The Cook County Board's Finance Committee has picked Valentine's Day to debate an issue pushed by Commissioner John Fritchey: combining the Cook County clerk and recorder of deeds offices. Fritchey thinks it could save the county $1 million a year.

If the Finance Committee, which is a committee of the whole, approves the plan, the County Board could vote on it the very next day. A yes vote there would put the issue to referendum in November. (The County Board all by itself doesn't have the power to eliminate an elected office.)

State Rep. Karen Yarbrough of Maywood

Expect a close vote. It's always hard to change the status quo. Some people will worry about losing jobs. And state Rep. Karen Yarbrough, who has no primary opposition on March 20 in her campaign to leave the Legislature and become recorder of deeds, would go from having a clear path to a four-year term in a countywide office to an uncertain future. (There's also no Republican on the ballot, but the party can appoint one after the primary.)

Follow BackTalk on Twitter@stbacktalk

The momentary shock? According to Metra's online trip planner, which she consulted, the train had become a phantom train. Long a bulwark of the Sunday evening schedule, it had just disappeared. There was a 4:30 p.m. departure and an 8:30 p.m. departure. But no 6:30.

She called a friend, who consulted Metra's full schedule on a laptop and got the same result. But the friend had what turned out to be good advice: Go look for the train anyway.

Metra schedule omitting the 6:30 p.m. Sunday departure

The phantom train turned out to be there after all.

The problem, Metra says, occurred on Jan. 29, when some minor schedule changes were made on the Union Pacific North and West lines, and some trains were renumbered -- although the train times didn't change -- on the Northwest Line. Somehow in the process, computer gremlins eliminated the 6:30 p.m. train (as well as a couple of trains on the North Line) from the schedules and the trip planner.

Metra says everything should be OK now. But the bad news for commuters? The computers were working just fine on Wednesday morning when new ticket prices took a hefty jump upward.

Follow BackTalk on Twitter@stbacktalk

But if you look there today, you'll see photos of U.S. Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) and U.S. Rep. Mike Quigley (D-Ill.) in Poland chatting with the foreign minister.

Kirk and Quigley are overseas pushing to have Poland join a list of 36 nations that quality for America's visa waiver program, which allows visitors with a passport to come to the United States without having to get a visa as well. Many Poles are offended that Poland, a longtime U.S. ally that has contributed troops to Iraq and Afghanistan, is not one of the lucky 36. Poland's consul general in Chicago, Zyfmunt Matynia, calls it "a question of honor."

Poland repealed its visa requirement for U.S. travelers in 1991.

On Oct. 27, Calumet City passed a resolution supporting the visa waiver for Poland, Matynia said. So has Tinley Park.

Follow BackTalk on Twitter@stbacktalk

To appear on the ballot, a candidate must file petitions with a certain number of legitimate voter signatures. The number of required signatures varies depending on the office. But what doesn't vary is the need to make sure the petitions can withstand a challenge. If a page isn't notarized, for example, every signature on the page is thrown out.

State Rep. Rosemary Mulligan (Seth Perlman~AP)

Normally, experienced politicians don't lose their places on the ballot because they file plenty of extra signatures. But this year, even incumbents have been falling and won't see their names on the ballot in the March 20 primary election.

State Rep. Rosemary Mulligan, a Des Plaines Republican, withdrew when it became clear too many signatures on her petitions wouldn't be counted. She has said she will run as a write-in candidate, but it would have been easier to get enough signatures on petitions than to get a winning margin on write-in ballots.

Chicago Ald. Rey Colon (35th) was kicked off the ballot and will lose his job as Democratic ward committeeman, although he will remain as alderman. Ald. Toni Foulkes (15th) had to drop her committeeman re-election bid, too. And Ald. Howard Brookins (21st), also running for committeeman, is fighting to rehabilitate his candidacy after falling short in a preliminary count.

Follow BackTalk on Twitter@stbacktalk

The L never seems to be out of danger.

Greg Borzo (Sun-Times Library)

Borzo, author of The Chicago 'L,' points out that Chicago once had the nation's largest cable-car system and then the nation's largest streetcar system. But both are long gone.

"Over eight miles of the traditional structured steel [L] system have been torn down," Borzo says. "We have lost lots of the system. ... So who knows what is going to happen? Every time you hear about a budget crisis ... people start talking about closing the L down. Two years ago the plan was to shut down the Purple Line and the Yellow Line. Once you shut them down it is awfully hard to get them back."

Follow BackTalk on Twitter@stbacktalk

In Downstate McLean County they evidently think so. Last week, the county board there voted to send the same issue to referendum on the November ballot.

