adulation of Ms. Preckwinkle as some kind of “reformer.”