More cloutrageous choices

Cook County President Todd Stroger had a chance at recommending a sterling board to run the county's ailing health-care system.

The kind of board whose independence critics couldn't question.

The kind of board that would give confidence to taxpayers that the nearly $1 billion each year going to county health care is being well spent.

Mr. President, you blew it.

Stroger had many good nominees, among the 20 he was given, to run the county health system.

But he bypassed many with strong backgrounds in health care and finance and focused on people with ties to unions or the Democratic Party. One Stroger selection, F. Daniel Cantrell, is a congressional aide who ran a health center that went bankrupt in the 1980s.

What's worse is a proposal to add a new person to the health-care board, Cook County Commissioner Jerry Butler, a strong Stroger ally, as a liaison between the commissioners and the health-care board.

Under the proposal, Butler wouldn't have a vote, but wasn't this board supposed to be free of politics?

Cook County residents are paying more than $400 million a year for this board.

That's the tax increase Stroger got in return for creation of an independent board.

Cook County commissioners need to beef up that independence, as a new proposed ordinance amendment suggests, forget about adding Butler to the board and look long and hard before approving each of Stroger's nominees.

After all, if the health-care board turns into boondoggle, the blame won't only be Stroger's to bear.