Archive for December, 2007

2008 could be the year of Tony Rezko's redemption in court, or progressive tax relief for area voters. But we don't think so. Here's a few more likely scenarios:

Olympics In June, the International Olympic Committee will select Chicago as one of its four finalists for the 2016 games (the final finalist will be chosen in 2009). Mayor Daley will prepare to spend two more years explaining how the games will be financed without public tax dollars and why we need Frank Kruesi to carry the Olympic torch into Soldier Field.

TIFs TIFs, which collected $500 million in property taxes in 2006, will take in at least $600 million in 2007 and $800 million more in ’08. Mayor Daley and the aldermen who help decide how to spend the money will continue to insist it isn't a tax hike while creating new TIF districts for "blighted" sections of the Mag Mile.

Police misconduct After working through the final legal snags, loopholes, and kinks, the city will finally agree to settle the lawsuits accusing police of torture under former commander Jon Burge. Aldermen will be relieved to put this issue behind them so they only have to approve payouts for routine police beatings and shootings.

CTA bailout State leaders will find money to let the CTA avoid cutting all but a few bus routes on the city’s south and west sides while continuing to employ former aldermen, ousted mayoral aides, and other middle managers sent over from City Hall.

Cook County Board President Todd Stroger will remain the favorite scapegoat for anyone interested in playing reformer while providing jobs for his friends, cousins, in-laws, nieces, and nephews.

Council progressives Reform-minded aldermen will realize they need some help organizing an independent caucus in the City Council and decide Mayor Daley is exactly the guy who can get it done.

New taxes The city will consider taxing residents 5 cents per toilet flush to raise money for the legal defense of alleged Shakman Decree violators. 

New lease arrangements Having worked out a deal to lease Midway Airport for an infusion of cash into the city’s coffers, Mayor Daley will propose to lease Lake Michigan to DuPage County.

It was a typical year in Chicago. There were the giants who did the stepping and the ants who got stepped on. Here's a look at some of the winners and losers in 2007. --Ben Joravsky and Mick Dumke

Winner: Photoshop. With the help of the photo editing program, Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. extended his political reach without having to miss any karate sessions at his favorite dojo. One and the same picture of him was used on billboard and campaign literature for each candidate he endorsed -- his wife Sandi included. When asked why Jackson didn't just pose with his wife, whom he presumably sees now and then, a congressional aide said: "That's the winning formula, the winning strategy."

Loser: Cook County commissioner William Beavers. The self-proclaimed "hog with the big nuts" thought his daughter Darcel's election as Seventh Ward alderman was in the bag. Then he realized that Jackson had secured every billboard around, saturating the south side. Sandi Jackson went on to trounce Darcel Beavers.

Winners: Ducks and geese. Critics of alderman Joe Moore’s foie gras ban vowed to overturn it, but the legislation never advanced. As a result, animal rights advocates say, fewer fowl have iron rods thrust down their throats in force-feeding.

Losers: Lovers of foie gras and haters of Moore’s ordinance, including Mayor Daley, aldermen Berny Stone and Tom Tunney, and Moore’s 49th Ward opponent Don Gordon, who mostly succeeded in inspiring animal rights activists to rally support for the ban across the city.

Winners: Service-sector unions, which became major players in the City Council by helping bankroll the victories of self-proclaimed reformers and independents such as Bob Fioretti, Pat Dowell, Sandi Jackson, Toni Foulkes, Joann Thompson, Brendan Reilly, and Joe Moore.

Losers: Service-sector unions, who watched while many of those "independents" sank into the comfy cushions of their City Council seats and voted for TIFs, higher taxes, eminent domain deals, and other Daley administration initiatives.

Winners: Mayor Daley, who was able to enjoy a bike ride around Paris; Governor Blagojevich, who chilled at a Blackhawks game; Michael Madigan, who continued to bring home big bucks as a property tax appeal lawyer; and Emil Jones, who kept dreaming of new casinos in Illinois ... while CTA bailout plans crashed in the general assembly.

Losers: CTA riders, at least some of whom are wondering if they should choose the more efficient option of skateboarding to work.

Winner: Former 42nd Ward alderman Burt Natarus. By losing his reelection battle to Brendan Reilly, Natarus no longer has to put up with ceaseless whining from Gold Coast constituents.

Loser: Brendan Reilly. Since he’s had the job, Mayor Daley’s all but called him a bigot for opposing the move of the Chicago Children’s Museum to Grant Park and a kid hater for asking questions about plans by Children’s Memorial Hospital to move to the Gold Coast. Plus he has to answer all those calls that used to go to Natarus.

Winners: The boys and girls soccer teams from the Latin School, one of the city's wealthiest and most exclusive private schools. The Park District gave them (as in for free) prime lakefront park property to build a soccer field.

Losers: Pretty much all of the public high school soccer teams, who have to play on lumpy, potholed, precariously uneven fields.

Winners: Elite athletes from around the world. Mayor Daley is planning to spend untold billions building them state-of-the-art track, swimming, field hockey, and equestrian facilities for the 2016 Olympics.

Losers: Chicagoans, who don't have, among other things, consistent access to swimming pools, well-lit gyms, unslippery basketball courts, or a single indoor running track.

Winner: Congressman Luis Gutierrez, who in exchange for obsequiously endorsing Daley for reelection won a pledge from the mayor not to use any public money for the 2016 Olympics.

Loser: Congressman Gutierrez. Once safely reelected, Daley broke his promise and got the council to commit $500 million for the Olympics.

