Filed under: News, Profiles, Politics
The name Dorothy Brown has not yet reached the national consciousness as a symbol of ineffective and corrupt local government, but the Chicago circuit court clerk is well on her way to that distinction.
Brown's inept and shady handling of what could have been a simple office initiative to boost morale in the workplace should be used as a test case of how to mess up a powerful government job.
Brown was forced to cancel the "jeans day" program she started at the Cook County courthouses, after an inspector general found suspicious money transactions and record-keeping procedures.
The "jeans day" plan was simple enough: Some court employees wanted to wear jeans to work on select days. Brown okayed the plan with a twist right out of the Chicago politics handbook -- make the court workers pay for their jeans-wearing privilege.
The court charged just a couple of bucks to wear the jeans, but the money added up.
When it was discovered that the jeans money was being raided to pay for tickets to Bulls games, amusement parks and employee parking, officials blew the whistle on Brown's shenanigans.
And the foolishness doesn't stop there.
Even the way Brown handled the release of the inspector general's report was a mess.
Before the report was officially sent out, she called select reporters and read out portions of it that were less damning to her cause. When reporters complained and said they wanted to see the whole report without Brown reading it out loud like a schoolteacher, she quickly ended the press conference.
Is anyone out there advising this woman?
While the inspector general stopped short of accusing Brown and her aides of stealing the thousands of jeans-day payments made last year, the report said Brown needs to keep better records and keep the jeans-day funds separate from other accounts held by her office.
It would be nice if Brown took this warning to heart and cleaned up her office, but it looks like there's a troubling pattern. Brown has already been accused of taking cash gifts from employees on her birthday and on Christmas.
I hope I'm wrong, but I don't think we've heard the last of the creative bookkeeping and financial pandemonium in the office of Dorothy Brown.