Thai language and this ceremony is specific for our Thai community.
In this picture Maria Pappas unveiled the new Thai Property Tax brochure.
(Read "Knowing Maria Pappas" at end of page)
Cook County Building
118 North Clark Street, Chicago, IL
The ceremony was hosted by Maria Pappas, Cook County Treasurer
Knowing Maria Pappas
Her parents, both children of Cretan immigrants, were born in this country, but Greek was spoken in the home. "I can express some things better in Greek than in English," Pappas says. She played organ in her Greek Orthodox church, directed the children's choir, and claims Byzantine music as one of her specialties. Her parents were extremely careful with their money; she grew up in a house that didn't have a shower. The Pappases owned a plant store, a toy store, and a restaurant that was adjacent to the only hospital in town. "Interns from all over the world came in and out of this hospital. And I had the privilege of being with them. I knew early on that I wanted to do something in the area of human services. I knew that I would do something with people."
In 1970 Pappas, a scholarship student, earned a BA in sociology from West Liberty State College, in West Liberty, West Virginia. She got it in three years by taking extra courses while holding down three part-time jobs simultaneously, two as a waitress and one selling clothes. That degree was followed in 1972 by an MA in guidance and counseling from West Virginia University, and four years later by a PhD in counseling and psychology from Loyola. An Adlerian psychologist, she has had a private counseling practice since 1972, though that has since been blended into her law practice. She has also been employed by the Adlerian Psychology Center in Holland, the justice ministry in Greece, and the Dreikurs Institute in Tel Aviv. She has trained people around the world in parenting techniques. From 1975 to 1982 she taught psychology and counseling at Governors State University in Park Forest.
In 1973 she got a state grant to train mothers in parenting at Chicago's Altgeld Gardens development. "That lasted one year. When the money ran out, I brought students in to train them. I had as many as 30 students at once in there. It was a great deal for everyone. The mothers got the training, the students got three hours of graduate credit--and it didn't cost the government a penny. That's what I mean when I talk about volunteerism. If I could, I'd have every graduate student in the county doing things like that.
"I ended up doing a lot of alternate-sentencing work with the courts. I came to be of the opinion that community service--heavy community service--and rehabilitation should be substituted for incarceration whenever possible.
"I came into my office at Governors State one day, and I found my secretary at her typewriter crying. So I asked her, 'What's the problem?' She wept and said, 'My son is at 26th and California--he's been locked up. They have him for dealing heavy quantities of cocaine, on video. He called me this morning. He told me he was homosexually assaulted last night. I've got to get him bonded out.' So I said, 'Let's go.'
"I knew that at 19 someone had not gotten into this type of trouble unless there was a reason. Well, I found out that years before, while the mother was working, the 12-year-old boy had been left alone with his 9-year-old mentally retarded brother. The mother told him to feed his brother lunch and mow the lawn. So he fed his brother a peanut-butter sandwich and went to mow the lawn--and when he came back his brother had choked to death. That discouragement led to drug use, which led to drug dealing, which led to 26th and California.
"I went to court for him; the judge had seen me testifying in various cases. I had my heart in this case. I believed we shouldn't be spending $18,000-plus a year to incarcerate someone like this. I told the judge, 'He's absolutely guilty. There's no question. But I want five minutes of uninterrupted time. Please don't ask me any questions until I've finished. I'm gonna ask you to please shut the courtroom door and ask everyone to be quiet, because I think that what I have to say will have a tremendous impact.' And I gave the most heartfelt Clarence Darrow-type argument that anyone had ever heard. And when I finished, the clerk was crying, the sheriff was crying, the other mothers in the room, who were in similar situations, were crying. And the judge said, 'I release this man to your custody.' Then he said, 'Pappas, I want to see you in my chamber. Case closed. Recess.' I went back into his chamber, and he said, 'I want to know why you're not practicing law.' I said, 'I really like what I'm doing.' And he felt that I should get formally trained in law so I could combine these two fields, because I had such a good understanding of the justice system. So I quietly got a law degree."