Winner: Mayor Daley. Thanks to TIFs, Daley's getting well over $500 million a year in off-the-books property taxes that he's pretty much free to dish out to favored developers, businesses, cronies, and friends.

Losers: Voters, who reelected Daley with more than 70 percent of the ballots, seemingly on the grounds that Chicago's not as bad as Gary or Detroit. In the words of a one-time civil rights activist who's now a key Daley ally, "But don't those flowers look nice?"

The city's Democratic machine is and always has been built on jobs: whoever's in the position to hand them out or take them away gets to do what he wants, from setting tax rates to, say, bypassing the process set in law for picking a police chief. So we thought it made sense to check Chicago’s political pulse by reviewing a few of the Daley administration’s personnel moves. And again, we welcome your comments. --Ben Joravsky & Mick Dumke

1. The police department disbands its Special Operations Section. SOS officers had the freedom to move to high-crime spots citywide and were credited by the department with reducing violence. Critics, on the other hand, long complained that many SOS officers were overzealous and quick to use excessive force. This summer aldermen learned that officers from the elite unit led the department in collecting misconduct complaints; others were charged with home invasion and kidnapping, and one with plotting to murder another officer. In October interim superintendent Dana Starks announced that he was breaking up SOS. The 100 or so officers who made up the troubled unit? They've been moved to other police divisions and special teams.
2. Christopher Kozicki admits to fixing testing results for city job applicants, then gets promoted. After Kozicki confessed that he helped the well connected get inspector jobs in the Department of Buildings, Inspector General David Hoffman recommended that the planning department fire him. But Mayor Daley overruled Hoffman, with city officials explaining that ousting Kozicki would send the wrong message to whistleblowers. Kozicki, who used to be a driver for Mayor Daley’s younger brother, county commissioner John Daley, ended up with a higher-paying job. Planning department officials wouldn’t return calls for comment on what qualifies Kozicki for a $130,000-a-year position.
3. Frank Kruesi’s skills are tapped again. In February Daley dismissed Kruesi from his job as CTA president in part because his arrogance alienated state legislators. In December Daley picked him to serve as the city’s chief federal lobbyist. Part of his job will entail making nice with congressmen.
4. The city fires former water department employee John Resa a mere two and a half months after he pleaded guilty to federal perjury charges. Resa, a onetime organizer for the Hispanic Democratic Organization, has a history of nice gigs with the city. From 2003 until October 2006 he stayed away from his job and collected disability pay; he was finally called back to work after the Sun-Times wrote about him. In December 2006 he was indicted for perjury by a federal grand jury, and the city moved to fire him a couple weeks later. But Resa appealed his termination, receiving pay and benefits for months while his case was in limbo. He finally pleaded guilty to lying in August and was canned for good in November, days before he was sentenced to 15 months in prison.
5. The city upholds its firing of former water department employee/whistle-blower/gadfly/political activist Frank Coconate [scroll down to "The Coconut Brings in a Closer"]. After generating hundreds of pages of paper in hearing transcripts, spending thousands of dollars, and mobilizing two lawyers and several high-ranking water department officials, the city persuaded a hearing officer that Coconate should indeed be terminated from his safety-inspector job for not properly stapling work-site photographs to reports. The three-person Human Resources Board, which is appointed by Mayor Daley, upheld Coconate’s firing. But Coconate has appealed in circuit court, arguing that his real sin was criticizing the mayor and several department programs. He adds that someone else did the stapling for his reports.
6. The Department of Planning and Development cracks down on rogue student interns. In March a student intern was forced to resign from the planning department when a high-ranking department official “began more strictly enforcing the rule that student interns actually be students,” according to the city’s court-appointed hiring monitor. The intern, it turned out, hadn’t been in school for a year. But he ended up lucking out: just when he lost his city job, the department decided to “outsource” his work to a private company. This contractor then decided to hire the intern to do the same work he’d been doing at the same desk he’d been using while he was a city employee.

Over the next few days we'll be looking back on the political highlights and lowlights of 2007. Feel free to weigh in (we know you will). --Ben Joravsky & Mick Dumke

"Most aldermen, most politicians, are hos." Former 20th Ward alderman Arenda Troutman, who was defeated in February after being indicted on federal charges of taking $10,000 in payoffs from an FBI mole posing as a developer.

"Fifty aldermen sitting in the City Council are hos. I want to change that culture. I don't want to be one of them. I don't want to be sitting in the City Council and have someone call me ho." Unsuccessful 50th Ward aldermanic challenger Salman Aftab, speaking at a candidate's forum during last winter's campaign.

"Alderman Schulter has always been concerned about the small businesses in his ward." Alderman Gene Schulter (47th), answering a reporter's question about his proposal to use eminent domain to force about 20 merchants on Western Avenue to sell their property to the city.

"Dorothy is busy taking care of the business of the Third Ward!" Political aide Jacky Grimshaw, explaining why her boss, former Third Ward alderman Dorothy Tillman, failed to attend a campaign forum. Tillman lost the election to challenger Pat Dowell.

"In boxing, the challenger meets the champion in the ring and they fight it out. If there's another challenger, he meets the champion in the ring. If there's a third, he meets the champion in the ring. Do the three challengers meet the champion in the ring all at once and join up and beat the shit out of him?" Alderman Berny Stone (50th), explaining why he skipped an aldermanic debate. Stone won in a hotly contested runoff.

"I'm the hog with the big nuts." Cook County commissioner Bill Beavers explaining his role on the county board.

"Their job is to protect us, not to hurt us." Alderman Walter Burnett (27th) explaining the responsibilities of the Chicago Police Department.

