>> thanks for joining us on Chicago tonight.

I'm Brandis Friedman.

Here's what we're looking at.

Democrats running for Cook County Board.

President are here tonight.

Toni Preckwinkle and Brendan Reilly join us to talk about the issues facing residents and to share their visions for the office.

>> We'll get to our panel in just a moment.

But first off tonight, Governor JB Pritzker is responding after former President Bill Clinton dropped his name during Clinton's deposition on Jeffrey Epstein.

It comes after a 90nd clip of Clinton's testimony before the U.S.

House oversight and Government Reform Committee began circulating online Monday night in it.

Clinton says he fought he and Pritzker travel together on a plane owned by convicted trafficker Epstein.

Today.

Pritzker denied those since recanted comments.

>> President Clinton clearly was mistaken and he corrected the mistake to his credit and, know, I have never had never met Jeffrey Epstein.

I was never on Jeff Fisher.

steams plane that was never on any plane with Jeffrey Epstein or with Glenn Maxwell never met her.

and but you know, did you know who powder around with both of them?

Donald Trump did.

>> On social media spokesperson for the former president has since reframe to comment saying, quote, President Clinton was simply giving an example of the many people he traveled with to see the Clinton Foundation's work.

Governor Pritzker join Clinton Foundation trip in 2008, not on Epstein's plane, not with Epstein, not with Maxwell.

Senator Durbin grills Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem today in a contentious Senate Judiciary Committee hearing no was testifying for the first time since the Minneapolis deaths of Renee Good.

And Alex, pretty at the hands of immigration enforcement agents, Durbin accused know of inflaming tensions.

>> How did you think that calling them domestic terrorists?

At that scene?

Listen, going to calm the situation.

>> You know, Senator, we are working in those situations where there's a tragic loss of life and that there is something that our agents are involved in, that we continue to deliver information.

Is this so hard to say you are wrong?

Durbin told known that administration's immigration tactics were in his words, quote.

>> Neither sensible nor humane.

The major development is breaking ground today in the South loop in Chicago.

Fire soccer team begins construction of its new stadium on a 62 acre site near Roosevelt Road in Clark Street.

The 22,000 seat venue is expected to open by the 2028 season.

The 750 Million Dollar Project is being privately funded.

But the development has been getting some pushback from neighbors who are calling for community benefits agreement.

You can visit our website for more on that.

2 candidates for Cook County Board.

President lay out very visions for the office right after this.

>> Chicago tonight is made possible in part by the Alexander and John Nichols family.

The Pope Brothers Foundation.

And the support of these donors.

>> The Illinois primary is 2 weeks away.

And one of the races that will likely be on your ballot is Cook County Board.

President, the president is tasked with preparing the county's budget overseeing the public health and court systems and maintaining the forest preserves.

The office manages in nearly 10 billion dollar budget and more than 22,000 employees.

Current President Toni Preckwinkle is seeking a 5th term maintaining that quote at a moment of national instability, experienced and steady local leadership matters and her challenger is also familiar face.

Longtime 42nd Ward Alderman Brendan Reilly, who's campaigning as a pro business affordability, focused candidate.

And joining us now, our Cook County Board, President Toni Preckwinkle.

And 42nd Ward Alderman Brendan Reilly.

quick note about our format tonight.

We will not have opening or closing statements and answers will not be timed.

I will use fairness as my guide and reserve the right to cut the candidates off.

If they are filibustering and not answering questions with that.

Welcome back to you both.

Thank you very much.

Thank you for joining us.

So let's start with Cook County It is a little over half of Cook County's budget is health care costs it is.

You have said it is your most pressing issue.

There is trouble on the horizon, though, for Cook County health, federal cuts to Medicaid, which largely funds Cook County health have been slashed.

Officials already say that they are seeing a number or the number of patients who are uninsured start to swell.

Madam President, what is your plan to continue to provide care to those that need it without breaking the bank?

Well, first of all, I'm very proud of our health care system for 180 years.

We've taken whoever comes to our door.

>> And not only do we provide care directly ourselves, but we ensure almost 400,000 Cook County residents with a Medicaid expansion program.

