Politics on Valentine's Day can be like a box of chocolates. You don't what you are going to get next.

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.)

Jaime DeSmit got a momentary shock last Sunday as her bus from Minnesota neared Union Station, from which she planned to scurry to the nearby Richard B. Ogilvie Transporation Center to catch the 6:30 p.m. train on Metra's UP-Northwest Line.

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.

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If you're not of Polish ancestry, you probably don't check the website msz.gov.pl very often.

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.

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Petition challenges are a traditional part of the election process. What better way to win an election than to knock your opponents off the ballot?

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.

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As contract talks with the CTA unions get going in earnest this month, it might be worthwhile to reflect on what Chicago L enthusiast and author Greg Borzo says:

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."

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Is Cook County Commissioner John Fritchey on the right track when he suggests merging the offices of recorder of deeds and county clerk?

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.

Why, an experienced real estate lawyer asked, are Chicago condominium buildings turning away buyers for units that banks have foreclosed on?

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.

A quirk in Illinois sentencing laws means some nonviolent prison inmates can't trim their sentences by getting a GED or undergoing drug treatment, but some violent criminals can.

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.

After setting her sights on higher office - for County Board president last year, for mayor against Richard M. Daley in 2007 - Dorothy Brown is focusing on winning another term in her current job as Cook County Circuit Court clerk.

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.
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So many people commute on bicycles that it is hard to remember what a revolutionary idea that was a half-century ago.

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: