This is what better government looks like

We can in fact have nice things

Camp Bullfrog Lake in Southwest Suburban Willow Springs.

Credit: Forest Preserve District of Cook County.

Earlier this week I wrote about Chicago’s state capacity crisis: government is getting steadily worse at delivering core public services. But that grim trajectory isn’t inevitable. I mentioned that we’d highlight successful efforts to rebuild state capacity, and the lessons that can be learned in the process. Here’s a great example.

For generations the Cook County Forest Preserve District was one of our worst-run units of government. In a quirk of local law, the Commissioners elected to the Cook County Board also serve as the Board of the Forest Preserve. With political leadership, labor intensive operations, and a low profile, the Forest Preserve was a prime patronage dumping ground for the politically well-connected.

The results were predictable. Trash piled up, along with maintenance backlogs and budget deficits. Independent auditors cited a litany of problems. Employees who quit continued to get paid. And a dumping ground for political hacks turned into a dumping ground for corpses—halfway through 2001, 17 bodies had been pulled out of the Forest Preserves.

Under the old guard, the Forest Preserve seemed to primarily exist to meet its bloated payroll. Board President John Stroger complained that he couldn’t raise taxes any faster, and shoveled money from the County (also in the red) over to bail out the Forest Preserve.[1] Camping had long been restricted to organized groups like the Boy Scouts, and facilities fell into disrepair. Controlled burns and other habitat restoration efforts (like culling invasive plants) are an important part of maintaining healthy prairie ecosystems. But when a small number of misguided Sauganash NIMBYs and faux environmentalists[2] complained, Stroger cut those too.[3]

Things started to change in 2001, when a set of reform-minded County Commissioners, including Forrest Claypool, Tony Peraica, and Larry Suffredin, were elected.[4] They fought to restrain Stroger’s tax increases and pushed for spending cuts. Between 2001 and 2003, Forest Preserve’s headcount was cut in half.

That was only partial progress. The Forest Preserve District went from doing less with more, to less with less. Long term structural deficits still loomed. And when Claypool ran for County Board President in 2006, he lost to Stroger. After Stroger resigned for health reasons, power ended up in the hands of his son Todd (seriously), who presided over a chaotic term with more red ink and mismanagement.[5]

It wasn’t until 2010 that Todd Stroger was defeated by then-Alderwoman Toni Preckwinkle. That December, she tapped Arnold Randall, a former Commissioner of the Planning Department and Chicago Park District veteran, to run the Forest Preserve District. Crucially, Preckwinkle gave Randall political cover and flexibility to do what he thought necessary—as long as he delivered better results.

Randall started with what he called ‘basic management.’ He launched a top-to-bottom review of the organization’s personnel structure, and began to institute novel policies like performance reviews, job descriptions, and performance-driven promotions. Technology systems were woefully out-of-date: the District rolled out computers and email addresses for employees, and had them start swiping in and out of work. The Forest Preserve also launched satisfaction surveys to measure feedback from users.

Randall also cleaned up the hiring process. In 2013, the Forest Preserve District became just the second unit[6] of County government to be declared in substantial compliance with the Shakman hiring decrees. In other words, patronage hiring had been (mostly) excised, and the District would no longer be subject to intensive court monitoring. That meant that the District would now have more flexibility to hire good talent going forward.[7]

But Preckwinkle and Randall didn’t just drag the District into the 21^st century. They also embraced the novel idea that County residents deserved more from their government.

The Forest Preserve allowed overnight camping again and built new campgrounds across the County. In 2016, a reporter checked out the new Camp Bullfrog Lake in the Southwest Suburbs, and noticed a group of middle schoolers from a charter school in McKinley Park. They had never been camping before, but their chaperones took the opportunity to do something safe and fun on Friday night. The reporter observed: “These kids, I thought, were likely the biggest beneficiaries of the opportunity to camp in a Cook County Forest preserve. Here they were, a short drive from their homes on Chicago’s South Side, immersed in nature. They must have felt a million miles removed from their urban surroundings.”