Medicaid insurance program called County Care, which is the highest rated plan in the state.

So our public health system has the highest rated Medicaid insurance program in the state.

We're going to be facing challenges because of President Trump's assault on us and the federal government has withdrawn its support for healthcare, made it harder for people to get Medicaid coverage and also made it harder for people to get insurance on the marketplace plans.

They took away the federal subsidies and as a result, sometimes people have seen 100% increases in their premiums.

We have partnerships with the University of Illinois with Rush University with the University of Chicago.

We'll use those partnerships to enhance our own a patient care delivery and will also we also put aside 320 million dollars in general reserves in the last budget.

And 65 million dollars.

And reserves simply for health care programs and initiatives that might be impacted by by Trump cuts.

So we have a well-functioning system.

We have a Medicaid insurance plan that that ensures almost 400,000 people.

And we put aside reserves to meet the challenges that are ahead of us along with enhancing our partnerships, as I said, with other medical providers.

>> Alderman, you've said that the county should have been ready for cuts like ACA and Medicaid to happen before they happen.

How would you balance the county's financial obligations with treating patients in need?

Sure.

You know, Trump tell it he basically telegraph that he was going to do these things when he was running for his second shot at the office.

And my concern is that the county health is projecting a 400 million dollar cut Medicaid from the feds over the next 2 years.

And while I'll give my opponent some credit for the 65 million set aside for Medicaid stabilization, I would argue that that number needs to be much larger.

My concern is that they haven't done enough to batten down the hatches knowing that this is soft on Medicaid is coming our way.

And so I would argue that we would need to use some more of our unassigned cash balances.

>> Take a look at possible restructuring, some long-term debt.

And re prioritizing funding to make sure that we're able to do that.

I know I also have a lot of faith in the county health care system.

My father's chairman of medicine there from decade and half and I know the important work they do.

And we certainly can allow Trump's assault on blue states counties and cities to tear apart that important safety net that so many people depend upon your running on affordability.

What can the county to to make health care more accessible and affordable to residents?

>> Well, look, you know, I certainly applaud Governor Pritzker for retiring some medical debt for for a number of folks that were carrying that.

>> But we need to get more help, frankly.

And I think that we need to look to Springfield to help us with this while Cook County and the city.

Just a part of the broader state.

We are the economic engine.

We have the greatest number of population.

And so we need to care for as many people as we can.

But again, I think at a minimum the county needs to take some steps do some triage.

And if we get to the horrible point where we have to start prioritizing medical services, we need to put a premium on access to emergency care and to primary care physicians and to make sure that that is it's maintain.

So we're not doing across the board cuts, which are often a knee-jerk reaction when a crisis occurs.

>> I mean, let me respond.

You Cook County was the first.

You know, government in the country.

To have a medical debt relief program, a medical debt elimination program.

So we've been in the vanguard of this from the very beginning from the very beginning.

600,000 more than 600,000 Cook County residents have had 1.5 billion in medical debt relieved as a result of the county program in the state program which followed I was at a press conference this morning with Governor Pritzker and Lieutenant Governor Stratton to talk about this work and he was very kind to point out that Cook County led the way and the state looked at our results and decided that they would follow with the program of their own.

Again, 1.5 billion and medical debt relieved for more than 600,000 Cook County residents and Cook County was the very first, you know, government in the country to have a medical debt elimination program.

I'm very proud of it.

>> We have to talk about taxes.

Of tax bills have recently hit mailboxes for property owners in Cook County they arrived on time.

But that is because the deadline got move.

So it's still later than usual this year.

They were 4 months late last year.

Property owners have until April first to pay them at the same time tax revenue distributions from the county to local governments and services were late.

School districts had to take out hundreds of millions of dollars in loans to make ends meet.

Some officials have blamed Tyler Technologies, which is, of course, the Texas based company that is contracted with upgrading the county's property tax system for cost overruns and costs being added and deadlines extended.

Madam President, you were a part of a approving this contract.

Where do you think it went room?

