If you want to see the Dead Zone, better hurry up.

The Dead Zone is, of course, the far northeastern corner of Bensenville, roughly 15 percent of the town. Using immense powers at the state, local and federal levels, Mayor Daley seized control of almost all the property there in order to plow it over and build a new runway and air control tower for O'Hare Airport.

Yesterday DuPage County Judge Kenneth Popejoy gave Daley the green light to begin demolition, ruling that there is no apparent environmental danger from tearing down the property. The city hopes to bring in the bulldozers as soon as possible, says Rosemarie Andolino, who oversees the mayor's O'Hare expansion program.

You might wonder why Mayor Daley would be so eager to proceed with a project for which there is no apparent funding or need, now that rising fuel costs have crippled the airline industry.

Well, I'm totally with Mayor Daley on this one. When I was about eight, I used to like to smash sand castles just for the fund of watching them fall. I mean, what's the fun of being an all-powerful mayor if you can't run people out of their community and demolish their homes?

In his ruling, Popejoy noted that more than 500 buildings in the Dead Zone are vacant and he called them an "eyesore."

I'm going to have to disagree with the judge about this. There's nothing ugly about the Dead Zone. In fact, I find it a little -- oh, what's the word? -- stirring to stand on the quiet streets amidst the boarded-up, vacant houses and contemplate the tremendous political power it represents.

I suggest Judge Popejoy amend his ruling and force Mayor Daley to keep the buildings standing until -- or if -- the city ever has the money it needs to build the stuff it wants to build.

In the meantime, state senator James Meeks should lead bus tours (but not bike rides) of children from Chicago's chronically broke public school system so they can see firsthand how their government spends its money. 

There was an Olympic rally on the south side this morning, but it wasn't like the rallies staged by Mayor Daley.

Instead of bringing in out-of-town celebrities to join the mayor's chorus -- Olympics good, Olympics good -- the newly formed coalition Communities for an Equitable Olympics raised the possibility that maybe, just maybe, staging the games in 2016 wouldn't be such a hot idea for Chicagoans.

It was a glorious sunshiny morning, and many of the leading south-side community organizations were there: the Kenwood-Oakland Community Organization, Action Now, Centers for New Horizons, the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, and the Brighton Park Neighborhood Council.

Facing a horde of reporters and camera crews, they stood on the steps of Michael Reese Hospital, at 2929 S. Ellis, which the city -- as busted as it is -- is preparing to replace with a 37-acre development that could serve as the Olympic Village.

Think about this for a moment. The city's $400 million in the red, we're in the midst of a crisis in low-income health care, and the condo market's soft. But the mayor's gearing up to sink $85 million into a 7,500-unit condominium complex that will take the place of a hospital.

For the moment the activists are playing things diplomatically. "We're not here to hurt the Olympic bid," said Denise Dixon, a member of Action Now. "We're here to enhance it."

The coalition wants to force the city to sign a "legally enforceable benefits agreement" that would, among other things, guarantee that as much as 20 percent of the units in the Olympic Village development would be affordable for working-class and poor people who currently live in the area.

At the risk of sounding like the jaded old coot that I am, I don't know why they would trust any promise that the city makes when it comes to affordable housing. As best I can tell the whole point of the Olympics -- other than putting an international spotlight on the mayor -- is to move the poor people out of the south side.

I can only hope that if the city turns down the residents' demands they'll move to plan B: opposition. I say the sooner they get there the better. Until Mayor Daley can show how he would pay for the games -- other than with property tax dollars -- we shouldn't be spending millions to try to have them, 'cause we can't afford them.

When I think about it, there should have been people from the north, northwest, southwest and west sides at today's rally as well. After all, tax dollars are coming out of their pockets too.  

If Saint Paul didn’t convince us, Mayor Daley might: the latest converts often become the most aggressive evangelists.

I bring this up because the mayor has apparently realized that Chicago’s public transportation system needs some work, and he wants to make sure others are onto it as well. “You have to get this on people’s minds,” he said during a tour of Beijing’s system.