While Pappas was working on her degree ("I was terribly bored in law school"), she happened to read an article about picking jurors through handwriting analysis. Fascinated, she got certified as a graphoanalyst. "That work was consistent with my dissertation, which was on early-childhood memories. You listen to early-childhood memories to get an index into someone's current frame of reference, which is one of the techniques I was using with these incarcerees. When you get someone who's a prisoner or awaiting trial, they're very guarded, and it's hard to get anything from them. So it's much easier to extract an early-childhood memory. And of course the early-childhood memory is a blueprint of the present."
She spent some time assisting attorneys in picking juries through graphology, and in 1982 got her law degree. She says she never completely stopped her psychological counseling: "How can you do a divorce case without counseling? How can you represent someone in a worker's comp case without understanding the pain of losing a foot?"
She did a lot of pro bono work, much of it in the black community, and built up a network of friends. But Pappas says she was completely apolitical until quite recently--she didn't even know who Mike Madigan and George Dunne were. Then Alderman Rickey Hendon suggested she run for county board. "He said, 'This is perfect for you. This involves public-policy-making, jails, and hospitals. It's just right up your alley.' I thought about it, and I said, 'I'm game.' And I literally threw my name in the hat. I called everyone I knew--all the people I had worked with. I called Altgeld Gardens, I called people from Governors, I called Koreans, Mexicans, Greeks--anybody that I had worked with over the last 20 years. I called them and said, 'Don't forget to vote!' They all said, 'What are you running for?' 'I'm running for county commissioner.' 'Well, what's that?' I said, 'Well, I'm not really sure, but it sounds like fun.'"
One of Pappas's successes is electronic home monitoring, which allows convicted criminals wearing special bracelets to stay home instead of clogging the jails and costing the taxpayers, as Pappas likes to point out, an average of $18,000 a year to feed, house, and guard. "I made myself the foremost authority in the county" on monitoring, she boasts, adding that she drafted a bill authorizing a user fee of up to $5 a day to pay for the monitoring; many braceleted cons work and can well afford the fee. The bill was sponsored in Springfield by the bipartisan team of senators Adeline Geo-Karis and Bill Marovitz, and Governor Jim Edgar signed it. But at the county level, Pappas says, her ordinance to make it the rule for county offenders has been "stalled in committee."
Pappas's greatest strengths, says Hendon, are "her attention to detail, her honesty, her unquenching energy. Anybody in politics who is not a crook is crazy, because it's a thankless, unending job. I'm a little crazy--I think Maria probably is a little bit crazy too. It's frustrating to see the corrupt deals, the inflated contracts, the taxes going up--and the people doing 'em keep getting reelected. You have to wonder, Don't people care? Maria is honest, and I don't think that politics is an honest profession."
"She's very intelligent, very opinionated, and very true to her beliefs. If she believes in a cause or an issue, it's hard to change her mind. She's very strong willed. But she's a very loyal friend, and that's rare in 1992. She's not a typical politician--I don't think she really fits into the mold of a politician. That's why I talked her into running. We need different types of people in government. She's nobody's coward, and she never took a backseat in her life--and I don't believe she's going to start now."
"Maria is a stand-up person. She's a beautiful person. She's a courageous person." Anything else? "She plays wonderful piano and sings off-key, and everybody has a wonderful time at her parties."
"She's a very knowledgeable, very committed, very dedicated public servant--and I don't make nice comments about people unless they're doing their jobs," says Tom Fuller of the Water Reclamation District. Fuller and Pappas campaigned together in black neighborhoods, and he says he got to know her pretty well. "She doesn't go along with the crowd. Maria will speak out."
"Maria's a survivor. Say you were lost in the woods. Most people would die of starvation. Maria would start a lumber business."
"Great girl, great girl!" says Marco Domico, a second-term commissioner. "I admire her for her spunk. She has the courage of her convictions. I've always told her, 'If you believe it, stick with it. If you think it's right, go for it.' I hope to see her go places in the future. She's a bright woman."
"I find her very intelligent, very bright, a person who's dedicated. She is very strong in her beliefs, and very cost conscious for the taxpayers of Cook County. I don't think anyone can say she's not dedicated. She's an asset to the county board.
"Her greatest strength is her ability and willingness to look at the entire subject matter and come up with a good judgment. I have not found a weak point in her as a board member."
"The way she talks is the way she is. The precinct captains all like her, the police all like her. She'll make a good president of the county board."
1 comment:
Wonderful use of taxpayer monies!!!
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