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Even many longtime observers of Chicago politics were taken aback by what happened at the end of last Wednesday's City Council meeting--when the mayor and his aldermanic allies ran roughshod over council precedent in repealing the two-year-old ban on foie gras. Observers of all political dispositions have since said that it may very well set a new tone in the council--one that ends up with the mayor having even more control over the agenda and even less tolerance of dissent than ever before. Skeptics say that it would be all but impossible for the council to be a bigger rubber stamp than it has been under Richard M. Daley.
For an admittedly pointed view of these things, we turned to 49th Ward alderman Joe Moore, who sponsored the foie gras ban and was essentially muzzled during the legislative twists and turns that lead to the ban's repeal.
When did you find out the repeal of the foie gras ban was going to come up Wednesday?
I was always concerned that [44th Ward alderman Tom] Tunney’s ordinance and [50th Ward alderman Berny] Stone’s ordinance were sitting in committee and they could have been brought up for a hearing at any time. And then I’d hear rumors that Alderman Tunney might bring it up on a motion to discharge [a maneuver that would allow a full council vote on it without going to a committee hearing first]. So I asked him for a meeting with [Illinois Restaurant Association president] Sheila O’Grady, since he’s kind of viewed as the association’s guy in the City Council. He said he’d get back to me and never did. So I called him again and he said she didn’t want to meet with me.
They obviously were bent on taking no prisoners. This had very little to do with foie gras. It was about the mayor reasserting his power.
Did you think there was any chance of keeping the ban in place? Did you try to lobby other aldermen about it?
Members of the City Council had been victims of a concerted campaign by special interests to ridicule the ban and insult the council. I could see the writing on the wall—I knew the chances of keeping the ban were minimal. But I was concerned about the process, so I tried to appeal to my colleagues for a hearing on the matter. Except in extraordinary circumstances, there’s a process in place, and things are brought before a committee for a hearing. That’s a fair thing to ask—especially for an ordinance that’s been on the books for two years and originally passed by a 48-1 vote. So my appeal to my colleagues was to at least have a hearing in the committee. I argued to them that they should at least not set a precedent by allowing a member of the council to circumvent [standard] procedure.
What did you hear back?
There was a range of responses. There were some shrugs of the shoulders. Especially among the new members of the council, there wasn’t the realization that this is breaking precedent. Among a lot of them there was a feeling that they just wanted to be done with this issue—and believe me, I understand that.
So what actually happened on the council floor?
The rules of the City Council were completely ignored. First of all, when they brought this up on a motion to discharge, I stood up to be recognized to speak to the motion, and they ruled me out of order, claiming that this was not a motion subject to debate. I am not convinced that I shouldn’t have had the opportunity to make my case that there was no reason not to have a hearing—it would have allowed the public to have the right to weigh in on this and for us to debate the matter.
After that I moved to defer and publish. It’s a matter of right under Illinois law that when a matter is brought before the City Council for the first time, any two aldermen have the right to move to defer it until the next meeting. But I was told I couldn’t do that in this case. I did not have an opportunity to appeal that ruling and we just pushed ahead.
Then came the most egregious part of this. There is no dispute that when something comes up for a vote, we should have the opportunity for debate. The failure of the mayor to give me the opportunity to speak was not only disrespectful to me but to the whole body.
So what were you thinking as this was going on?
The word I would use was that I was shocked. I had grown up watching, on TV, the mayor’s father cut off the mike of independent aldermen who dared to speak out against mayor-supported ordinances. But up until Wednesday this mayor had at least allowed debate. He would occasionally make rude or snide comments from the rostrum, but he would always allow you to talk. I was absolutely surprised that he wouldn’t recognize me. At first I thought he didn’t hear me—then I started shouting at the top of my lungs and he still didn’t recognize me. It became clear that he was going to ram it through, rules be damned.
You’ve disagreed with the mayor before but always taken pains to note that you also work with him on many issues—more than some Daley critics would like, in fact. What does this incident mean for your relationship with him?
Over the years I’ve agreed with him on far more issues than I’ve disagreed with him on. I think what has changed in the last couple of years was the fact that on a couple of issues—the living wage ordinance and this ordinance, for example—my allies and I had scored some legislative victories. And that’s apparently something the mayor takes very personally. And so he has been more demeaning, not just to me but to the entire City Council. And what I find shocking is that most of my colleagues just take it. They may grumble about it privately, but they do nothing to comment on it.
I am going to continue to work with the mayor. I think he has still done some tremendous things for the city. But I don’t think anyone should allow themselves to be treated the way I was the other day, and by extension the way the entire City Council and the people they represent were treated.
The mayor also struck a defiant pose last week at the onetime site of Meigs Field, which of course he ordered destroyed in violation of federal rules. Where do you think this extraconfrontational attitude has come from?
I think it probably has been building for awhile, and I think this week the mayor wanted to make very clear who was in charge, and that he wasn’t going to brook any dissent. I think he wanted to make it clear that we’re supporting actors. I don’t think he needed to do that. Despite some of the political setbacks he’s suffered, he’s still the most powerful big-city mayor in the United States, but it seems to me that’s just not good enough for him.
Is the City Council always going to be a mayoral rubber stamp?
Well, I’m an eternal optimist. And with the new aldermen elected last year I was extremely hopeful that we would have more debate in the City Council, more aldermen willing to challenge the administration from time to time. But I must say that what happened this week has tempered that optimism tremendously. I think this does not bode well for Alderman Reilly and his battle with the Children’s Museum. The last real power that aldermen give themselves is aldermanic prerogative [to allow fellow aldermen the right to decide whether to approve zoning and development plans in their own wards]. And while I understand that this particular issue involves a development in the downtown area, nonetheless the mayor’s willingness to completely disregard the views and sentiments of the local alderman and the people he represents is not a good sign.
To me, this upcoming City Council vote [on the museum’s plans] represents who gets to make decisions in this city. Is it a joint effort between the mayor and the representatives in the city council, or is it just one man? I fear the vote coming up will confirm once again that we in the City Council will be willing to surrender what power we have to the mayor—and at great public cost. One-man rule may be easier in the short run, and democracy may be messy, but ultimately you get better policy and government through checks and balances.
It’s widely known that a lot of the mayor’s priorities right now orient around getting the Olympics here. How much of this is about him making sure his Olympics plans get the go-ahead from the City Council?
Quite frankly, I don’t think he’s even looking that far. I believe he felt embarrassed, especially on the living wage ordinance, and wanted to get back at us.
But you won that, as it turned out—Wal-Mart’s not coming.
I don’t know about that. The living wage ordinance is about more than Wal-Mart. The other day the City Council spent some time protecting the interests of restaurants to serve $40 appetizers, yet they haven’t worked one bit on getting living wages in this city.
Why don’t aldermen, and the voters who elect them, try to stop “one-man rule” if it’s so dangerous?
It is ingrained in the culture of this city—a culture that has existed my entire life. Most of my life has been spent with a Mayor Daley on the fifth floor of City Hall. And there has been this deference accorded to whoever was mayor—even Harold Washington in his final year or two in office was winning votes by incredibly lopsided margins in the City Council. I think there’s a particular comfort people have in strong, autocratic leaders.
I think this mayor benefited coming after the tumultuous period of Harold Washington’s administration. And you have to hand it to him—he’s one of the most skilled politicians I’ve ever witnessed. He and his team are very skilled at marketing themselves, they’re very skilled at getting their message out, and they’re very skilled at their relationships with individual members of the City Council. And he also has accomplished a lot of good things.
Old habits are very hard to break. We’re just extremely accustomed to deferring to the mayor on all citywide matters, and unfortunately it appears as though many of the fresh faces we have in the City Council are starting to accept this too.
You’re a big Cubs fan. Is the drought going to end after a century? Maybe that’s a way you could get back at the mayor, who’s a Sox guy.
Didn’t I say earlier I was an eternal optimist setting myself up to be disappointed again? So yeah, I feel really good about this season.
But he used the race card in the last election.
He is very typical of white liberals who know what to do for minorities. This was in the 2007 election.
Joe Moore also got a lot of heat from the Latino community for perceived anti-Latino and disempowerment move against Tax Board of Appeals Review Commissioner Jose Berrios and MWRDGC Commissioner Frank Avila.
Even if Berrios was viewed as machine guy, Avila was as independent as they get and Moore still went against him.
Moore has a significant Hispanic population and slapped the Latino community in the face. He tries to hide behind the skirt of Rick Munoz but that is not enough to not see the backlash of his disempowering anti-Latino behavior.
Joe Moore speaks a lot but has no real impact. The whistle blower ordinance did nothing for Patrick McDonough nor Frank Coconate or others in the city that have no protection from the Daley administration.
It is sad that Walmart is not in the Brookins 21st ward, not because Walmart is so great but the loss of jobs and consumer choices and jobs through construction. Moore made a lot of Machivellean maneuvers against Brookins.
Joe Moore has also been with the boss of his hack committeman Fagus who is a real sell out for Toddler Stroger.
Moore is a terrible alderman.
However, the Daley move was about power and it is scary.
If Daley can bitch slap an alderman just imagine what he could do to a lowly city worker.
Joe Moore will go down in history as a joke. Joe Moore will go down in history as an anti-Latino hypocrtical liberal.
http://morsehellhole.blogspot.com/
Joe Moore sponsored the ban a bit more than two-and-a-half years ago, in the fall of 2005. He had been working with animal rights extremists for months before the introduction.
The proposed ban was referred to the health committee, on which Joe sits. Hearings were held, in October 2005, and nothing was done. First days went by, then weeks, then months, and -- no word from the health committee.
Constant inquiries were made of the health committee by individual restaurants, the Illinois Restaurant Association, foie gras producers, avian scientists and others who were troubled by the proposed ban. All were told that an announcement would be made by the committee about when the measure would go to the floor of the City Council.
The announcement never happened.
Instead, at a meeting two years ago, I believe in June 2006, after a business session that covered a wide range of issues, the Mayor recognized an Alderman for the purpose of passing an "omnibus" measure -- that is, a lengthy list of non-controversial items on which there was complete agreement.
The foie gras ban was included in that omnibus.
There had been no announcement. The ban was not identified. No one said, "Oh, and by the way, contrary to 170 years of practice, this week we have a controversial item tucked into the omnibus on which you are about to vote..." It came as a surprise.
Unlike yesterday, the vote had not been in the news that morning.
Unlike yesterday, opponents had not been informed that the vote was coming.
Unlike yesterday, no alderman was out among his colleagues asking for votes, as Tom Tunney did.
In the discussion after the vote several aldermen said they had never seen a controversial item slipped into an omnibus for a final vote by the council in their entire careers. I am not a historian of the City Council so I don't know if that is true.
But we all know that when Joe Moore was winning with a process that ignored public notice and normal practice he was happy as a clam. In fact, he was on Chicago Tonight, and he could not have cared less about deceiving his opponents. He was right proud of his little ploy.
But now that his colleagues have repudiated both him and the issue which pre-occupied him for more than a year, while 49th Ward kids were struggled below state averages in achievement, he cloaks himself in due process, claiming offense at tyranny and bully tactics.
That's how Joe saw fit to pass his ban. So I am not surprised that the Mayor and his colleagues decided Joe needed an object lesson to learn that as one treats others, one may expect to be treated by them.
Since the percentage of citizens meeting the criteria for voting and actually being registered to vote is approximately 50% of the whole, this means that a mere 8.87% of the total number of citizens who could be voting, voted for Daley.
Shit, that's less than 1 out of 10.
If you're correct, it's worse than I thought.
And also better.
All it will take is for a bit more than 1 out of 10 citizens to vote out Daley.
How hard can that be?
REGISTER TO VOTE
VOTE IN EVERY ELECTION
HAVE NO DOUBT, VOTE INCUMBENTS OUT
(Starting with Joe Moore)
I've seen that thought piece floating around the web
I'd sure like to know who wrote it
any idea?
let's compare & contrast
the ban had a public hearing, the repeal did not
the ban was considered by committee, the repeal was not
the ban was brought before the full City Council in the course of normal business as part of the normal Health committee report, the repeal was brought up as misc busineess
cute little weasel!
that's for sure
here's a tip for you going forward: try not to post stuff if you are not pretty sure it's true
the omnibus is not a ploy
it is an abomination but it is how the Council does 99.9% of its work
When you hear an alderman attempt to explain their 180 on the ban as "I didn't know what I was voting on," what the bozo is not telling you is that MOST of the time he has no idea what he is voting on.