"You mean you don't want children from the city in Grant Park? Why? Are they black? Are they white? Are they Hispanic? Are they poor? You don't want children?" Mayor Richard Daley, playing the race card in his effort to overcome local opposition to moving the Children's Museum to Grant Park.

He didn't call them racists this time.

But this week Mayor Daley chastised Gold Coast opponents of a helipad Children's Memorial Hospital wants to build as part of a new facility on Chicago Avenue east of Michigan. Some area residents have raised concerns about the safety of helicopters taking off and landing from the area, which is packed with residential and commercial high-rises. The mayor, though, insinuated that their questions were petty next to the possibility that kids could be saved, according to the Sun-Times. "So, once in a while, we have a helicopter landing. Why? To save your child -- not your child, in a sense. But your child really. Another child coming from another city [who] does not have a Children's Memorial Hospital. ... We will look back in 20 years what we did with this new and wonderful hospital."

The area's alderman, Brendan Reilly, says he's tried to serve as a moderator between the hospital and the residents. Last week Reilly signed off on the helipad plan on the condition that transportation and safety specialists for the hospital and a residents' group sit down and talk. The construction schedule for the new facility won't need to be changed regardless of how the helipad issue is resolved, he says. 

Reilly's had an intense first six months leading the 42nd Ward. This summer, over the objections of some powerful real estate and business interests, he effectively killed the plan of one of the ward's key institutions, Northwestern University, to sell its historic Lake Shore Athletic Club building to a developer that wanted to tear it down and build condos. Earlier this month Northwestern announced it would sell the property to another developer that will turn it into upscale residences for seniors. 

And earlier this fall he sided with nearby residents and announced his opposition to the plan of the Chicago Children's Museum to move from Navy Pier to Grant Park. The museum, he said, would create traffic problems and use up park space that's supposed to be forever "free and clear" of development. In response a worked up Mayor Daley ripped into Reilly and other opponents, suggesting they were really concerned that minority kids would be visiting their neighborhood: "You mean you don't want children from the city in Grant Park? Why? Are they black? Are they white? Are they Hispanic? Are they poor?"

If the museum scrap is any indication, Reilly shouldn't expect the mayor's help in smoothing out differences over the helipad.

Museum officials continue to lobby other aldermen to support their plan, Reilly said in an interview, while he's made it clear he'd like to sit down with Daley and come up with alternatives. "We've heard nothing from the mayor yet," Reilly said. "We've reached out to his office on three separate occasions, and we still haven't had any response." 

Jacqueline Heard, the mayor's press secretary, shrugged off Reilly's comment. "I'm unaware of that," she said. "I can't respond to something I haven't heard about."

One side of a flyer circulating in the western suburbs boasts that Cook County recorder of deeds Eugene "Gene" Moore has brought major improvements to the office, which is responsible for documenting property transactions. Moore, the flyer says, has expanded Internet access to public records, installed an electronic recording system, and succeeded at "providing MOORE service with less employees." 

On the other side the flyer invites us all to a lingerie fashion show.

The show, promoted by Click Click Productions and presented by "The Man in Black with Mary Shorter," will take place at Mariella's banquet hall in Maywood on Saturday, December 29, from 8 PM to 2 AM.

Moore, recorder since 1999, has taken a few knocks lately. Just Tuesday the Trib cited his office as an example of wasteful, out-of-touch county government. Many Cook County voters are oblivious to the post altogether. Certainly few are anxiously wondering whether Moore will ward off challenger Ed Smith in the February 5 primary. Some might even say it's time Moore drummed up a little good publicity.

A spokesman for Moore says the recorder's campaign didn't have anything to do with the flyer and isn't involved with the fashion show.  "It's not the type of event he would associate himself with," said Askia Abdullah. "I just know that's not something Mr. Moore would support."

The man who answered one of the phone numbers on the flyer had a different story. Moore, he said, had underwritten the costs of getting 5,000 copies of the flyer made in exchange for putting his picture and message on one side of it. "We do this event every month," he said. "If you want to pay for the flyers, we'll put your stuff on it."

He identified himself as Click Click. "I've got another name," he said. "But Click Click is all you're going to get."

Mary Shorter, a fashion designer who's the event's other presenter, had yet another explanation. "Gene Moore is a relative of mine, and I said, 'I'm doing a party,' and I said, 'OK, we'll do a little campaigning for him,'" she said. "Gene Moore has nothing to do with our party. He's a cousin of mine, and we just want to get his name out there."

Alderman Walter Burnett (27th Ward) agrees with the city’s court-appointed monitor that something’s amiss with City Hall's employment practices. He just has a different take on what it is and who’s responsible for it. “One of the things I’m concerned about is the monitor being able to secure a job for themselves,” Burnett said Wednesday. “As long as they’re here, they’re getting paid. If they don’t find anything wrong, they won’t get any money. Why wouldn’t they keep it going?”

No one else had the guts (or gall) to say it as bluntly as Burnett, but several other aldermen attending a committee meeting this afternoon reacted similarly to the news that monitor Noelle Brennan, appointed by a federal judge to chart the city’s compliance with bans on political hiring and firing, continues to find examples of patronage, fixed job interviewing and test taking, and “temporary” hires that last months or years. The general consensus  was that Brennan is making patronage mountains out of the molehills of innocent favors and minor bureaucratic mistakes. 

“I’m not too happy with the monitor,” said one alderman, hastily adding that he didn't want to be identified.