John Fritchey (John H. White~Sun-Times)

Fritchey already has introduced an ordinance backing a Cook County merger, which he thinks will save the county $1 million a year.

Three-term incumbent Recorder Eugene "Gene" Moore is not running for re-election. State Rep. Karen Yarbrough (D-Chicago) wants his job and has no opponents on the ballot in the March primary, so she seems a likely replacement.

The recorder maintains records on real estate sales for the county. The clerk administers suburban elections and keeps track of birth, marriage and death records. The clerk also assists property owners in redeeming delinquent taxes and takes minutes of County Board meetings.

Follow BackTalk on Twitter@stbacktalk

The lawyer cited a condo complex with hundreds of units in Edgewater, where the board turned down a young woman who was ready to close Thursday on a foreclosed unit for $63,000. Instead, the building manager said, the board decided to exercise its right of first refusal and purchase the unit itself, as it had already done with two other units in the past 18 months.

The reason, the building manager told the lawyer, was the board was afraid such a low sales price would reduce the value of all the other units in the complex.

The unit in question would have gone for between $100,000 and $140,000 before the market crash, the lawyer said.

It sounded like a deal gone sour for the young buyer, who had good credentials and had already jumped through numerous hoops just to get as far as a scheduled closing.

Before the condo board can exercise its right of first refusal, the decision must be approved by owners of existing units. The number needed for passage varies depending on the condo's declaration, which spells out the rules, but it's usually two-thirds. And it's two-thirds of all owners, not just two-thirds of those who vote. That's a hard number to reach, said Levin, who now is running for Cook County Judge in the Eighth Subcircuit against six opponents.

Rights of first refusal in condo declarations mostly date back to the 1960s, when condos first began appearing in Illinois, or the 1970s, when most were built or converted, Levin said. They dropped out of favor when owners found the declarations made it harder to resell units, and newer condos generally don't have them.

One of the legitimate purposes of a condo association is to try to maintain property values, so a condo board has the right to invoke its right of first refusal, he said.

But at a time when it is very hard to sell units, condo boards tend to be happy to find qualified buyers at any price.

Follow BackTalk on Twitter@stbacktalk.

That's because state sentencing laws are a hodge podge collection that's been assembled piecemeal over the years without much overall research or reflection.

An example: At one point, the Legislature decided that people convicted of the most serious offenses - Class X crimes - aren't eligible to get good time for GEDs or drug treatment. At another point, the Legislature added some nonviolent drug crimes into the Class X category.

That seems to run counter to sensible prison policy. Don't we want to encourage people behind bars to try to improve themselves? Don't we want to reward good behavior? If we sometimes let people out early because prisons are running out of space, why wouldn't we want to do that for more positive reasons?

The amount of time knocked off a sentence isn't huge. A prisoner can get two months of good time for a GED. Good time for drug treatment can vary.

Follow BackTalk on Twitter@stbacktalk

Brown is in her third term after winning the job in 2000 by defeating the Democratic organization's candidate. In a recent interview, she laid out her talking points for the upcoming campaign.

Dorothy Brown (John H. White~Sun-Times)

To hear some lawyers mutter about the record-keeping abilities of her office, it's sounds as though Brown is lucky the vote won't be restricted to members of the bar. But that's exactly where Brown thinks she's strongest. She's proud of her record on computerizing the office.
.

The next step, she said, would be to allow electronic filing, but that requires approval from the Administrative Office of the Illinois Courts, the administrative arm of the Illinois Supreme Court, which put pilot projects on hold while the courts study the matter, she said.

Brown also said she has reduced the number of employees by about 200 since she took office and now has about 2,100.

"We have been working for a number of years making sure that our staff is properly trained in making sure that our office is effective," Brown said.

Follow BackTalk on Twitter@stbacktalk

But here's evidence: When a wire service reporter happened to see Richard Frisbie (father of this writer) riding his bike to the Arlington Heights, Ill., train station in 1955, the reporter was so amazed that he wrote a report that went out on the national wire.

Newspapers as far away as Arizona (and maybe farther, but there is no easily accessible record now) ran the story and accompanying photograph.

A photograph that amazed the readers of the 1950s: a man actually commuting on a bicycle.

Here's what United Press correspondent Alfred Leech wrote:

"This solves the parking problem and lets his wife have the car while he's at work."

Only in the 1950s did people need to be told that.

