The newly elected clerk of Cook County’s court system took the oath of office Monday, pledging to reform a department that has been plagued by scandal under her two predecessors.
After being sworn in at the Daley Center, Mariyana Spyropoulos said she would work to make court records more accessible to both litigants and the public — hammering on a promise she made during her campaign to unseat incumbent Clerk of the Circuit Court Iris Martinez.
“The clerk’s office is the front door to our justice system,” Spyropoulos said. “I pledge to keep that door open for everyone, not just for those who know how to navigate the system.”
The clerk’s office employs more than 1,000 people, manages billions of pages of court records and millions of dollars in fines, fees and bond payments. While it’s crucial to the largest county court system in the nation, the clerk’s office typically only garners attention for its blunders or outright corruption.
Spyropoulos handily defeated Martinez last spring in the Democratic primary, then coasted to victory in the November general election. Martinez had won an upset victory in the open race to replace Dorothy Brown, the longtime clerk. Like Spyropoulos, Martinez committed to transparency and technological progress.
Brown left office following a nearly two-decade tenure marred by probes that centered on the alleged sale of jobs to campaign donors, a real estate deal involving her husband, and a loan to a goat-farming business by one of her deputies. Brown was never charged but several top deputies were, and she chose not to run for a fifth term.
Martinez oversaw the launch of an improved online records system, and she spruced up dingy offices that had been lined with paper files. But she was also was criticized for operational failures, including erroneously listing felonies on the records of defendants who completed pretrial diversion programs and refunding bond money.
Martinez, the first Latina to hold the clerk’s job, was often at odds with party leaders who ultimately backed Spyropoulos, a former commissioner on the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District’s board.
Spyropoulos spoke Monday about restoring faith in the office by removing politics from the day-to-day operations, and she vowed not to accept campaign donations from her employees.
“I will ask for one thing from [employees],” she said. “I will ask them to give the public their best work.”