The Tribune reports today that officials from the Chicago Children's Museum decided to take their case for moving to Grant Park to their constituents--literally. In other words, they made their argument that this is all about the children to the children:

"As the children munched on pretzels and drank from juice boxes at the Harris Park Field House, Jim Law, the museum's vice president of planning and external affairs, said the project was good for families."

Odd? Perhaps. Exploitative? Some would say so. But here's where it gets really ... deep. The Trib reports the event was organized by one Georgette Greenlee-Finney, executive director of the Woodlawn Organization.

Greenlee-Finney's the wife of the organization's CEO and president, Leon Finney Jr. Finney, a big Daley ally, is a member of the Chicago Plan Commission, the body that's supposed to rule on the move next week.

Looks like Mayor Daley ("We want economic development") lost the big-box minimum wage battle after all.

Near the beginning of the City Council’s environment committee meeting Wednesday, a staffer handed aldermen copies of an article describing how an English village implemented an outright ban on plastic shopping bags.

Aldermen murmured their approval as they glanced over the story.

Only one, the 49th Ward’s Joe Moore, noted the irony. “If a little village in England can seamlessly ban these plastic bags, then surely the great city of Chicago, with its admirable efforts at leading the way in terms of becoming a more green city, can do that as well,” he said.

That made some sense. In fact, just about everybody at the meeting—aldermen, city officials, and recycling advocates—agreed that the ordinance before them, which merely requires that certain Chicago stores recycle their plastic bags, probably didn’t go far enough.

Then the committee voted unanimously to pass it.

This means the ordinance will likely be approved by the full council next week, providing another example of how well-meaning City Council legislation often gets moderated, compromised, or co-opted nearly to the point of pointlessness.

Fourteenth Ward alderman Ed Burke, one of the chief sponsors of the plastic bag recycling ordinance, explained its rationale: "I think it’s true that in our everyday lives we’re offered and sometimes bombarded with plastic bags. These bags encase our local newspaper; they’re given to us in excess at local retailers and grocery stores. And while the plastic bags provided to us appear to be a convenience, they quite literally are destroying the planet."

A few minutes later, Burke added: "I know there are many who would like to see the outright ban of these bags, but I don’t think we’re ready at this point."

Burke didn’t remind the committee that last year one of the City Council’s most powerful aldermen proposed a ban on plastic shopping bags, or that he was that alderman. He probably didn’t need or want to, since that proposal went nowhere.

But a few months ago, after New York City passed a weaker law requiring retailers to develop plastic bag recycling programs, 39th Ward alderman Margaret Laurino put together a similar ordinance for Chicago. After several rounds of discussion and amendments, it ended up . . . not all that different from what Laurino first introduced. In other words, far weaker than what everyone but retailers claimed to want. For example, stores that don’t make most of their sales on food or medicine, such as Best Buy and Macy’s, won’t have to comply. And there’s no guarantee the ordinance will be enforced any better than the city’s other recycling laws.

“Politics is the art of compromise,” said Burke.

“Not everybody’s going to be happy with an ordinance,” Laurino said.

The Chicago Recycling Coalition’s Mike Nowak explained why he counted himself among the not-so-happy. "Frankly, we feel that we were not included in the discussion in a meaningful way," he told the committee. "Certain measures that we suggested, such as a fee on bags, were never seriously considered."

Laurino continued to assert that she sees this as a “first step.” That sounds to many like a lame excuse for giving away far too much. “Let us not forget that the Blue Bag program was a first step that failed to produce a second step,” Nowak said.

Then again, maybe Laurino and the rest of the council will prove the critics wrong. After the meeting, while Burke was busy defending the ordinance to a throng of reporters, Laurino stood around talking with colleagues about finding ways to compost unused grocery store produce.

