Accountability
Forest Preserves
Public Safety
Cook County Budget
Forest Pres. Budget
Property Tax Appeal
Health & Hospitals
Policy Resolutions

Even allowing for a bureaucracy's keen sense of self-preservation, the case of the Suburban Cook County Tuberculosis Sanitarium District still amazes.

There is almost universal agreement that it's a vestigial and expensive appendage of government that should be eliminated, and its dwindling functions transferred to the Cook County Department of Public Health. Yet the district doggedly continues to lobby legislators in Springfield to avoid that fate.

A bill in the House would end the charade and eliminate the district. It ought to be approved.

The district was created in 1947, at a time when tuberculosis was the deadliest disease in the U.S., and people afflicted with it were confined to sanitariums to avoid contagion. During the past 57 years the treatment of tuberculosis--and public health practices--have progressed considerably. That's why independent taxing districts to deal with tuberculosis have been eliminated elsewhere in Illinois and across the nation.

Not in Cook County, where the bureaucracy keeps trying to reinvent itself and justify its budget, which was $7 million for fiscal year 2003.

Logic and evidence argue for elimination. A study by the Civic Federation found that in 2002 there were 512 cases of tuberculosis in the county. Of those, 382 occurred in the city and were handled by the Chicago Department of Public Health, with the remaining 130 handled by the county agency.

If you do the math--divide the city and county budgets to treat tuberculosis by the number of cases--the district's per-patient costs come out to be more than double those of the city.

A large part of the problem is personnel. The district employs 56 people--more than half the salaries go to management or clerical functions--to handle its 130 patients. The Chicago Department of Public Health has about 63 employees to handle 382 cases.

Five bills in the General Assembly this session sought the elimination of the county tuberculosis district. On May 18, the Senate amended and approved--by a vote of 49-8--a bill to dismantle the district, effective Jan. 1, 2005. The House now needs to concur with the amended bill, but time to do so is growing very short.