Well, first of all, let let's begin at the beginning.

When I took this job in 2010, we hadn't gotten property tax bills out on time.

>> For 30 years.

30 years.

So this was a massive complex problem and nobody had tried to address it before and I vow to try to fix it.

Tyler Technologies was chosen by each of the 6 separately elected officials because it was the only company they all agreed could do the work.

They've done the work in in New York.

They don't work in Philadelphia.

And when we ran into challenges with the vendor, we brought in an outside consultant who said the same thing.

This is the only company that can do the work.

When we hit, face those challenges we brought in more technical assistance.

We brought in more support for the 6 separately.

Elected officials have property in taxation, increase oversight.

Increased resources and also tied performance to pay.

Well, it's been a tremendous challenge.

We've gotten the bills out on time and we now have a transparent and accountable system going forward.

But again, we started out.

30 years not getting the bills on time and no one willing to take on the challenge of fixing the system, which I did.

>> you have called for a full review of this contract.

What what do you think that would accomplish?

What your Engel, one?

And more importantly, I think it's important to talk about the audit that President Preckwinkle is using to excuse this disaster that 20 2020 report actually stated that there was an opportunity to find a different vendor, but there was sunk cost bias going on at Cook County that already spent a number of years and a lot of money on a failed contract and to get out of it and switch to a different vendor.

That was absolutely possible.

As pointed out in the report.

But that was a decision to be made by county.

And I would argue had county gone out and found a different vendor that would only add a couple of years to their process and maybe 15 million dollars.

And when you balance that against the 120 million dollars, plus that school districts in this pallet ease around Cook County are now out.

That would have been a really good deal.

And they still would have only had about an 8 month extension on the time of the entire project.

And so I would say taking that extra 8 months, we could have saved the school municipalities in the suburbs, hundreds of millions of dollars in short-term interest.

And let's not forget, the Chicago public schools are paying almost $230,000 a day in interest that to full times teacher salaries per day being burned up into thin air because Tyler technologies in the county's failure to manage that contract properly blew up in our face.

And so that a lot of actually said the county did have options.

This was not the only vendor who can handle this, but it would have come at the cost of time and a little bit more money for the contract to be completed.

So let's not hide behind audits that didn't say that.

That's absolutely not correct.

The audit report said it would be years.

It would be at it to this process years.

An undetermined number of years.

So I disagree with with the alderman's analysis of this.

It was still delivered many years late.

Let's not forget this was to be a three-year 30 million dollar contract that was over 8 years And here we are today and these bills came out for months.

Plus late depriving all these local taxing bodies of the revenues.

They depend to keep the lights on.

They had to go out and take out short-term payday loan style operating You said Alderman that the obvious answer to making Cook County more affordable is to expand the overall tax base.

How would you do Look, we have a land bank and I can give my Bridget Gainer, who was a Cook County commissioner a lot of credit for wanting to use a land bank here.

>> Unfortunately, modern-day land bank literature points too.

The model that we use in Cook County as outdated in the 70's era model.

It no longer is considered to be best in practice.

I want to look at what Cleveland and Detroit dawn to spur great revitalization of their once dead cities where they work in partnership with the Legislature to create a land bank that allows them to clear off a lot of in conferences and to leverage environmental grants to clean up the sites and market them to bring in private developers to partner with Cook County to deliver on new development investment, which creates jobs.

The potential for affordable housing units like manufacturing.

The idea being we we can expand the tax base with tall ships and take that pressure off of homeowners who are getting creamed.

If you live in Lawndale a Garfield Park, you're getting an 80 to 130% property tax increase this year over last and for a lot of these families, that's their generational wealth.

Their home, they don't have money set aside for these massive property tax increases and then that puts them at risk of losing their homes to tax sales, another injustice that goes on only in the state of Illinois across the country.

And president.

Sure.

Well, first of all, I think we should talk about what a land bank is.

It's vehicle for taking tax delinquent properties and putting them back on the tax rolls so they can properties abandoned homes that are an albatross that are a blight in their communities and bringing them back into the tax rolls.

And that's what the land bank is not.