The Chicago Plan Commission is set to take up the Chicago Children’s Museum’s plans to move into Grant Park at its May 15 meeting, and the safe bet is on the museum getting its way. Why? Well, the commission rarely sees a high-powered zoning change it doesn’t like. Then there’s the rather vocal position of its most important member, Mayor Daley. And finally there's the matter of the individual loyalties and ties of all the other commissioners:

• Linda Searl, chair: A partner in the respected Searl Lamaster Howe architectural firm, Searl is ten-year veteran of the commission, a donor to Daley’s campaign committee, and a longtime adviser to Daley and the city’s planning department.
• Mayor Richard M. Daley: Didn’t we hear something about how he’s going to look out for the children?
• Arnold L. Randall: As the commissioner for the city’s planning department, he reports to Mayor Daley.
• Tom Byrne: As the commissioner of the city’s Department of Transportation, he reports to Mayor Daley.
• David Weinstein: Now the president of the Chicagoland Entrepreneurial Center, a nonprofit affiliate of the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce, which receives thousands of dollars a year in city funding. He formerly served as the mayor’s “technology adviser.”
• Alderman William J.P. Banks: The northwest side alderman chairs the City Council’s powerful zoning committee—which would take up this proposal next if the commission passes it. He's one of Daley’s staunchest council backers and proud of it.
• Patricia Scudiero: Scudiero is the top official—officially the "administrator"—for the city’s Department of Zoning, which enforces and interprets the city’s zoning code. As the Chicago Tribune has reported, Scudiero formerly served on Banks’s zoning committee staff and worked for the planning department.
• Alderman Edward M. Burke: Among his many intertwining business and political relationships, the City Council’s finance committee chairman has received numerous campaign contributions from museum board secretary Matthew Neumeier.
• Leon D. Finney, Jr.: Finney was one of the mayor’s earliest and most vocal supporters in the black community, and the nonprofit he leads, the Woodlawn Organization, has received millions of dollars from the city for social service and public housing programs.
• Alderman Mary Ann Smith: Smith often touts her independence but is usually a reliable council vote for the mayor’s initiatives. She’s enthusiastically supported the Daley administration’s ever-expanding use of TIFs, including several in and around her 48th Ward, and she’s got a record of using hardball tactics and backroom deals to eliminate political opposition.
• Doris B. Holleb: The University of Chicago trustee and professor of economics and urban planning has served as a consultant to the city’s planning department and an education, economics, and cultural adviser to the Carter, Reagan, and Clinton administrations. Her husband, Marshall, is a widely respected preservationist and attorney who has donated thousands of dollars to numerous political campaigns, including those of aldermen Smith and Banks.
• Lyneir Richardson: Richardson is a registered City Hall lobbyist for General Growth Properties, a real estate firm that develops, owns, and manages shopping malls in 45 states. The firm has received hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks around the country, according to a study by SEIU, which has been in a pissing match with it over procedures for unionizing employees.
• Carole Brown: Besides being appointed by the mayor to chair the CTA’s board, Brown is a member of the Children’s Museum board.
• Smita Shah: She’s the president and CEO of SPAAN Technology, which last fall received a $5 million city contract to provide engineering services for the city’s transportation department. The firm has also done work for the CTA and Chicago Public Schools.
• George W. Migala: Migala’s a radio broadcaster and station executive at WCEV 1450-AM.
• Alderman Patrick O'Connor: As Daley’s unofficial City Council floor leader, he’s about as loyal as they come. He’s currently got a campaign war chest of about $400,000, much of it contributed by developers, realtors, and construction interests.
• John H. Nelson: Nelson, a $5,500 donor to Mayor Daley’s 2007 reelection campaign, is an architect with Harley Ellis Devereaux, whose work includes the Boeing Galleries in Millennium Park, the 18th District police station, and the Picnic Grove Pavilion at the Lincoln Park Zoo.
• Nancy A. Pacher: Pacher is president and chief operating officer of U.S. Equities, an international real estate firm that has received millions of dollars in city business for property management and consulting work on TIFs.
• Alderman Bernard L. Stone: Stone isn’t above berating a city official when he’s worked up during a meeting of the City Council’s buildings committee, which he chairs. He’s not even above stalling what he deems “stupid” ordinances some of these officials occasionally send him. But after more than three decades as an alderman, he’s not going to suddenly become an independent. Like most other influential aldermen, Stone receives thousands of dollars in political contributions from developers every campaign cycle.
• Gracia M. Shiffrin: Now the senior director for development and construction programs for Catholic Charities, Shiffrin previously held several high-ranking positions in the Daley administration, including deputy chief of staff to Daley, assistant planning commissioner, and assistant corporation counsel.
• Alderman Regner "Ray" Suarez: As chairman of the council’s housing committee, Suarez is a proud defender of the Daley administration’s housing and development record. He too is able to rake in campaign contributions—about $147,000 in just the last six months of 2007, when he wasn’t running for anything. As with his council colleagues on the Plan Commission, Suarez collected a good chunk of his cash from developers and construction companies. But he’s the only one who will be faced with a conflict of interest if the entity known as Fullerton Cicero Donuts ever has a matter before the commission. It gave him $1,025 last year.