Of course, some aldermen said they hadn’t read the report yet. They should. The complete document is supposed to be available at shakmanmonitor.com soon, but in the meantime here's some of the dirt:

• Before the end of 2006, the city didn’t have any “objective measure of skill” included in its procedures for hiring foremen for trade positions. In other words, there were no tests to measure how good the candidates were at their trades. Part of a new test introduced this year includes skill questions that require short answers. But the grading process has been so subjective that in some cases “one scorer will have a candidate passing the test, but another scorer will fail the same candidate.” The city is supposed to be working on changes.
• In March the Department of Planning and Development began working to hire a new senior research assistant. A representative from Brennan’s office sat in on some of the interviews and determined that the questions and answers suggested “potential pre-selection” of the person who ended up being offered the job. The monitor investigated further before concluding that the favored candidate had been a student intern in the department for three years, until top department officials “began more strictly enforcing the rule that student interns actually be students.” The intern had to leave the job because he hadn’t been a student for a year. But at just that time, the department decided to “outsource” the position to a private company—which hired the former intern and gave him the same duties he’d had before. “During his transition from a City ‘student’ intern to an employee of the outside contractor, the individual in question never left his duties or his desk at Planning.”
• In late 2005 the Department of Fleet Management sought to hire a pair of equipment dispatchers. Two department employees were targeted for the positions, but they didn’t have the year of experience required. So both were named “acting” equipment dispatchers and the formal hiring process was halted. A year later, when these candidates had gained the required experience, the positions were posted as open again. But human resources officials didn’t put the two employees on their candidate list, so the hiring process was stopped once more. Finally, late last year, fleet management started the process again. This time the two preferred candidates were tapped for the jobs “despite being the least senior or all the candidates who bid for the title,” and a deputy commissioner of fleet management “was involved in the manipulation.” Brennan’s office forwarded this information to the Inspector General’s Office for a full investigation.
• In January a deputy commissioner of the Department of Transportation sent an e-mail naming four people she planned to hire to fill department openings—before any of the jobs were posted or interviews had been conducted. She told an investigator from Brennan’s office that “she had, in effect, ‘promised’ these positions to the candidates she intended to select.” The city suspended the deputy commissioner for a week.
• For the last several years the Department of Aviation has circumvented the official hiring process for several openings by bypassing better qualified candidates in favor of other employees who were simply promoted to the new posts on an indefinite “acting” basis. The promoted workers had appeared on the “clout list ” [PDF] of politically sponsored job-seekers introduced in the federal trial of Robert Sorich, Daley’s patronage chief. The city has pledged to start the hiring process again from scratch.

I'm never really surprised when the board of elections bounces a rookie candidate off the ballot. In fact, I work on the assumption that the board will always favor the well connected over the neophyte in these matters. It's sort of like taking out a champion in boxing. If the rookie wants a win, it better be a knockout.

That being said, it was Christmas comes early for state rep John Fritchey last week, when hearing officer Lynne Ostfeld booted Roger Romanelli, his wannabe opponent in the 32nd Ward Democratic committeeman's race. Her ruling was a stretch even by election board standards.

On November 16 Fritchey challenged Romanelli's petitions in part on the grounds that they contained "the names of persons who did not sign the papers in their own proper persons." "Such signatures," his challenge urged, "are not genuine and are forgeries."

After Fritchey filed, the case moved to what they call a record review. That's the mind-numbing process where representatives from both sides sit around a computer screen while a clerk from the board of elections compares signatures on the nominating petitions to the signatures on voter registration cards. If the clerk thinks the signatures don't match, or if the address isn't in the ward, she recommends that they be stricken.

Romanelli submitted 710 signatures. At the records review, 483 signature were ruled invalid, leaving Romanelli with 227 valid signatures, 20 below the 247 he needed to make the ballot.

So Romanelli retraced his steps. Accompanied by notary publics, he and his aides went back to the homes of voters, asking them to sign sworn affidavits affirming they had indeed signed his original petitions or that they lived in the 32nd Ward. All told, he gathered 49.

"I could have got more, but I didn't think I needed more," says Romanelli. "I didn't think they were going to rule against 49 personally sworn affidavits."

Almost. On December 13 Ostfeld issued a ruling dismissing 45 of the statements. According to Ostfeld, it's not enough that voters signed notarized affidavits swearing that they signed the original petitions. They also have to explain why the signature on the petition looks different from their signatures on the voter registration card.

As more than one lawyer has explained to me, it doesn't matter why the signatures are different so long as the voter swears that he signed the original nominating petitions. "A sworn, notarized affidavit is what we call prima facie evidence," says one election-law attorney, who'd rather not be named because he has friends on both sides of the debate. "It's evidence that's established as a fact unless it's rebutted. But the hearing officer isn't rebutting the evidence. She's changing the issue."

Ostfeld also removed seven voters who'd signed affidavits attesting to the addresses at which they were registered. In this case her finding was that Romanelli "presents nothing to show" that the voters were "registered there on or before" the day in November when they signed his nominating petitions. Well, I suppose it's possible that all seven of these voters moved between signing the petition in November and signing the affidavit one month later. But is there any reason to doubt them on their word?

On Sunday Romanelli held a press conference to announce that he would appeal Ostfeld's ruling to the Cook County circuit court. On hand were four residents whose affidavits Ostfeld had dismissed. They showed me their driver's licenses to prove that they lived at their addresses and all but raised their right hands and swore to God that they were telling the truth. "They accused us of fraud, and the only way to debunk that is to sign an affidavit. So I signed," said Craig Gould, a 32nd Ward resident. "And now they say my affidavit's not good enough? I shouldn't have to prove I'm me. If they don't believe I'm me, they should have to prove it's not me."

