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Better government? Send your ideas

If you've ever been in charge of anything, you know the downside of asking other people, “How can I do this better?”

You might get some fantastic ideas — fantastic, time-consuming, difficult to enact or politically treacherous ideas. In other words, you might be in for some hard work.

That's why we have to hand it to Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, whose revamp of cookcountygov.com comes complete with a big, front-and-center solicitation for citizens to offer ways to “make Cook County more efficient.”

“You have firsthand knowledge of how government in Cook County works, and the ways in which it doesn't,” she continues in her online request.

Boy, do we.

Pay-to-play politics, hiring cronies and a general nose-thumbing at suburban constituents marked the president's office during the tenure of its former occupant, Todd Stroger. Nearly six weeks into the job, Preckwinkle shows evidence that she's not only asking for ways to improve the county, but taking heed of the responses.

Her initial plan for the next four years cites 150 ideas garnered online by her transition team before she was sworn in Dec. 6, as well as input from more than 80 community experts on budgeting, criminal justice, health care and other Cook County responsibilities.

From that came some sound plans: Replace one-year seat-of-the-pants budgeting with long-range planning; combine purchasing, sync computer technology and share vehicle management among departments; find ways to shorten the time it takes for plaintiffs to come to trial; consider handing over policing of forest preserves to the county sheriff or municipal police rather than maintaining a separate forest preserve police force.

A few of the ideas being considered sound suspiciously like we're gonna pay: “Optimizing” fees for court and for county licenses; charging towns for things like detective work or tax collection; “recovering” from residents of unincorporated areas the costs of certain services. We'll reserve judgment until we hear more on those, and until we see if Preckwinkle keeps her pledge to repeal Stroger's unpopular sales tax increase, with half disappearing in 2012 and the rest by 2013.

Meanwhile, if you live or work in Cook County, take Preckwinkle up on her invitation.

It's your chance to help make things safer or saner or cheaper where we live. Pass your good ideas along to Preckwinkle on the county website, and while you're there, take a look at her Transition Report for more of the ideas she's investigating so far.

This time around, it sounds like someone just might be listening.