Because it was the mid-20th century, Leech pitched the article toward car lovers, pointing out that commuting by bicycle was a fine way to save money for a second car, an idea reflected in the headline one newspaper wrote: "Will Power, Steady Income And A Bicycle."

Compare that to the recent observation by Ron Burke, executive director of the Active Transportation Alliance, that he had seen 250 bicycles parked at just one train station - the Naperville Metra stop. Or look at many of Chicago's arterial streets during rush hour as numerous cyclists accompany motorists on their way to and from work.

As for Richard Frisbie's bicycling career, I can report you can still spot him on nice weekends pedaling away on local bike paths.

Follow BackTalk on Twitter@stbacktalk

Garry McCarthy, Chicago's police superintendent for about the last four months, has not seen that TV drama series based in Baltimore (even though he once lived in that city). But he does have a strong idea of what Chicago's police need to be doing.

Garry McCarthy (John H. White~Sun-Times)

His philosphy? A four-step process.

Step One: "Timely, accurate intelligence. You have to know what's going on, when it's going on and why it is going on."

Step Three: "Effective tactics."

Step Four: "Relentless followup and assessment. Look at what you did to see if it works. If it works, you do more of it. If it doesn't, then do something else."

McCarthy already has restructured the department at the top and he will push to put more authority and resources in the hands of district commanders. He also wants to create the position of executive officer for each district.

"Right now, if a district commander is on vacation or out sick or has a death in the family, you know who covers the district? The guy next door. They don't have any accountability or any interest in what's happening there. That's just crazy."

In a recent interview with the Chicago Sun-Times editorial board, McCarthy was careful to say that he will not ask for more police officers until he is sure the existing force has been restructured to its maximum efficiency. But he did say he will beef up the warrant and fugitive division.

"One area where we are going to make an investment is in warrant and fugitive apprehension," he said. "Because you don't have to be a brain surgeon or a criminologist to figure out that if you lock somebody up who is wanted right now, they don't commit the next crime. Right? So if there are people walking out there who are wanted, we have an obligation to go out there and lock them up.That's a good crime reduction strategy right there."

If there is an area that sees a cutback, it might be in the number of detectives.

"We have about a thousand detectives," McCarthy said. "Is that enough, or is it not enough? Anybody's guess right now."

However, a "back-of-the-envelope analysis" based on staffing levels in Newark and New York, where he previously worked, suggests Chicago may have more detectives than it needs, he said.

Follow BackTalk on Twitter@stbacktalk

But Daley's successor Rahm Emanuel hasn't been building on that momentum, at least not yet, one diplomat says.

Acknowledging that Emanuel has been in office just a few months and understandably has other priorities, Fatih Yildiz, Turkey's consul general based in Chicago, pointed out that Rahm left globalization off the benchmarks he wants to meet in his first year.

Fatih Yildiz

"When I bring people from Turkey to make them more aware of what Chicago stands for, they are going back with more than they expected," Yildiz said Wednesday in an interview with the Chicago Sun-Time editorial board. " ... It should be the city's task to reach out as well."

"You know, when it comes to the globalization ranking of Chicago, it was sixth in the world, but when we go out and talk to people and do business with them, you don't see that perspective with the people. Although there is that huge potential here. So we are trying to do our best ... to open Chicago to the world."

Follow BackTalk on Twitter@stbacktalk

But activists say the real problem is that nothing is being done about abandoned buildings. Action Now members and Humboldt Park residents have scheduled a rally for 6 p.m. today to draw attention to two vacant, unsecured buildings that they say are dangerous for children walking to school.

"it's an example of what is going on in the city," said Aileen Kelleher of Action Now, which has been holding similar rallies throughout the city. Another is scheduled for Thursday in Englewood.

But unsecured vacant buildings can be crime havens. Even putting up boards doesn't necessarily protect the buildings because people kick their way through, so steel panels are needed to secure doors and windows.

Follow Back Talk on Twitter@stbacktalk

Last week, the Republicans elected Sig Vaznelis, the Lemont Township Republican committeeman, as their new chairman. (He replaces Lee Roupas, who took a job as a DuPage County assistant state's attorney.) On Monday, Vaznelis announced his deputy will be Aaron Del Mar, Palatine Township committeeman, who dropped out of the race for chairman and endorsed Vaznelis.

Vaznelis, an engineer by trade, says he'll approach county politics in an engineering fashion: "By profession, we are problem-solvers and builders."

And though President Barack Obama's nationwide numbers don't look rosy, local pols figure he'll still run strong in 2012 in Cook County, making this a tough year for the GOP to make inroads.

Follow BackTalk on Twitter@stbacktalk