Open Illinois.org

Cook County Commissioner Tony Peraica has brought the county to another level of transparency with his cookemployees.com site. This site is a central list to get salary information on all employees of the county, as well as vendor contract from 2005 and 2006. Also included on the site is a list of vendor contracts for the Forest Preserve from 2007.

Here some highlights I was able to quickly find for your enjoyment:

• Cook County President Todd Stroger’s salary is $170,000
• Cook County Freedom of Information contact Rich Velazquez’s salary is $111,240 (click here to read about the difficulty we had with a Cook Co. FOIA request)
• Cook County in 2006 had a $20,996 contract with the Chicago White Sox, but none with the Cubs.

Kudos to Commissioner Peraica for his work in not only presenting this data for the benefit of transparency and accountability, but for working to advance good government even more. A few weeks ago, the Cook County Board of Commissioners passed a resolution by Peraica to make the Cook County the second county in Illinois to post its check register online.