The Daley administration's Blue Bag recycling program was officially declared dead Friday morning. It was 17. 

City officials offered no lamentations for the program in announcing its demise at a press conference in Uptown. By the end of the summer, they said with pride, blue bags and other recyclable materials will no longer be sorted out of trash collected by city sanitation crews.

Instead, the city will resume its slow expansion of blue cart recycling, in which residents toss their recyclables into a container for separate pickup. An additional 92,000 households will have blue cart recycling by the end of the summer (see map), and all residential buildings with city garbage pickup--those with four or fewer units--will have blue cart recycling by 2011. Areas that already have blue carts have recycled at about triple the rate they did with blue bags.

The city will also begin adding more sites where residents without the service can drop off materials for recycling. 

"This is a day to celebrate," said Suzanne Malec-McKenna, commissioner for the Chicago Department of Environment. "We have accomplished much, but we also understand we have a lot of work to do. Our programs and initiatives have earned praise from many in the environmental arena, but the one consistent area of concern has always been recycling." 

Streets and Sanitation commissioner Michael Picardi said the blue cart rollout can't go any faster because the city doesn't have the money for all the new carts, trucks, and employees needed. And it doesn't have the means to handle the logistics that quickly. "It took us five years to roll out the black cart [garbage pickup] program," he said. "It takes ten months to order a truck. We pick up from 600,000 city residential households. It would be impossible to roll this out to all of them in a year."

But the city isn't going to wait until 2011 to kill off what's left of the Blue Bag program. It wants the money it's currently spending on it to put toward the Blue Cart program. And environment officials want to be able to focus their recycling education efforts on the newer approach.

First introduced by Mayor Daley in 1990 as "extremely convenient, environmentally sound, and the least expensive method to administer," the Blue Bag program instead cost Chicago taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars while keeping just a fraction of the city's recyclable waste out of landfills. It has been widely blamed for dimming Chicagoans' confidence in recycling generally, even though environmentalists say recycling is one of the simplest ways the average household can help fight climate change and protect natural resources.

Even at the event that amounted to the Blue Bag program's wake, city officials were defending the decision to stick with it so long. "That was the state of the art at the time," Picardi said. "This is state of the art now."

But recycling experts never thought it was a sound approach. "If by 'state of the art' you mean new and unproven and unused by just about anyone else in the country, then yes, it was," said one environmentalist at the event Friday. 

Among the Blue Bag program's fiercest critics were the leaders of the Chicago Recycling Coalition, some of whom were on hand to announce their support for the conversion to blue carts. "The CRC has fought for this change for 16 years," said Julie Dick, vice president of the group's board. "Today marks the end of a long, hard battle. There are so many other waste management issues to be addressed in this city, and we are really excited that we finally get to move on to those issues. The Blue Bag program has been a huge distraction."