For his part, Fritchey says he thinks the hearing officer made the right ruling. But he can understand why Romanelli and his supporters would be disappointed. "If people feel these rules should be changed, I'd be happy to sit down when them," he says.

By the way, Fritchey was represented by Michael Kasper, go-to guy for house speaker Michael Madigan and many others. Kasper's made a name for himself convincing the board to bounce independent Democrats and third-party candidates from the ballot. Fritchey says that his statehouse alliance with Madigan has nothing to do with him hiring Kasper or with Kasper taking his case -- they're old friends from law school. 

Fair enough. But if the board's going to keep on making rulings like this one, I suggest we do away with the time, money, and inconvenience of elections altogether. Let's just give the oath of office to any candidate Kasper represents.

Leaders of the City Council's Independent Caucus are still talking crazy: they say want to conduct budget and legislative research beyond what's provided by the Mayor Daley's staff and council committee chairs, who tend to be mayoral allies. And now they say they're close to hiring a staffer to help them out.

"A lot of folks think it's a really good idea to have someone to rely on for information besides what the administration provides us," said 49th Ward alderman Joe Moore, one of the leaders of the still developing group of more or less progressive-minded alderman. "It's by no stretch of the imagination meant to be antagonistic to anybody, but we think the City Council is actually a separate branch of government and needs some independent information."

Moore and his council allies realized that again during this fall's budget hearings. They met with outside experts and consultants to talk over how to scrutinize and analyze the Daley administration's proposals. But most of the rookie "independents" stayed quiet during the hearings and appeared overwhelmed by the hundreds of pages of budget documents in front of them. The veterans offered only modest alternatives, and did so too late in the process to have an impact. In the end Daley agreed to cut a little spending and reduce tax hikes from his original plan, but that was mostly the result of pressure from his traditional council friends.

The caucus, a fluid group of around a dozen aldermen, has been getting together before meetings of the council's finance committee. Last week they decided to accept an offer of "seed money" from an unspecified outside source and to come up with specific proposals for organizing an office and hiring at least one staffer, according to several aldermen who attended. In the past officials with the Service Employees International Union have said they were prepared to help fund the caucus. "Certainly our friends in organized labor will help, and we'll look other places as well," Moore said.

But neither Moore nor fellow caucus leaders Toni Preckwinkle, of the 4th Ward, and Ricardo Munoz, of the 22nd, will offer a timetable or any more specifics on when the hiring or formal organization will happen--probably because they don't have any yet themselves. "We've decided to go ahead and figure out how to fund staff support," Preckwinkle said.

Between the lines, aldermen say that getting an independent/progressive/sometime-opposition bloc together has been slow and tough--or at least slower and tougher than initially expected. Call them smart or write them off as wusses, but several aldermen who've worked with Moore, Preckwinkle, and Munoz on particular issues, such as police accountability or affordable housing, have shown only tepid interest in appearing to join a group created as a Daley alternative. Others say they don't want to give up their independence to the Independent Caucus any more than they want to hand it over to the mayor.

"I'll sit in sometimes and be briefed on what's going on," said 42nd Ward alderman Brendan Reilly. "But yeah, I'm doing my own thing."

Fourth Ward alderman Toni Preckwinkle has been lobbying the Daley administration for years to stop fighting and settle several lawsuits filed over the torture of black men by former police commander Jon Burge and his underlings. For a few days this week, she thought it was finally going to happen.

Why it hasn’t yet is—what else?—a matter of dispute.

Last Friday the city announced it had agreed to settle the cases of four torture victims for $19.8 million, and Monday the City Council’s finance committee approved the payments. Mara Georges, the city’s top attorney, told the finance committee that one of the plaintiffs, Stanley Howard, needed to sign a release form to finalize his portion of the agreement, but otherwise everything was set to go.

So Preckwinkle was shocked to show up for Wednesday’s full council meeting and get the news that the city had called the settlements off, at least for the time being.

On the council floor, finance chair Ed Burke explained that Howard had indeed signed the release form he needed to, but not before he’d added a new last-minute condition. In addition, the lawyer for plaintiff Aaron Patterson hadn’t presented a document showing he had power of attorney. For both reasons, the city would need more time, and the council would hold off on a vote until at least January.

“Along with many of my other colleagues, we were anxious to vote on this today,” Preckwinkle said after Burke was done. “It should be as clear as we can possibly make it that this [delay] is not the result of city action in any way.”

At a press conference after the meeting Georges made the same point repeatedly. She said Frank Avila, Patterson’s attorney, had produced a document empowering him to settle for at least $5.2 million, but not $5 million, the amount the city had agreed to.

The Howard snag was a separate issue. Howard was pardoned by former governor George Ryan for a murder charge that once put him on death row, but he remains in prison downstate for rape. Georges said Howard’s attorneys had sent the city a release form Tuesday night with a new settlement term written on it by hand: “This release does not bar any future claims that may arise in connection with his separate rape convictions.” Howard had initialed the document.

“On those terms, we did not feel we could settle with that plaintiff,” she said. She added that the city would be bringing U.S. district court judge Marvin Aspen into further discussions but didn’t anticipate the problem would scuttle the settlements altogether. “We have talked with opposing counsel, which understands our position,” Georges said. “I think everyone had hoped these settlements would be able to proceed today.”

Georges also said that she wouldn’t normally bring a settlement before the finance committee until all the signatures were in place. “But I suppose in my haste to get this resolved I didn’t require all the signatures at that time.”

