CHICAGO - After serving in the politically tumultuous position of chief of staff to Cook County, Ill., Board President Todd Stroger for nearly two years, attorney Lance Tyson will leave that position tomorrow and in July join the municipal finance practice at Chicago-based Freeborn & Peters LLP.
As Stroger's chief of staff, Tyson helped craft and win approval for two $3 billion county budget- one that implemented deep cuts and another that relied on a controversial measure to raise the county's portion of the sales tax - amid an atmosphere often nearly paralyzed by political fighting among the 17-member county board.
"It was amazingly challenging," said Tyson, 36. "It's tough to get anything done."
Tyson said his departure was expected by the administration. "It was always expected that my service would be about a year or a year and a half," he said. "I'm a lawyer. I prefer practicing law."
Tyson, a friend of Stroger's who joined the county government after Stroger took over as president in December 2006, will be replaced by current county Comptroller Joseph Fratto. Stroger has not yet selected a new comptroller, a position that requires board approval to fill.
Tyson also previously worked under Chicago Mayor Richard Daley as part of the mayor's legislative team in the Office of Governmental Affairs, where one of his projects was aiding in the successful effort to win state legislation that allowed the city to privatize the Chicago Skyway tollroad.
At Freeborn & Peters, a 25-year-old firm with offices in Chicago and Springfield, Tyson said he expects to focus on health care and housing finance and to work with non-profits looking for conduit issuers.
"We're going to focus on conduit deals initially, and tap into the hospital experience that I was able to garner at the county," Tyson said, referring to the county's massive Department of Public Health that includes three hospitals and 13 clinics. "We're also going to look at basic general obligation refunding and getting into the auction-rate securities restructuring that's out there."
Tyson began his public finance law career at Kutak Rock LLP, and went on to launch Tyson Strong Hill LLC, a minority-owned public finance firm with offices in Chicago and Milwaukee. The firm closed in late 2006, when Tyson joined the county.
County ethics rules prohibit Tyson from working with the county for a year - and Tyson said he has no plans to court the government as a client, instead planning to call on former clients that include the Illinois Finance Authority, the Chicago Board of Education, and the Chicago Transit Authority, among others.
"[At Tyson Strong Hill,] we were able to get on deals as co-counsel, but also we got opportunities to be sole counsel on a lot of transactions," Tyson said. "That's one reason I'm excited about [joining Freeborn & Peters], is to have a greater capacity to take it to the next level."
Freeborn & Peters currently has about six attorneys working on public finance and 120 attorneys throughout the firm. The firm ranked 14th in Illinois as underwriter's counsel in 2006, with $318.2 million in volume, and did not rank in the top 25 last year, according to Thomson Reuters.
David Gustman, the former head of the Illinois Finance Authority board, who has ties to state government, is a partner at the firm and chairman of the firm's executive committee.