Dick called for other waste-reduction strategies and a citywide program to bring recycling to the thousands of residential buildings with private garbage haulers, which aren't eligible for the Blue Cart program. "We're looking forward to the day when every building in Chicago has an effective, source-separated recycling program."

The Blue Bag program is survived by its parents, Mayor Daley and garbage giant Waste Management; its stepmother, current program manager Allied Waste (PDF); and dozens of longtime aldermen who publicly supported the program for years. One longtime defender, former Streets and San commissioner Al Sanchez, was bagged himself in 2005.

People around the country are still talking about Reverend Jeremiah Wright's appearance at the National Press Club Monday. But as our very own Ben Joravsky argues in this piece in the Washington Independent, some Chicagoans are still trying to figure out how someone with so much to say about the federal government's many acts of injustice could all but ignore the politics of his own city. 

Today's Tribune offered former governor Jim Thompson's promise of a solution to one of most baffling mysteries of our time: How the state can buy and fix up Wrigley Field without spending any public money.

Thompson, now head of the Illinois Sports Facilities Authority, claimed to have solved what the article termed this "seemingly intractable puzzle."

Unfortunately, Thompson offered few specifics, nor did he give up much of anything to the Sun-Times. In essence, his message amounted to "Trust me, you'll see, there are ways . . ."

But then someone other than me -- in this case the Sun-Times editorial board -- pointed out the obvious: that this would amount to using public taxes for a private deal. Thompson was left with two choices. He could try to convince the public that the Sun-Times is wrong and that somehow or other spending sales taxes on Wrigley wasn't really, you know, spending sales taxes on Wrigley. Or he could concoct a magical alternative to using public money.

Apparently Thompson and his allies have settled on Plan B.

But in the absence of any concrete details, allow me to offer a few fund-raising suggestions. A bake sale, maybe? How about a Cubs car wash? Or officials could kill two birds with one stone by getting the Latin School to pick up the cost.

True, if Latin School soccer moved from Lincoln Park to Wrigley Field, the Cubs would have to schedule more night games--Latin would undoubtedly want the field from 3 PM to 7 PM every weekday and from 9 AM to 4 PM on weekends. And the Cubs would have to go on an extended road trip in July, when Latin would claim Wrigley for its summer camp. But hey, the pope gave the Yankees the boot from Yankee Stadium.  

As if your last experience on the road--any road--in Chicago weren't convincing enough, the numbers [pdf] prove it: traffic around here sucks. Rush-hour drivers in the Chicago area spend an average of 46 hours a year--that's on top of normal traffic times--sitting in congestion. Three of every five miles of local roads are congested, and the total length of rush hour--morning or evening--has grown over the last decade from seven to eight hours a day. Traffic delays result in our cars burning an extra 142,000 gallons of gas a year--and cost us millions of dollars in wasted fuel, time, and business. The Chicago area's congestion is among the fastest-growing in the country.

In other words, it's a good thing the feds are chipping in more than $153 million to help ease traffic congestion here, on ideas ranging from the seemingly obvious, such as improving the efficiency of CTA bus routes, to the kinda innovative, like creating incentives to keep vehicles out of the Loop.

Mayor Daley appeared with federal officials Tuesday to discuss some of the plans, which is itself probably a good thing. The last time someone brought up the possibility of trying to reduce traffic downtown--before federal dollars were offered as collateral--he dismissed the idea.

Last year, 14th Ward alderman Ed Burke proposed City Council hearings on the possibility of imposing a London-style surcharge "in a bid to ease downtown traffic congestion, reduce air pollution, and bolster funding for the city’s beleaguered transit system." Daley's response? He said he had an "open mind," then added, "Let's not rush to that and scare everybody off. We're trying to keep businesses here." 

Business leaders also pooh-poohed the idea and it died a quick death.

On Tuesday, though, the mayor was talking about raising the rates for downtown parking meters and public garages. Essentially, this revisits the idea of a congestion toll--though it technically penalizes people for stopping and parking. 