Several reporters wondered why the city was so eager to settle the cases now, after not doing so for years. “There are a lot of different reasons for settling cases,” Georges said. Among them, she said, was the fact that Judge Aspen had told her the city might win one, even two or three, of the cases, but they were unlikely to win all of them. Also, by settling these four cases at the same time, the city could count on insurance to cover a big chunk of the tab.

In addition, she said, “I heard the message from the aldermen, which they delivered to me very loudly and clearly on many occasions, that they wanted to get these cases settled, and I have been working diligently to get that done.”

The message from the council and the administration was clear. “The plaintiff’s attorneys need to get their acts together,” Preckwinkle said.

But at least some of the attorneys say the city is simply resorting to a tired old routine of its own built on false promises and delays.

Avila on Wednesday held a screaming press conference accusing the city (as well as other plaintiffs’ attorneys) of stalling and trying to cheat Patterson out of his settlement money. He didn’t produce the document the city said he needed, but Avila said it wasn’t necessary and threatened to bow out of the agreement and ask for $10 million for his client alone.

And in an interview Thursday, Kurt Feuer, an attorney with the civil rights firm Loevy & Loevy, which represents Howard and plaintiff Madison Hobley, disputed many of Georges’ contentions, calling the city’s actions Wednesday “trifling” and “bizarre.”

“It’s like killing an insect with a nuclear bomb,” he said.

Feuer said the city had been fighting for weeks over even minor wording in the settlements until agreeing Sunday afternoon to language proposed earlier by the plaintiffs' lawyers. Once the agreement was reached, attorneys struggled to reach Howard at the Western Illinois Correctional Center to get his consent. On Tuesday, with the help of prison officials who bent a few rules, they got him a fax of the agreement and permission to call them. “When we finally got a hold of Stanley, he had some concerns,” Feuer said. So Feuer added the line, in pen, about Howard reserving the right to sue over his rape convictions.

Feuer said that should have only clarified, and not changed, the scope of the settlement, which focuses on Howard’s false murder conviction. Howard can neither sue nor give up his right to sue over the rape convictions unless evidence surfaces to show a problem with them, according to Feuer. “Maybe we’re guilty of overlawyering a bit,” he said. “But this is like putting a penny on the railroad track and watching the train crash.”

Even if Georges had problems with Howard’s addition, she could have allowed the council to vote on the settlement payments and then worked with the plaintiffs’ attorneys and Judge Aspen to tinker with the final language, Feuer said. “The amount of the payment’s not in dispute, and that’s all the council’s signing off on,” he said. “It’s not a big deal at all.”

The city insists it is. “We believe it materially changes the agreement,” law department spokeswoman Jennifer Hoyle reiterated Thursday. “It was something we received at the very last minute. We didn’t get a call saying it was there. It was a surprise to us. It is absolutely not commonplace in an agreement like this to pencil in something at the last minute.”

Both Feuer and Hoyle said their offices want to work something out and should be able to keep the other settlement terms in place. But that’s assuming Avila doesn’t stick to his vow to raise Patterson’s settlement price.

The city blinked.

That's the initial reaction from people in Lincoln Square regarding the city's retreat from plans to use eminent domain to force out all the businesses on the east side of the 4800 block of North Western. On the proposed deal the land would have been turned over to an undetermined developer, who would replace the existing buildings with condos and retail. Funding for the acquisition was to come out of the Western/North TIF.

It was actually one of the more interesting twists on use of the program. TIFs (or tax increment financing districts) are intended to subsidize development in blighted communities that would otherwise find it difficult to attract investment. In this case, however, 47th Ward alderman Gene Schulter was seeking public funds to keep private development out -- at least a certain kind of private development.

Schulter contended that the commercial strip, with its booming residential base, was starting to attract the interest of big-box chains. By beating the big boxes to the punch, he said, his plan would actually protect small businesses and help keep the community free of too much traffic and congestion. Sure, in this case protecting small businesses meant threatening them with government seizure of their property. But the declaration of eminent domain alone would help keep the Best Buys at bay: there's no market for land the city can snatch at will.

It was a classic case of the up-is-down, down-is-up logic peculiar to TIFs. As mandated by state law, the city commissioned a consultant's report, which argued that the area needed a TIF handout to stave off blight and underdevelopment. Meanwhile Schulter and planning officials kept insisting that tens of millions were needed to prevent overdevelopment.  

Most TIF deals are consummated in the shadows, with hardly any opposition. This one attracted major heat from the start. Merchants and property owners on the block didn't want to sell, and resented the threat of being forced to. It was, they said, downright un-American for the city to snatch one person's property only to turn it over to someone else. The Castle Coalition, a national property-rights organization, rallied to the cause. On December 5 some 300 residents showed up for a rally at Chicago Soccer, a sporting goods store at 4839 N. Western. After the meeting, a large group of protesters marched over to Schulter's Lincoln Avenue office to demand that he drop the scheme.

On Monday, December 10, just two days before the City Council was scheduled to vote on the proposal, Schulter called several merchants to his office to tell them the city had had a change of heart. (Schulter has since said he'll submit a revised ordinance to the housing committee in January.)  

Why'd the city back down? Schulter says what he's maintained all along: the plan was never written in stone, and he listens to the desires of his community.

I suspect the December 5 demonstration had something to do with the turnaround. Residents left Schulter's office that night vowing to turn up at City Hall in even greater numbers if the matter came to a vote. Of course, the last thing Mayor Daley or his planning department needs is a storm of protest. If a big crowd showed up to scream and yell over a TIF project, the mainstream press might have to start asking questions about the slush fund that sucked up some $500 million in property taxes last year. The fewer people who know about TIFs, the better.