That was just the beginning. The District added trails and doubled its programming. Arnold also mended fences with conservation groups and further rolled back restrictions on prescribed burns and other key habitat restoration practices. In 2013, roughly 1,300 acres of Forest Preserve land were actively cared for. Ten years later, 15,000 acres were being restored.

How much did this all cost? Less than you’d think. Better management meant that the Forest Preserve could get a lot more out of the staff it had. Better partnerships with conservation groups helped the District leverage volunteers more effectively, and land more outside grants. Better run-programs helped it pull in more in user fees. Between 2010 and 2021, staff headcount held steady, and property tax revenues declined in real terms.[8]

Only after cleaning house in 2022 did Preckwinkle and Randall ask for a .025% property tax hike to retire pension debt and address a major maintenance backlog. Thanks to their track record, the referendum was backed by major conservation groups, the Civic Federation, and the Tribune Editorial Board. It passed with overwhelming support.

There is a lot to like about this story – most of all Randall, who stepped down in 2023 to a string of accolades. But I promise you that there are a lot of great public servants like him spread across state and local government.[9] The problem is that most of the time, they’re trapped under layers of risk aversion and process, slamming their heads against the wall as their agencies do less with more.

Just as important to this story is the leadership of Toni Preckwinkle, who gave Randall the freedom to act and held him accountable for results. And Preckwinkle was only in a position to do so because voters had become so disgusted with the prior mismanagement that they finally forced out Stroger.

Mobilizing voters generally requires media attention. In the Stroger era tax increases and scandals all generated headlines. But the actual quality of the Preserves got a lot less coverage. I couldn’t find any discussion of when or why the Forest Preserve had ended overnight camping, or efforts to bring it back. But the Tribune did cover a controversy about whether the Forest Preserve should continue to offer preferential facility access to the Boy Scouts, given their ban at the time on gay troop leaders.

The scandals and tax hikes eventually brought Todd Stroger down and created an opening for better management.[10] But directing attention to the actual results that the public sector delivers will continue to be a challenge for advocates of better government.

In the end, voters got fed up. They demanded better leadership, and they got it in the form of Toni Preckwinkle. She found a good public servant in Arnold Randall and put him in a position to succeed. All of us – environmentalists, employees, taxpayers and middle schoolers alike – are better off as a result.

Let’s keep working to foster similar outcomes across the region in the years to come.

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[1] This seems like a good moment to plug Conor’s excellent breakdown of the fiscal shenanigans underway between the City, Chicago Teacher’s Union, and Chicago Public Schools.

[2] These are the people who believe anything that green must be preserved in amber, as opposed to the actual environmentalists (like the Nature Conservancy) fighting to protect and restore the County’s prairies and oak savannah ecosystems. Noah Smith coined the term in the context of land use, where a similar dynamic plays out.

[3] As the links note, some of those restrictions had been eased by the end of the John Stroger era. But many of the rules remained in force, and County-led restoration efforts were minimal.

[4] They teamed up with a one term incumbent by the name of Mike Quigley.

[5] He hired his cousin to be County CFO. It didn’t end well.

[6] In case you’re curious: the Sherriff’s Office, under Tom Dart, was the first. The Cook County Clerk’s office wasn’t released until 2023.

[7] If you’re craving a deeper dive into Shakman and municipal hiring, you can find it here.

[8] According to the Forest Preserve’s financial statements, the property tax levy (which makes up the vast majority of the District’s income) rose at a rate of 1.5% per year from 2010-2011. Inflation was 2% over the same period.

[9] Why am I so sure? I’ve the chance to work with enough of them. But also, Randall had an accomplished, but pretty conventional career path prior to running the Forest Preserves. He’s a great public servant. But you’d be crazy to look at his resume and not believe there are more out there like him.

[10] But importantly, getting rid of patronage and cronyism didn’t, in and of itself, make the Forest Preserve District functional.