It's probably not going to be any more popular with the business community than Burke's call for hearings. "We've expressed concern about previous congestion proposals because of their impact on both businesses and their employees," says Justin DeJong, a spokesman for the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce. "We'll be looking at this more closely in the coming weeks."

But if Daley wants it now (and why wouldn't he?--the city's not paying and it could make the place more attractive to an international Olympics committee), they're going to have to compromise and live with it.

In case you've lost count, here's a sampling of some of the ways the city has promised in the last few months to spend your money:

$15 million (with another $35 million coming from insurers) to settle suits from the 2003 fire in the Cook County Administration building that left six people dead;

$12 million dispersed to victims of the Daley administration's patronage system;

$11 million to pay off a Millennium Park contractor fired several years ago for not working fast enough;

$13 million so far to victims of abuse under former police Commander Jon Burge;

$2.7 million in January to settle various suits over police misconduct, traffic accidents, and citizens' "animal loss." 

That's $53.7 million so far, and it's only April! By comparison, the city spent: 

$47 million in total judgments and settlements for 2007;

$49 million in total judgments and settlements for 2006;

$34 million in total judgments and settlements for 2005.

All week cynics were telling me there was no way the residents would win round one of their case against the Latin School soccer field in Lincoln Park.

On one side, you had a collection of cloutless north-siders worried about coming up with the money to pay their lawyers.

On the other, you had the Park District and the city, with almost unlimited access to taxpayer dollars, and Latin, one of the wealthiest private schools in town. 

Plus Mayor Daley wants the field and, as we all know, the mayor generally gets what he wants around here. The case, of course, is being held in the Daley Center, and as more than one lawyer has jokingly told me: "They don't call it the Daley Center for nothing."

Well, Cook County circuit judge Dorothy Kirie Kinnaird stunned us all this afternoon.

She didn't give the residents the complete victory they wanted, but she came pretty close.

Ruling that the residents made a persuasive argument that the field could only be built with approval from the Chicago Plan Commission, she prohibited Latin or the Park District from installing "lighting, permanent or fixed goal posts, permanent or removable bleachers or signage." Furthermore, the scoreboard, which has already been installed, "may not be lit, connected to lighting, or otherwise used."

In addition, Judge Kinnaird temporarily nullified the contract the Park District has signed with Latin--the one giving the school exclusive prime-time use of the field.

She did, however, allow Latin and the Park District to finishing installing the artificial turf.

The residents wanted Judge Kinnaird to halt all further work on the field. But after the judge read her ruling, they were feeling pretty good with what they got. I for one hope their lawyers get to start grilling Park District, Latin, and city officials under oath for the inside story on this deal.

Judge Kinnaird's restraining order will be in effect until at least May 20; during that time the residents will gather evidence to ask the judge to make her ruling permanent. In contrast, Park District and Latin lawyers said they will probably appeal to have the temporary restraining order lifted. Other than that, they'll be reviewing their options.

And what are those options? Well, Latin has to decide whether it wants to press on with construction if there's a probability a judge will void their contract. After all, what's the point of them spending up to $2 million to build a field if they don't get exclusive rights to use it?

And the Park District has to decide if it wants to waste even more taxpayers dollars installing a field that some court may eventually force them to pay for--or remove.

At Wednesday's hearing, Latin's lawyer argued that the Park District has to cover all construction and removal costs if a judge orders the field removed. Latin says it's going to cost $2 million to install the field. Lord knows how much it would cost to take it out. If the Latin contract gets nixed, then the school may have to chase after the Park District to get its money back. In other words, more lawyers, more litigation--any way you look at it, the taxpayers get screwed.

Of course, all of this could have been averted had Park District officials gone to the Plan Commission for approval of the field, as the law clearly states they should. Then again, if they had, residential and aldermanic opposition might have killed the deal. So they tried to sneak it through.

I guess the judge's ruling means that even in Chicago you're occasionally supposed to play by the rules.