>> For 2400 parcels, 2400 parcels in the decade that the land bank has been in existence.

And in addition to bringing these parcels back on the tax rolls, fixing up, renovating the House is building things on vacant lot.

We've also created a cadre of small and medium-sized developers, mostly black and brown developers that have done this work with the land bank and then gone on to do work in the private sector, continue to work with us, but gone on to to work in the private sector and to compare our land Bank with Cleveland and Detroit, which are states which have different constitutional requirements and very different.

Situations in terms of the number of vacant parcels they have Detroit for examples can sort of hollowed out.

So it's not a fair comparison to talk about these places that in the same breath as we talk about Cook County.

But, you know, the land bank, it's just part of the economic development work.

We do.

We've invested in the last 4 years, 100 million dollars and small businesses are a million dollars and small businesses to help build the tax base.

Just like the land Bank helps build the tax base.

38.

38,000 small businesses have gotten grants.

Business advising technical support with 100 million dollar Cook County.

Invest going to jump in here.

Really quick.

It looks like you've got something to say very briefly and I want to move on to kind of public safety.

I would just remind people that we've got over 1000 parcels in the land bank today and last quarter, we only moved 39 parcels.

>> Out of that assemblage.

And to me, that is not enough progress.

Not nearly fast enough.

And I think if there's an all hands on deck call from the chief executive Cook County, we can prioritize out and make a lot more progress while those all those parcels are might remain on the land bank rolls, we have to Perry.

We've to take carrying costs to secure them and clean them and all these sorts of things.

This should be an asset, not a liability for Cook County.

So I want to talk about crime public safety because alderman you referred to with crime and public safety and Cook County is total chaos.

You have faulted President Preckwinkle for supporting the former state's attorney Kim Foxx.

>> And witness testing judges who are on the bench.

You've been openly critical of the electronic monitoring system that has come under greater scrutiny as of late following an arson attack on CTA train by allegedly by a man who was on electronic monitoring newly installed chief Judge Charles Beaches Office has since made some changes.

Those include and individual on electronic monitoring who's accused of a major violation like an unauthorized absence or tampering with a monitoring device will be returned to court within 24 hours.

Courts can now handle those violations on the weekend.

Previously, that only happened on Monday through Friday and an unauthorized absence of more than 3 hours on weekdays now qualifies as a major violation that requires defendant to appear back in court that when it had previously been set at 48 hours.

So coming to you first on this alderman, should the county's electronic monitoring system moved back under the sheriff's office?

Would you advocate for We certainly have someone in law enforcement managing that program for us because we need sheriff's deputies to out get these folks when they've been violating the terms of monitoring agreement.

I think the general public was under the impression that someone was put on electronic monitoring, they are being monitored.

24 7.

And if they were to error, move off their property and go out to the public, that some will be there to scoop them up and bring them back in so that their victims aren't read victim AISD and it's been made clear that that's not the case and that we've had a lot of people re victimized because people are violating these terms and there wasn't someone there to go in, get them.

>> And one of the reasons that the Cook County sheriff gave up this program was he was under resourced and he felt that the safety act that was championed by my opponent.

was going allow too many violent criminals to take advantage of this program.

And here we are that you mentioned the blue line immolation that occurred.

This man was arrested more than 70 times and he was supposed to be on electronic monitoring when this happened.

And so that was something that could have been avoided.

Had we had a sheriff's office.

It was properly resourced to do this work.

But he turned that the share of turn that back because he did not have the resources to meet the mission that was being put for him that safety at sheriff said yes, he had concerns about implementing the program about managing it.

>> Madam President, how do you rate the Excuse me?

Weigh the risk of someone on on electronic monitoring.

We have that relief funding.

Can you weigh that against the benefits of someone?

Being on electronic monitoring being able work in to be with family.

I think we have to talk about the larger context here.

First of all, right.

Want to express?

My dismay for the poor woman who was who set on fire on the blue line.

This is a terrible tragedy.

>> And again, my heart, my heart goes out to her.

But we can't make policy on on the basis of these horrific incidents.

