Activist takes on 'Iceman' for 3rd County District 

By Amy Rothblatt

The upcoming election on Nov. 7 between Democrat Jerry "Iceman" Butler, the current Commissioner for the 3rd Cook County Board district, and Republican challenger Maurice Perkins involves two very determined candidates who have diverse and impressive backgrounds.

Incumbent Jerry "Iceman" Butler, who is finishing up his fifth four-year term, has worked hard on the budget to

 assure adequate funding for public safety and the Department of Public Health. He has focused on improving the hospital system and expanding the number of clinics available for uninsured and underinsured individuals. Butler considers completion of the John H. Stroger Hospital, after years of discussion and negotiation, his greatest accomplishment as Commissioner.

Butler feels the County-run Stroger, Provident, and Oak Forest Hospitals and 25 clinics in Chicago and some of the poorer south suburbs such as Harvey and Chicago Heights well staffed and busy, providing excellent medical care for those lacking health coverage. He noted a large number of former inhabitants of various housing projects that have been torn down throughout Chicago have relocated to these southern suburbs, which previously had almost no facilities to treat the uninsured.

The board is working to collect from third-party payers for healthcare services rendered at these facilities. "Sometimes we get reimbursed by Medicare and Medicaid," Butler explained.

The $882,000,000 annual budget for the County Department of Public Health covers the hospitals and clinics and the branch of the department focusing on preventive public safety measures such as curbing communicable diseases, ensuring existing public buildings do not contain dangerous substances such as asbestos and lead paint, and calculating the number of flu shots needed each flu season. This last often is a difficult task because of supplier competition and flu shot shortages. Yet, Butler said, "Our projections are pretty accurate."

If re-elected, Butler wants to "change the attitude that has been raised that the health and hospital portion of County government is rife with patronage and terribly mismanaged. That's not true, but you can't tell that from what you read in the papers. We do wonderful work at our hospitals."

Of the vast 3rd District, Butler said, "probably greater than 70% is African American," and its boundaries "start at Chicago Avenue, go to the east side of Michigan Avenue, south all the way to 79th Street, cross over the Dan Ryan, and go out to Worth Township." Residents number about 317,000, some of whom live in southern suburbs.

Of its racial demographics, Butler said, "There are some well-to-do African Americans—Hyde Park falls in there—so the issues are not the same for everyone. It's all part of the mix."

Butler believes "Good government is a journey, not a destination. Even when you can make it good, you can make it better all the time” by "addressing everybody's needs."

About government, "I like it a whole lot on certain days; I hate it on others,” he said. “That's part of the nature of politics. The government I like; the politics I hate. The politics part gets you away from governing. You know it's 'gotcha and I gotcha back,' as opposed to 'this is the way we ought to go and this is why,' in order to make our government operate more effeciently."

Butler wants to decrease the prison population and hopes to work on this issue in his next term.

"We have a jail that on almost any given day has 9,000 to 10,000 people in it and is overcrowded," he said. "Our criminal justice system is quite complex. We pay for the prosecution, and we pay for the people who are arrested and can't afford their own defense. We are paying for all of it."

Butler also hopes to continue improving the public health and judicial systems in Chicago and for his district.

The Commissioner also is a professional musician, producer, and composer.

Maurice Perkins, born at Cook County Hospital and raised in Bronzeville, has served the city for many years. He has worked for the Fire Department, the Police Department, and the City's Department of Human Services; he also served in the military.

For 30 years Perkins has run the Inner-City Youth Foundation, which operates out of the Old Urban League Building at 4500 S. Michigan Ave. This non-profit organization "basically works with anti-social youth, ex-offenders, and education programs, for all ages," Perkins said. "It involves training, rehabilitation, life management skills, and education to help raise the quality of life." He estimated that up to 60 people use the facility weekly and take advantage of the training, which is held elsewhere at the Dawson Skills Center at 39th and State Streets.

The organization also helps recruit unemployed young people ages 16 to 21 for the U.S. Job Corps "so that they can get Federally funded training," Perkins said.

Perkins has worked for the U.S. Department of Justice in planning the boot camps operating at Cook County Jail. Geared primarily for first-time offenders, boot camp is highly physical and based on military training, with a strong emphasis on discipline.

Boot camps also separate first-time offenders from the rest of the criminal population, and Perkins claimed they have "been quite successful." He noted the recidivism rate is "70% less than that of the general population who have not been in this program."

If elected, Perkins wants to continue improving the prison system structure to keep first-time, non-violent offenders separate from the general prison population at Cook County Jail.

He feels too many incarcerated drug offenders who are non-violent and "have only hurt themselves… need to be in treatment centers. There are alternate sentencing measures that we can take by mandating drug rehabilitation and job training to build back up the self-esteem which is lost when a person is on drugs." He believes drug offenders should be housed in separate facilities and sentenced differently from violent criminals who have "hurt and robbed people."

Perkins added that the thousands of prisoners awaiting trial on an average day at Cook County Jail  "makes it a dangerous place." This overpopulation also violates the court consent decree of Duran vs. Sheehan, which was adopted in 1983 and sets a maximum number of prisoners, which the jail often exceeds.

Perkins wants to clean up County government and cited recent media coverage claiming that theft, patronage hiring, corruption, and "mismanaging funds" are endemic in Cook County government. "The FBI is over at the Cook County President's office, taking out records and doing an investigation. Several people have already been indicted for embezzling in the Cook County Bureau of Health. Their trials will be coming up, hopefully before the end of the year."

As a Republican, Perkins feels "We need to re-invigorate the two-party system, which works. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. So, as a Republican candidate, this is important to create some checks and balances."

Perkins, if elected, would work closely with Tony Peraica, a lawyer who has donated much of his salary to charity and is running for Cook County Board President as the GOP candidate. Peraica has taken a written pledge not to raise taxes if elected and would clean up the County's fiscal house by "weeding out the corruption in the Cook County government, which is the 'hidden factor' in why they [taxes] are so high," Peraica said.