Chicago City Wire

Candidate for Cook County Chairman Bob Fioretti slams Toni Preckwinkle for her failed leadership in Cook County.

Fioretti said he would be calling for Preckwinkle's resignation "If the election was not a few weeks away."

"It is shameful that Toni Preckwinkle wants to give away our hard-earned tax dollars to illegal immigrants while we have veterans, people who risked their lives for our country, sleeping in the street," Fioretti said. "This is going too far, we are telling people from all over the world, ‘come to Cook County, we will give you free housing and cash’ yet we can’t take care of our own. The last count of homeless veterans estimated that there were more than 500 homeless veterans in Chicago alone. There is an economic recession in this country, our working families are having a tough time with groceries and gasoline, if Toni has extra tax money laying around, let’s have a tax rollback but she would never think of that. She has so many problems to solve for the people she has sworn to serve, the taxpayers of Cook County, yet she chooses to grab headlines and give our cash to illegal immigrants who have never paid any tax to us and are here against our laws." 

Fioretti added that there is a need to create job and "not dependency on government."

"She needs to get the tax bills out and collected to make any of this work yet this year they will be at least four months late and next ear probably even more," Fioretti said of Preckwinkle. "No other business operation could function this sloppily. Getting your bills out and cash in is essential. yet she can't seem to do it. How can we support these wild new ideas of cash giveaways, including to illegals, when the basic functions of her government are in disarray? Toni is a failure and a disgrace to the hard-working people of Cook County."

Chris Dargis, a Republican running for Congress in the 8th District, is ripping on the City of Chicago for sending illegal immigrants to the suburbs. 

“The impact of the #BidenBorderCrisis should not fall on Illinois taxpayers because the Biden-Krishnamoorthi administration has refused to solve this humanitarian and national security crisis. We need leaders in D.C. who will secure our borders now! #twill," Dargis said on Twitter.

Elk Grove Mayor Craig Johnson and Burr Ridge Mayor Gray Grasso both lambasted Mayor Lori Lightfoot for sending busloads of illegal immigrants to their towns without advanced notice. This comes after Mayor Lightfoot said she would welcome busloads of migrants from Texas.

Two Nicaraguan migrants were treated for scabies infections last month after their symptoms were discovered by the Elk Grove Village Fire Department during an unrelated visit to the La Quinta Hotel in Elk Grove Village, where Lightfoot dropped off a busload of illegal immigrants who were sent from Texas to Chicago. The village said it was working with county and state officials to get a handle on the situation. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention requires strict medical exams for foreigners looking to live in the county legally, but not for illegal immigrants. Johnson is angry at Lightfoot for the lack of advanced notice, North Cook News reported. He has concerns about many individuals in the group regarding security and health. This comes as illegal border crossings are at an all-time high because the Biden Administration refused to encore the law on the border.

Police, residents, and the Burr Ridge Hampton Inn staff still do not know why Lightfoot chose their location to drop off 75 illegal immigrants. In a video, a Hampton Inn employee said, "I don’t know where they came from to be honest with you. They were just dropped off yesterday afternoon." A video showed many immigrants lounging in the lobby, on the patio, and at the pool outside, and many were on laptops, according to Dupage Policy Journal. Rooms at this hotel were listed at $165 per night. Nearby resident Bob Pearson said that Lightfoot's words of being a sanctuary city did not match her actions. Pearson said the move from Chicago to Burr Ridge feels politically motivated because Burr Ridge is a wealthy, Republican town with home prices in the millions of dollars.

In July, Preckwinkle announced that tax bills would be delayed because there were still steps that needed to be completed before they are sent out. However, she said they would be sent out before the end of 2022. Fioretti is attacking Preckwinkle because, in 2018, she ran on getting the tax bills out in a timely manner. The tax bill issued between June and July which is due in August will not be due until early 2023. West Cook News reported that Fioretti called on Preckwinkle "to account for her utter failure on this major issue and take responsibility for her complete lack of leadership." The Cook County Assessor's Office is blaming the delay on a new which delayed the transmission of data the Board of Review by several months. The Chicago Sun-Times says that the delay is due to the updating computer system, which is from the 1980s. Board of Review Commissioner Larry Rogers Jr. blames first-term assessor Fritz Kaegi for updating the system: "This is squarely in Kaegi’s lap. This is purely an implementation failure. He is the reason tax bills will go out late. He has failed to get his work done timely. He needs to own it."