At long last Cook County Board President Todd Stroger is getting some good press, and from the Chicago Sun-Times, no less. The Sun-Times has been extremely critical of Stroger’s recent blunders, as has the Chicago Tribune. This time, however, Stroger gets some good news:

Cook County Board President Todd Stroger is set to hand control of the county’s struggling health system to a panel of nine health care and industry executives he says “reflects the cultural, gender and racial diversity” of the county.

And Stroger’s choices are largely drawing praise.

The paper lists the names of those Stroger has chosen.

In March, the Chicago Tribune reported that Palatine, IL, was looking into ways that it could secede from Cook County. The issue in Palatine is not necessarily Stroger’s incompetence, but the higher taxes proposed by Stroger.

The Cook County Board needs to get a handle on all of this, or other municipalities on the outskirts of Cook County will consider like measures. There are strong arguments to be made for secession. Cook County’s equalizer may make sense for the City of Chicago, but it only makes a bad situation worse in the suburbs.

The first thing we need to realize is that taxes in Illinois make no sense. No one thought this mess through from start to finish. The Illinois tax code is a hodge-podge of nonsense.

Municipalities on the outskirts of Cook County are wise to consider other alternatives.