Cook County Board: Keats

With her shifting position on the Cook County sales tax increase and her consistent support for Machine-style pol Joe Berrios, Toni Preckwinkle has not given a reassuring picture of the kind of reformer she would make as Cook County Board president.

Although she now says her sales tax position that she would immediately begin studying a full rollback of the 2009 sales tax increase not immediately roll it back represents her position all along and praises Berrios' hiring of women and minorities in his office, glossing over his lobbying activities for the video gambling industry and his unabashed willingness to take campaign contributions from businesses and individuals who come before his Board of Review seeking tax breaks, Preckwinkle's responses have an all-too-familiar ring in the ears of anyone who has watched Cook County government operate, lo, these many decades.

By contrast, the unwavering promises of Republican Roger Keats to address the sales tax increase, dramatically streamline county government and find creative ways to provide and improve county services lack nothing in sincerity, and Keats' energy and demonstrated willingness to work respectfully and successfully with people of all parties and constituencies suggest he might actually be able to accomplish some of the goals we all yearn for so desperately in county government.

Tom Tresser, the Green Party candidate, is equally sincere and reliable in pressing a reduced-spending reform agenda at the county level.

But it's Keats and Preckwinkle who have the clearer record in government, and it's Keats whose record and personality tilt the most toward achieving reform at Cook County.

He gets our endorsement.