Dorothy A. Brown

In 2008 Brown announced that she would no longer accept any gifts, even though permitted by the ethics board, and claimed on her tax returns.[21][22][5]

In May 2006, Brown chaired the host committee for a Chicago fund raiser to support the re-election of Mayor Ray Nagin of New Orleans, Louisiana. Information technology contractor Mark St. Pierre, who had worked contracts for both the city of New Orleans and Cook County government and contributed to both Brown and Nagin, organized the event. Nagin was indicted on corruption charges on January 18, 2013,[23][24][25][26] and convicted in 2014.

In January 2010, at the request of Brown, 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 Inspector General's report documented expenditures unrelated to charitable causes, including Chicago Bulls tickets for an employee morale outing for employees and Six Flags Great America outing for employees and their children tickets and employee parking reimbursements. The Inspector General's report cleared Brown's office of wrongdoing, but advised Brown provide better controls and register the fund as a charitble fund. Brown discontinued Jeans Day in August 2010.[27][28][29][30][31]

In June 2011, 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. 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 The Sankofa Group sold the property for $100,000. Brown's lawyer said that this was an arm's length transaction and neither Brown or her husband were charged with any wrongdoing. [5][32][33] The Cook County Inspector General and by a grand jury convened by prosecutors with the Cook County State's Attorney's office opened an investigation of the land deal.[34][35][36][37][38]

In 2013, it was reported that a campaign donor had given Brown's husband a parcel of land for $1. Brown's name was later added to paperwork and Sankofa Group (a private entity once registered to Brown's home) ended up on the title. Brown and her husband sold the land for $100,000. Brown did not disclose the land as a gift or donation on state economic interest forms but disclose it as a part of her interest in the Sankofa Group.[39]

In November 2015, a federal indictment alleged that a clerk's office employee had been rehired by the Clerk's office weeks after lending $15,000 to a company controlled by Brown's husband, then lied to a federal grand jury about how many times he called another person, during questioning about the incident.[40][41] The employee pleaded guilty in 2016, and the "going rate" for a job in the office may have been $10,000, according to a former employee that Brown has stated in a letter to the editor of the Chicago Suntimes, was lying and was a part of a skim by former employees that she fired to destroy her reputation.[42]

In 2018, a federal probe detailed accounts of alleged job-buying in Brown's office.[43] Brown was never charged in any wrongdoing and indicated in a letter to the editor of the Chicago Suntimes in 2018 that the allegations of job selling were lies made up by former employees that she fired, to destroy her reputation.

In March 2019, a federal indictment charged Donald Danagher with bribery, alleging a pay-for-contract scheme which involved making donations to Brown's campaign and scholarship funds in exchange for his debt collection business receiving a contract. Brown contended that she was not involved with the selection of the debt collection contract and that Danagher never approached her in any way.[44][45][46]

On April 26, 2019, a jury convicted former Brown aide Beena Patel, who had supervised approximately 500 employees in the clerk's office, of perjury concerning her federal grand jury testimony in 2015 and 2016.[47]

In late 2019, Brown's office had a class-action lawsuit brought against it alleging that it had charged illegal fees to people seeking child support enforcement.[48]

For much of her tenure, Brown has been criticized for failing to provide stored records that had been requested in a timely fashion.[49]

Brown has been criticized by advocacy groups for her failure to sufficiently update the court system even thought she made many 21st century improvements as sourced on this page, including efiling, a new case management system for criminal and for the county division, a new imaging system, and many others. Chief Judge Timothy Evans stopped Brown from implementing the new case management system for the civil and traffic areas of law before she left office on November 30, 2020. [50][51] The court's case management system has been characterized as "archaic" but was upgraded for the criminal areas of law and the county division.[52][53] A partial update, first phased-in in November 2019, which digitized criminal courts filings, proved problematic. This update lead to records it made available being often incomplete, and taking longer to be updated.[52][53] This proved so problematic that the court itself in October 2020 ordered that Brown halt its implementation.[53]

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Brown received criticism from courts clerks and the clerks' union, who argued she was not doing enough to protect them and the public amid the pandemic in spite of the office providing the proper personal protective equipment and giving the employees on the skeleton crew their full pay, plus double pay as hazard pay and paying all the other employees working from home full pay. Some clerks walked off the job.[54] Also during the pandemic, Brown received criticism for failure to mail out the notices telling individuals that their court appearances would be conducted virtually in a timely fashion, with some notices having been mailed out after the date of the court appearances had already passed. When questioned by WGN-TV on this, Brown alleged that “unconscious racism” was at the root of both that story, and other negative stories reported on her during her tenure.[55] In November 2020, Brown was caught by WGN-TV holding a retirement party that appeared to possibly violate the city and state's 50-person limit on gatherings amid the pandemic, even though the reporter's temperature was checked and he could not be admitted because the event was private and at the limit according to guidelines. [56]