Actually, it’s been on our minds—those many thousands of us who rely on the CTA to get to work each day—for years.

But the mayor appears to have had his own blinding light experience earlier this year when the International Olympic Committee gave our system tepid reviews. The exposure of a major weakness in Chicago’s Olympic bid captured Daley’s attention in a way the frustrations of riders and a string of high-profile mishaps never could.

Now, the Trib reports, Daley would like to find a way to get CTA president Ron Huberman and others over to Beijing to check out their comfortable, high-tech transit network.

But some of his constituents are suggesting a far cheaper, more essential option: maybe the mayor should start taking public transit in his own city to see how it creaks along.

After all, if he continues to be inspired like this, the man who’s amassed the power and funding to “reform” the schools and “transform” public housing and “modernize” the airport can find a way to move buses and trains, if not mountains.

Dwayne Wade, LeBron James, and other NBA superstars have endorsed Chicago's bid for the 2016 Olympic Games!

Thank goodness -- I was starting to worry they back Rio.

The good news was delivered today in a press release -- with accompanying video -- from Chicago 2016, just in case any of you were wondering what they're doing with the $12 million they raised last month at Millennium Park (and you thought they were wasting the money).

Other former and current NBA stars who've sided with Chicago are Gary Payton, Carlos Boozer, and Jason Kidd, according to Chicago 2016.

No word on Dennis Rodman, but I'm sure Chicago 2106 will keep us posted.

Incidentally, I hope the International Olympic Committee doesn't hold it against us that Chicago 2016 misidentified Carlos Boozer as Dwayne Wade in its video.

The press release didn't mention whether or not the NBA multimillionaires were going to help us pay for the games.

I'm sure their checks are in the mail . . . 

No sooner had I promised myself to never, ever wade into the murky waters of 49th Ward politics, then what do I do but jump right in.

But don't blame me. Journalist Dave Glowacz--aka Mr. Radio--made me do it as part of our weekly segment, the Rest of the Story. 

It's about the Gale Community Center controversy. Check it out . . .

By the logic of Cook County politics, it makes perfect sense. Republican state’s attorney candidate Tony Peraica is vowing to use his independence to put away criminals and fight political corruption, so of course it was just revealed that he accepted $2,700 in contributions a couple years back from several felons. His Democratic opponent, Anita Alvarez, has promised to bring the office a fresh perspective--integrity--even though she’s worked in it for 20 years; she's been under fire for taking donations from prosecutors who'd report to her if she were elected, and from at least one attorney whose firm reaped millions in a lawsuit against the county.

Peraica returned his scrutinized money; Alvarez kept hers, brushing off conflict-of-interest allegations.

Alvarez was mostly quiet about the controversies. Naturally, Peraica tried to rally his supporters to battle.

This time, though, he didn’t storm the county building.

“Predictably, Alvarez attacked us for taking some minuscule (about $2,700 total) contributions—during past campaigns—from individuals who later ran afoul of the law,” he wrote in an e-mail to supporters.

“Fair enough. A candidate for State's Attorney should avoid even the appearance of impropriety—so we are returning those contributions in question.

“But we now challenge Alvarez to return her tens of thousands of dollars in "conflict of interest" campaign cash. Will she do it? We bet she doesn't - and, in the process, proves that she is little more than a political insider out to defend the status quo.

“WE NEED YOUR HELP TODAY TO RESPOND TO THESE ATTACKS.

“Please read the following stories and add your comments in the comments section ... or consider writing a letter to the editor. Tell your fellow citizens that Tony is doing the right thing—and that Anita needs to come clean with her questionable campaign cash.”

The email then provides links to stories in the Trib, SouthtownStar, and Illinois Review, a right-of-center blog.

But I’m not sure enough troops responded to the call-up—at least not the ones he was hoping for.

“Commissioner Peraica is a selfish, self-absorbed politician,” a commenter named RedPickUpTruck wrote on the Illinois Review site. “I'm a conservative GOP who supported Commissioner Peraica for County Board but he has lost it. He likes the attention of taking on the machine but cares none for fixing it. He needs to go away.”

