The proposed 2012 Cook County budget would help plug a projected $315 million dollar deficit but it also reflected lots of tough decisions by Board President Toni Preckwinkle. The budget involved layoffs, new taxes and new fees; and there were quite a few proposals that could affect public safety. A task force will take a deeper look at a measure to share costs for Cook County’s policing services with unincorporated areas. Also, prison populations would go down – as many as 1,000 inmates would get out of jail over the next year. Eight Forty-Eight asked two people intimately involved in the plans, President Preckwinkle and Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart, to explain what the budgetary moves would mean for public safety.

Music Button: Justice, “Brainvision”, from the album Audio Video Disco, (Elektra)