Dorothy A. Brown

Dorothy A. Brown (born September 4, 1953) is an American politician and lawyer. Brown currently serves as the Clerk of the Circuit Court of Cook County in the First Judicial District of Illinois.

Dorothy A. Brown
Clerk of the Circuit Court of Cook County (Illinois)
Incumbent
Assumed office December 1, 2000
Personal details
Born	(1953-09-04) September 4, 1953 Minden, Louisiana, U.S.
Political party	Democratic Party
Spouse(s)	Benton Cook (m. 2009)
Children	1
Alma mater	Southern University DePaul University Chicago-Kent College of Law

Early life, family, and education

Brown grew up in Minden, Louisiana, one of eight children. Her father worked in the laundry room of the Louisiana Army Ammunitions Plant near Minden. He also owned a cotton farm in Athens, Louisiana, where Brown and her seven siblings helped him pick and chop cotton. Brown's mother worked as a cook and a domestic.

At Webster High School, Brown was captain of the girl's varsity basketball team, and graduated in the top ten percent of her class. Brown entered college in 1971 at Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. She graduated Magna cum Laude from Southern University in 1975. In 1977, Brown received her license as a Certified Public Accountant (CPA). In 1981, she received her Master in Business Administration (MBA) with honors from DePaul University in Chicago. In 1996, Brown received her law degree with honors from Chicago-Kent College of Law.

Professional career

Brown worked for Arthur Andersen and Commonwealth Edison as a certified public accountant. She also helped to start a minority public accounting firm. From 1991 to 2000, Brown was employed as the General Auditor for the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA).

Brown unsuccessfully ran for Treasurer of the City of Chicago in 1999, Mayor of Chicago in 2007 and President of the Cook County Board of Commissioners in 2010.

Clerk of the Circuit Court of Cook County (2000–present)

Brown was elected as the Clerk of the Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois, in 2000, and has been reelected to three additional terms in office by overwhelming margins of votes. As the official keeper of recorders for all judicial matters brought into one of the largest unified court systems in the world, Brown is responsible for managing an annual operating budget of more than $100 million and has a workforce of over 1,800 employees. The Clerk's office was described as "a 2,300-employee office, one of the last true bastions of political patronage in Illinois" by the Chicago Sun-Times in 2014.

Major projects and services developed under Brown’s leadership include: Electronic filing (e-filing), a Clerk of the Circuit Court mobile app: “Court Clerk Mobile Connect,” an Online Traffic Ticket Payment System, an Electronic Tickets (eTickets) system, Mortgage Surplus Search, SmartForms (Online Order of Protection service), Smart Kiosks (court information terminals), and IDMS (Imaging Document Management System). All of these “Green Court”/E-Court initiatives improve accuracy, save time for court users, cut costs for the court system, and conserve energy.

Brown accepted cash gifts on her birthday and Christmas from her employees, a practice that several former employees described as being an unspoken requirement of their jobs. Brown later announced that she would no longer accept the gifts after questions arose regarding how she claimed the items on her tax returns.

In January 2010, the Inspector General of Cook County investigated Brown's "Jeans Day" program, in which Clerk's office employees could donate cash to the Jeans Day fund and wear casual clothing to work on a Friday. The Jeans Day fund, which grew to over $300,000, was supposed to be used to fund employee morale activities and charities. The Inspector General's report documented expenditures unrelated to charitable causes, including Chicago Bulls and Six Flags Great America tickets and employee parking reimbursements. The Inspector General's report cleared Brown's office of wrongdoing, but advised Brown provide better controls. Brown discontinued Jeans Day in August 2010.

In May 2006, Brown chaired the host committee for a fund raiser held in Chicago to support the re-election of Mayor Ray Nagin of New Orleans, Louisiana. Helping organize the event was information technology contractor Mark St. Pierre, who had worked contracts for both the city of New Orleans and Cook County government, and was a significant political donor to both Brown and Nagin. The event figured prominently in the indictment of Nagin on corruption charges on January 18, 2013. Brown was not charged.

A contributor to Brown's political campaigns gave a commercial property at the intersection of Pulaski, Ogden and Cermak Avenues on Chicago's southwest side to Brown's husband in June 2011. Two months later, the deed was transferred to The Sankofa Group, L. L. C., Brown and her husband's for-profit consulting firm, and in November 2011 they sold the property for $100,000. The land deal is being investigated by the Cook County Inspector General and by a grand jury convened by prosecutors with the Cook County State's Attorney's office.

In 2012, during Brown's third re-election campaign, the Chicago Tribune editorial board declined to endorse any candidate, citing "Brown's years of failed assurances to modernize the obsolete, paper-choked office she heads."

In 2015, the Democratic party of Cook County withdrew it's endorsement of Brown, (and switched it to Michelle A. Harris) immediately after her cellphone had been seized by a federal agent even though she had not been formally charged with any wrongdoing.

External links

• Clerk of the Circuit Court of Cook County
• Illinois Circuit Court Clerks by District & Circuit
• Dorothy Brown news and investigations by the Better Government Association, an Illinois watchdog group
• Dorothy Brown archive at the Chicago Reader