State rep Annazette Collins, a Democrat from Chicago’s west side, agreed earlier this week to pay a $20,000 fine and issue an apology for filing inaccurate campaign finance reports with the state board of elections. From 2005 to 2007 Collins claimed she didn’t raise or spend a penny. Turns out both sides of the ledger were off by more than $100,000.

Collins has some company. A couple weeks ago I wrote about how 12th Ward alderman George Cardenas said he’d eschewed fund-raising, instead asking supporters to donate to charity in his honor—a maneuver that some campaign finance experts don’t think is legal. A couple of his colleagues, the 11th Ward’s James Balcer and the 35th Ward’s Rey Colon, also reported raising zilch in the first six months of 2008, while other politicians say they've brought in next to nothing: county commissioner Bill Beavers reported getting a meager $350, 17th Ward alderman Latasha Thomas just $600. And that's just what I found after a quick search.

Maybe there's a sudden movement afoot to ask potential donors to save their money for a worthy cause.

Probably not. It's more likely sloppy record keeping or some dubious scheme. “If they’re an incumbent claiming zero contributions, it’s a red flag,” says Tony Morgando of the state board of elections’ campaign finance division. “In the city of Chicago, especially, there’s money out there.”

And the board isn’t going to catch everybody who fails to comply with reporting requirements. Every six months each of the 3,600 active political committees in Illinois is supposed to submit itemized campaign finance records; active campaigns have to file additional reports in the weeks before the election. In other words, in election years like this one the board will receive a total of about 10,000 finance reports. It has 15 people on staff to go through them all.

Morgando says they conduct a “cursory review” of each report—for example, if a committee says it transferred money to another candidate, the staff will check that candidate's records to see if the numbers square. But that’s typically after the reports have become available for public viewing, since most are filed electronically and show up online almost immediately. And by law “deep audits” only happen when someone presents evidence of a problem.

“We operate this on an honor system, and anyone who knows anything about Illinois politics knows that probably can’t work here,” says Jim Bray, a spokesman for the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform, whose complaint against Collins resulted in the penalties. 

Of course, some politicians are on the opposite end of the disclosure spectrum. House speaker Michael Madigan recently reported making “contributions” to five of his legislative allies that totaled $1.29; the cash was apparently spent on highway tolls. And former state rep candidate Phillip Jackson meticulously listed the series of loans he’d received from his nonprofit education organization, for $2.16, $2.95, and $3.05.

In a quieter-than-predicted foreclosure sale, Jam Productions bought the Uptown Theater today for $3.2 million.

But that's only the latest step in the restoration of the historic property at Broadway and Lawrence. Jam owner Jerry Mickelson is telling reporters that he's going to need major financial assistance from the city.

And if you haven't figured it out by now, that probably means TIF money. Look for the funds to come from the Lawrence-Broadway TIF district. A few years back, Joseph Freed, Michelson's partner in the Uptown deal, got assistance from this TIF to fix up the Goldblatt's building, located just to the south on Broadway. And the same TIF issued $376,437 in unspecified Uptown-Theater-related expenses in 2006.

In last year's debate over the Hollywood-Sheridan TIF, Alderman Mary Ann Smith (48th) said money from the Lawrence-Broadway TIF couldn't be used to fix up the McCutcheon School because it was already earmarked for the Uptown. 

Think of it as the theater's favorite TIF . . .

They won’t give an exact number, but city officials have been admitting over the last few days that they’re already looking at a substantial budget shortfall—perhaps as high as $400 million, or 6 percent of the $6.3 billion budget.

Budgets are essentially guesstimates about what’s going to happen in the year ahead. Apparently last fall’s were off by quite a ways. 

Acts of God and the economy have lots to do with it—budget department spokeswoman Wendy Abrams says she can’t provide specific figures because they’re so fluid, but the unusually long, messy winter cost the city far more than it had expected, as have rising fuel costs. And the rotten economy—especially in the foundering construction and real estate sectors—has slowed the rate of money coming in.

