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Public commenters urge scrutiny of workers' compensation practice and allege property-tax-related home losses
Summary
Two public speakers told the Cook County Workers' Compensation Subcommittee that lawyers dominate workers' compensation cases and that county and city actions led to unlawful home losses; speakers asked commissioners to investigate and called for political accountability.
At a meeting of the Cook County Workers' Compensation Subcommittee, two public commenters raised concerns about local legal representation in workers' compensation cases and about alleged unlawful property losses tied to county and city processes.
George Blakemore told the subcommittee he believes "all everybody that fall or slip down" are steered to one lawyer and warned the panel to "stay away from this lawyer." Blakemore described his remarks as grounded in a long personal familiarity with local history and said certain attorneys seem to receive a disproportionate share of county workers' compensation cases.
Another speaker, introduced as Zoe Lee, said a federal judge recently ruled Cook County liable to repay "millions of dollars to people who lost their homes in the county's annual property tax sales," and told commissioners she had lost a fully paid family building to demolition. Lee accused local leaders and the land bank of facilitating unlawful property transfers, saying, "she is the one who's stealing our properties," and naming Toni Preckwinkle in her remarks. Lee urged Commissioner Morrison (identified in the transcript as a sitting commissioner) to meet with community members about the alleged property theft crisis.
The assertions by the speakers were made during the public-comment portion of the subcommittee meeting; no county official in the transcript disputed or confirmed the legal claims on the record during the meeting. The chair proceeded to committee business after both speakers' time expired and there was no recorded committee response or staff report addressing the allegations during this meeting.
Both comments were limited by the meeting's three-minute rule. The transcript records speakers' allegations and personal accounts but does not include corroborating documents or a staff presentation addressing the legal or factual bases for the claims.
Next procedural steps were not announced on the record in response to those comments.