We have to look also at the data and what's happening in Cook County.

A crackdown across the country is crime is going down.

Violent crime going down all across the country, not just in Cook County.

We've had significant declines actually murders in the last 4 years have gone down 50%.

Murders of going down 50%.

And in the city of Chicago, we've had fewer members than any point in the last 60 years.

At the same time that we've been Institute Criminal Justice reforms, violent crime is going down.

And let me speak to electronic monitoring.

I think it's a it's a reasonable alternative in a in complex of responses, too alternatives to detention.

It's clearly if if there serious violations of the M, the person needs to be held accountable.

And I am strongly supportive of Chief Judge Beach and his is new protocols which will require that anyone who violates serious violations of their electronic monitoring protocols will be brought into court.

I intend to support chief Judge Beach and the installation of these new protocols.

All right.

Let's get to immigration.

That's it before time runs out entirely last fall.

Of course, we all know the city was inundated with federal agents operating under what dubbed Operation Midway Blitz, intended to target the so-called worst of the worst of undocumented immigrants.

>> The county like the city in the state has a sanctuary ordinance on the books.

Alderman you were one of 11 votes in Chicago City Council, of course, in favor of modifying sanctuary protections to allow local law enforcement to cooperate with federal immigration agents to target violent criminals.

But you have said that you would not push for a change in the county's sanctuary ordinance if elected president.

Why not?

If you advocated for it at the city level?

Look, I don't think that anyone should be able to hide behind the shield of their immigration status when they're doing things like committing murder, rape child abuse.

This was about getting violent criminals out of our communities, period.

Hard stop.

But I think it's important to mention while we're talking about the county policy of not coordinating with ICE, David data contract with app for us after says owned by Equifax and after says is a victim notification system that tells people when violent offenders are being released from detention.

And unfortunately, Equifax shares that information with LexisNexis which ICE uses to track down these very people.

And it was Cook County that approved this contract just back in November, knowing full well that that data, that county data on detentions is shared with ice by LexisNexis.

And that was it was brought up in a county board meeting 10 of the 17 members of the county board voted present because they had concerns about this data sharing being used by ice to track down people in Cook County and 7 members voted for it.

And so that tells you a lot right there.

So I think it's interesting.

My opponent is is is trying to make hay about my position on ice when in fact, Cook County is already through their data contract in a way indirectly cooperating with ICE.

Madam President, let respond.

But also what about undocumented folks who are in jail accused of violent crimes?

Well, first of all, let's let's begin at the beginning.

You know.

Don, interesting Donald Trump, Donald Trump came into office and sued the governor, the mayor and me around immigration enforcement wasn't really about immigration enforcement was an effort to intimidate us into cooperating with ICE and the Border Patrol.

We refuse we for in court.

>> 6 months later, the federal court threw out the case.

You know, when the Border Patrol and ice were our communities terrorizing people in creating chaos.

I issued an executive order and said you can't be and our hospitals in our clinics.

You are our courtrooms in our parking lots.

And if I could have, I would have for been them from being on our streets and sidewalks.

You know, they they killed single father and Franklin Park.

They shot 5 times of protest or they tear gassed them.

Pepper sprayed nonviolent protesters and they left here and went to Minnesota.

My home state and killed young mother and a nurse.

So, you know, Donald Trump has declared war on blue counties, blue states and blue cities.

And I'm the only candidate in this race that has the courage and the experience to stand up to him.

Stand up to him and defend our residents and the programs and services that they rely on And that is where we'll have to leave it.

I'm sure the voters make their decision in a couple of weeks.

We'll have to leave it there.

>> My thanks to both a Cook County Board, President Toni Preckwinkle 42nd Ward Alderman Brendan Reilly.

Best of luck to you.

Thank you.

And we're back to wrap things up right after this.

And that's our show for this Tuesday night.

Join us tomorrow night at 5, 30 10 now for all of us here at Chicago Brandis Friedman, thank you for watching.

Stay healthy and have a good night.

>> captioned was made possible.

I a tip and Clifford law a Chicago personal injury and wrongful That is a