There are a couple ways to look at this. On the one hand, city officials couldn’t have predicted how many inches of snow were going to fall last winter any more than they can control national economic forces. Then again, maybe their projections could have been more conservative. Chicago hadn’t gone through a full-on winter in a number of years, and sooner or later it was bound to happen. The housing market was in a free-fall well before the 2008 budget was drawn up.

Yet the Daley administration laid out a budget plan last fall that assumed a mild winter and a stabilizing economy. A few examples:

·        The city’s Bureau of Street Operations, the division responsible for street cleaning and snow removal, had a 2004 budget of $89 million, but it was cut to $73 million by this year. (Over the same period, the budget for the Bureau of Sanitation, which handles garbage and recycling, grew from $142 million to $163 million.)

·        The Department of Fleet Management, which provides the fuel for city vehicles, budgeted just a little more (a couple million) for gasoline and diesel though prices were already shooting higher.

·        The 2008 budget predicted the city would bring in the same amount in real estate transfer taxes—$210 million—as it did in 2007, despite the sinking housing market. (And the city overestimated these revenues last year too.)

·        Same deal with the sale of city-owned land, which rises and falls with the pace of development and real estate speculation: the city projected making $16 million this year even though it only brought in $12 million in 2007.

·        Mayor Daley announced a shortfall at this time last year too.

 
If the budget department was overly optimistic, it had allies in the City Council—40 aldermen voted for the revenue package (though just 29 for the portion of it raising property taxes), and 37 supported the spending plan.

Now the mayor is considering employee layoffs and unpaid furloughs, and aldermen have also been told to prepare for cuts in city services. There’s nothing remotely good about this for them. No one walks around singing songs of praise to their aldermen just because the trees are trimmed and streets are swept. But if people start noticing that little things aren’t being taken care of, they’ll bitch, and whoever’s sitting in the ward office will be held responsible for the decline of the neighborhood whether it’s actually happening or not.

So what is an embattled alderman to do? Thank God there's a Republican in the White House to blame, at least for now.

In the last few days Mayor Daley has been spreading the word that even though the city faces mountains of debt, there's absolutely no way he will raise property taxes.

Last week he and schools CEO Arne Duncan announced that the Board of Education would rather take $50 million out of reserves than hike taxes for the cash-starved system.

And today he proclaimed that he would mandate furlough days for nonunion city employees to help close a budget deficit he says stands at "a couple of hundred million dollars." But no new property taxes.

This is a surprising turn of events for the mayor, who hasn't been reluctant to hike taxes in the past. For instance, to help close last year's $293 million deficit, Mayor Daley raised roughly $276 million in fees, fines, and taxes, including $83.4 million in property taxes. And this was on top of his $113 million increase in what I call the TIF tax (which the mayor doesn't acknowledge because he's apparently convinced himself that TIFs aren't taxes even though we have to pay them).

So what gives this year?

Well, there are two theories bouncing around City Hall. The nice guy theory is that Mayor Daley truly cares about the little people of his town and he realizes that in these hard economic times they can't afford another tax hike.

"Chicago taxpayers have been generous and supported our school improvements, and they deserve a break," the mayor told reporters at a July 23 press conference where he announced no new property taxes for the schools.

Arne Duncan was even more direct. "People are hurting," he said at the same press conference. "They're having a hard time making ends meet. And we refuse to add to that burden....We will not raise taxes. It would have been the wrong thing to do at this time."

Then there's the more, shall we say, realistic point of view that goes like this. With just six months left before the city submits its official bid for the 2016 Olympics to the International Olympic Committee, the last thing Mayor Daley wants or needs is to risk igniting anything remotely resembling a property tax revolt. Not when he's trying to show the world that everyone in Chicago just can't wait to host the games. There will of course be plenty of chances to jack up taxes next year, when he won't have to impress the IOC.

So which theory do you buy: Mayor Daley truly cares about you, or he wants you to remain asleep?