Cook County Dem Party boss has 15 members of his family on gov't payroll

Joe Berrios is the Cook County Assessor. He's also the chairman of the Cook County Democratic Party--the Machine.

You'll learn from the Chicago Sun-Times that government has been good to him--and his family.

That got him in trouble with the county ethics board, which called for Berrios to fire three family members who are on his staff and fined him $10,000 for violating the county's anti-nepotism ban by hiring two of them -- his son and sister -- after he was elected assessor in 2010.

But the Berrios family's presence on government payrolls goes far beyond that. In September, his nephew Stephen Berrios got a job working for the Cook County judiciary. That made him the 13th member of the powerful politician's family on a county or state payroll, a Chicago Sun-Times examination of government records shows.

And two of Berrios' siblings have recently retired from government jobs and now get public pensions. Count them, and that makes 15 members of the Berrios family who receive a total of more than $1.05 million a year in wages and pension payments, records show.

All six of Berrios' brothers and sisters work for or recently retired from jobs with the county, the state or the Chicago Public Schools. All three of his children are state or county employees. So are three nephews, a sister-in-law and a brother-in-law.

Berrios cowardly denied an interview request from the paper--He's a public figure, right?--but he did inject race into the discussion, telling the Sun-Times in a written statement, "You are picking on the Puerto Rican kid from Cabrini-Green who's sitting alone at the lunch table while all the Irish kids sit together, laughing and grateful he's there."

Ugh.

If the anemic Illinois Republican Party is going to make any headway in the Land of Lincoln--its candidates should among other things sign a no-nepotism pledge.