The steps taken Monday by the Daley administration and City Council to address police abuse rightly dominated the news out of City Hall. After years of delays and inaction, the city agreed last week to settle four police torture cases, and as the council's finance committee signed off on the $19.8 million in payments Monday, aldermen urged Mara Georges, the city's top lawyer, to find a way to end the city's obligations to defend and pay a pension to the lead torturer, former commander Jon Burge. Then aldermen Ed Burke and Isaac Carothers, one a former cop and the other chairman of the council's police and fire committee, introduced an ordinance that would require police involved in shootings to take tests to see if they've been drinking--standard procedure in other cities. In a demonstration three floors upstairs, Al Sharpton called for reforms--such as a fully independent agency to investigate police misconduct--that local leaders have pushed for years.

But nearly lost amid all of the talk about the police department was the finance committee's discussion of another important civil rights issue: minority access to jobs in the predominantly white building and construction trades.

City and negotiators for 33 trade unions representing 7,800 city employees recently hashed out a deal on pay and benefits for the next 10 years. Some critics have charged that the Daley administration gave away too much--pay will increase by 16 percent over the next five years alone--in the interest of ensuring labor peace during the possible buildup to the 2016 Olympics. Others, including many of the council's black aldermen, have long howled that the trades shouldn't get sweet city deals when they can't be bothered to improve recruitment outside old white ethnic circles. Former alderman and current Cook County commissioner William Beavers summed up this view during last year's Big Box minimum-wage debate: Unions, he said, "don't do nothing for us in the construction industry."

Monday, though, union leaders and city attorneys stressed that the new agreement calls on the trades to enroll at least 100 former students from Chicago public schools or city colleges in apprenticeship programs each year. Union leaders said repeatedly that the plan was their idea.

It sounded great to aldermen. Then they started asking questions, and it began to sound less great. As Ninth ward alderman Anthony Beale put it a few minutes later: "We have no teeth."

Beale first asked the union officials and city lawyers what safeguards were in place to ensure the apprenticeship numbers were met. Jorge Ramirez, secretary-treasurer of the Chicago Federation of Labor, said the unions would have to report their progress to the newly formed Labor Management Cooperation Committee, established to smooth out any city-labor issues over the next decade. "People will be watching," Ramirez said.

"But there's no penalties in place?" Beale asked, then answered himself: "Once we sign this, we're on for ten years, and there's no guarantee that some of these locals with low minority participation will do their part."

"Well, that's true," Ramirez said. "But it was one of the goals of the agreement."

Tom Villanova, president of the Chicago and Cook County Building & Construction Trades Council, added that it had never been easy for the unions to find qualified apprenticeship candidates from the public schools. "There are only 17 shop teachers in all of the Chicago Public Schools," he said.

"Well, we had shop when I was in high school," Beale told him. 

Manny Flores, of the First Ward, and Ed Smith, of the 28th, both urged the union and city officials to issue regular reports on the apprenticeship numbers. "My experience is that if it's not in the contract, it doesn't happen," Smith said. The union officials said they were serious about the new initiative but made no other concrete promises.

Fifth Ward aldermen Leslie Hairston wanted more details. "What are your goals for minority hiring?" she asked. "Of the 100 apprenticeships, how many do you expect to be minority?"

"A hundred," Villanova said.

Hairston nodded. "Well, the reason I'm asking is that we sit in here year after year, and minority people must be hiding under a rock, because we can never find them for jobs," Hairston said. "Who will monitor this?"

"The LMCC," Villanova said. "The mayor appoints an independent monitor to it."

"The mayor appoints an independent monitor," Hairston said. "That's pretty funny."

The aldermen grilled the officials and groused a little more, then approved the labor pact with a unanimous vote.

Except in the Eighth Ward, where he's trying to hold on to his post as Democratic committeeman, Cook County Board president Todd Stroger won't be on the ballot in February's primaries. But lots of people across the county are running against him.

Since taking office a year ago, Stroger has been portrayed as a bumbler, a child, a pawn, a doofus, and, in the biblical sense, a tax collector. In his latest act of embarrassing irresponsiblity, the thinking goes, he's got the nerve to push for nearly $900 million in tax hikes to support a bloated county budget that mostly succeeds in employing scores of his family members and friends.

There are lots of reasons Stroger is characterized this way, including the fact that some of it is true. But when election season comes around, precision matters less than perception and polling numbers. As a result, 2008 is looking like the Year of the Anti-Toddler.

It makes some sense that Tony Peraica would make a big deal out of his opposition to Stroger's management and tax proposals. Peraica's a Republican Cook County commissioner who lost a tough race to Stroger for the County Board presidency last fall--then led a collection of zealous supporters in an ill-advised storming of the County Building on election night.

While that image might fade into local political history, Todd Stroger's has only gotten worse; he's still trying to avoid looking like a freshman about to be stuffed into a locker . . . and somewhere in there figure out how to get the county funded for next year. Peraica is running for state's attorney now, but he remains busy reminding voters that's he's not Todd Stroger. "I oppose Todd Stroger's budget proposal because it unfairly and oppressively reaches into the pocketbooks of Cook County taxpayers to fund a government than has proven to be anything but efficient and accountable," Peraica wrote in a letter to supporters, parts of which were also published in the Tribune this week.

Peraica isn't the only candidate to adopt the strategy. Kenny Johnson, an ally of Jesse Jackson Jr., has relentlessly challenged the Stroger tax plan even though he's running for a seat in a different legislative body, the Illinois House. A few weeks ago Johnson led an anti-tax demonstration, the awkwardly named Boston Tea Party in Chicago, and more recently he sent around an e-mail urging suppporters to "raise your voice loud and clear against Cook County Board President Todd Stroger's excessive and regressive tax hike proposal."

