Cook County Board commissioners are considering adding a new $100 million fund to their roughly $9 billion proposed budget next year that would be earmarked for “disaster response and recovery,” which includes the arrival of thousands of migrants and asylum seekers.
About $70 million in that fund would be set aside to provide medical care for migrants. That’s in addition to money already budgeted next year to treat this population, proposed budget documents show. About $20 million would flow to suburbs to help cover costs related to providing services for migrants, and about $10 million would be used to help communities with other disaster response and recovery efforts, such as record-setting rainstorms that have inundated many residents’ homes.