In a campaign announcement sent out Friday, Michele Smith, a candidate for 43rd Ward committeeman, also mentioned the Toddler: "The need for change was vividly illustrated when our current Committeeman [Peggy Roth] voted to slate Todd Stroger as the replacement for John Stroger in the race for Cook County Board President, even though the 43rd Ward voted overwhelming for Forrest Claypool, the second-place finisher in the primary."

Smith said in an interview that she wasn't using the Stroger name as a wedge--she just wanted to illustrate that committeemen are supposed to be the party's ward representatives, but too often simply operate as a "closed group." Still, given the lack of support for Stroger on the north side, it's not going to hurt her image to be on the record supporting someone--anyone--else.

Mismanagement in Cook County has been the center of Seventh Ward alderman Sandi Jackson's campaign for Democratic committeeman against Stroger ally William Beavers and not-so-subtly alluded to by 28th Ward alderman Ed Smith, who's challenging incumbent recorder of deeds Eugene "Gene" Moore.

Perhaps all of this is simply a sign that Stroger has guts and resilience the others could only wish for. "It's never popular to support a tax increase, but the reality is that the president wants to continue to provide health services and other services in Cook County, and to do that we need additional revenue," said Ibis Antongiorgi, Stroger's press secretary. "If others want to take advantage of that for political purposes, so be it, but President Stroger will continue to work for responsible government."

During his ten-year reign as president of the CTA, Frank Kruesi made so many blunders it's hard to know where to begin.

He wasted time, money, and effort on projects that were either redundant or needlessly extravagant (think Pink Line, Brown Line reconstruction, and of course the idiotic underground station at Block 37). At the same time, he overlooked basic repairs and maintenance, with the result that service is slower and less dependable than it's been in years.

But perhaps his greatest failing came in his role as chief public representative of the agency he headed. The man was consistently arrogant, rude, and contemptuous of anyone he deemed beneath himself -- that by and large being everyone he ever met. Over the years I don't know how many people -- aldermen, congressmen, CTA staffers, ordinary riders -- told me how much they despised him for his treatment of them -- and of the public. One of the most memorable meetings I've ever witnessed occurred three years ago at Clemente High School, where dozens of riders turned out to protest yet another one of Kruesi's doomsday budgets. Kruesi infuriated the long-suffering crowd, spending much of the evening rolling his eyes or whispering to CTA board chair Carole Brown (who apparently couldn't stand the guy either).

The group he alienated as much as any were the people he needed the most: state legislators he was counting on to send more transportation dollars to keep the trains and buses running. When Daley finally bowed to reality and replaced Kruesi with Ron Huberman last spring, most legislators I know rejoiced that they'd no longer have to deal with him.

So having ousted Kruesi from the public payroll for his divisiveness and ineffectiveness, what has Mayor Daley decided to do with his longtime friend? Put him back on the payroll as the city's chief federal lobbyist in Washington.

Let's get this straight: Daley's hiring an insufferably arrogant and ineffective negotiator for a $143,000-a-year position that requires tact, diplomacy, and the ability to schmooze congressmen and federal regulators?

"His job is to help make sure our relationship with the federal government is as productive as it can be toward helping to improve the quality of life for all Chicagoans," Daley said in a press statement, released just after the mayor took off for Italy on yet another one of his international junkets.

Why did the mayor appoint a man so eminently ill-suited to this important post? As near as I can tell, there are two reasons. (1) He wanted to take care of a loyal factotum of long standing (Kruesi's been working for Daley in one capacity or another since the 70s). (2) Because he can.

Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. teamed up with organized labor earlier this year to help send his wife and several other newcomers to the City Council. But he resisted union pressure to drop support for longtime ally Howard Brookins Jr., even though Brookins, the 21st Ward alderman, was a labor target for opposing the big-box minimum-wage ordinance.

"I've known Howard Brookins all my life," Jackson said before aldermanic runoff elections in April. "I'm not going to lose my friendship with him over a political issue."

But Brookins has just found out that friendship doesn't always translate into political support.

The alderman is now fighting five others for the Democratic nomination for Cook County state's attorney, but he'll have to campaign without the endorsement of Jackson. Brookins says his old friend told him recently that he'll be supporting another candidate, most likely Cook County commissioner Larry Suffredin, because the congressman refuses to back anyone allied with Cook County Board president Todd Stroger or commissioner William Beavers. Beavers is now running against Jackson's wife, alderman Sandi Jackson, for Democratic committeeman of the Seventh Ward. 

"I'm kind of at a loss as to exactly why this is happening," Brookins said. "He asked me if Todd Stroger and Bill Beavers were supporting me. I said, 'I'm reaching out to everyone'"--including Suffredin and 38th Ward alderman Tom Allen, another state's attorney candidate. "He said, 'Well, I can't endorse you, then.'"

Jackson wrote an op-ed piece published in the Tribune Sunday ripping Stroger's proposal to raise sales taxes for the county's 2008 budget. A year ago he endorsed Stroger over Republican Tony Peraica. 

Brookins said he was disappointed by Jackson's move but tried to shrug it off. "We're building our support in the African-American and other communities, and I seriously don't believe Jesse Jackson Jr.'s support of Larry Suffredin will pull away enough from us to keep us from winning."

A spokesperson for Suffredin's campaign referred me to Jackson's office for comment. My call there wasn't immediately returned.