Nothing gets added to the omnibus without unanimous consent. No one alderman can "slip" something onto the omnibus. The aldermen had an opportunity to call the roll on the ban if they wanted.
Chicago is City of the Year.
If you dont like it, go to Cleveland, Gary or Detroit:
Skyscrapers, green roofs, and house music -- a very American metropolis.
In the bottom of the ninth inning of the 2005 World Series, as the long-suffering Chicago White Sox were about to win their first championship in 88 years, play-by-play announcer Joe Buck waxed eloquent about Chicago's South Side, where the Sox play. He described it as "a collection of neighborhoods...Irish neighborhoods. Italian neighborhoods. Polish. Lithuanian. Firemen. Policemen. Schoolteachers. Stockyard workers." Stockyard workers? The last stockyard closed in 1971. Irish, Italian, Polish, Lithuanian? The South Side has long been predominantly African-American, and most of its immigrants now are Mexican. Yet that is how many view the city, through a lens dominated by the past. If you travel abroad and tell people you're from Chicago, they'll often pull their hands out of imaginary holsters and start shooting. To them, the city is still Al Capone's town, which it was -- nearly a century ago.
The real Chicago isn't so easy to keep up with. It's constantly reinventing itself. Jumpy. Agitated. Impatient. It's as if the place is trembling. Move aside. Don't linger. And if you're going to dawdle, get out of the way. But what any Chicagoan will also tell you is that the past is very much present. It doesn't go away. It shouldn't. In fact, that's Chicago's lure and its beauty: its ability to take what was and figure out what could be.
Consider Millennium Park. The city's spectacular growth in the late 19th century was in large part because of the railroads. Chicago, centrally located, could ship anywhere and receive anything. But 100 years later, the railroads here had become near relics; the dozens of Illinois Central Railroad tracks that converged downtown, an eyesore. So what did Chicago do? It covered some 25 acres of tracks and commuter lines with a massive platform, one so sturdy that it could build a park on it. It made the park's centerpiece a band shell, designed by Frank Gehry, that feels simultaneously whimsical (it resembles a tangled ribbon tossed by the Lake Michigan breeze) and brawny (that ribbon is made of steel, a call to the city's past as a center of industrial might). Some 100 years ago, Daniel Burnham, who oversaw the construction of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition and drew a layout for the city that included putting everyone within walking distance of a park, declared, "Make no little plans."
And so Chicago does not. FAST COMPANY has named it U.S. City of the Year, recognizing not its past but its present -- and its future -- as a place where there's room to stretch. Chicago has given America social investing and the stories of Stuart Dybek and Aleksander Hemon. It has been greening itself since long before it became trendy, and it has been dancing, too -- this is the home of house music, Wilco, and Lupe Fiasco. Here, in the birthplace of the American skyscraper, Santiago Calatrava is redefining the form with his Spire, while at the Art Institute, Renzo Piano is building a $300 million addition. The economy is growing faster than New York's or L.A.'s. And one of Chicago's own, who arrived in the 1980s and, in the tradition of the great rabble-rouser Saul Alinsky, took a job community organizing, has made a shockingly viable run for president, despite everyone telling him he was too inexperienced. Early in his campaign, Barack Obama told supporters, "I try to explain to people, I may be skinny but I'm tough. I'm from Chicago."
"Remember very few politicans are indicted and prosecuted by the STATES Attorney."
Elect Tony Peraica the next Cook County State's Attorney and this will no longer be true.
"REGISTER TO VOTE
VOTE IN EVERY ELECTION
HAVE NO DOUBT, VOTE INCUMBENTS OUT
(Starting with Joe Moore)"
Starting with every Incumbent; Legislative, Executive and Judicial; City, County, State and Federal.
Throw a giant monkey wrench into the machines of the manipulators.
Just Do It.
JOE MOORE WILL LOSE FOR ALDERMAN.
Revenge is mine thus saith the Lord.
Joe Moore is a racist, hypocritical, phony liar.
Helen Schiller sold out working people on the Big Box.
Helen Schiller sold out taxpayers on the property tax increase.
So, Kate, Mick, Ben, et al, we see multiple examples of the natures and attitudes of the mayor's administration's employees and supporters, and of the species of sub-human beings infesting our city, (and county), government.
As well as the nature and flavor of politics as usual and as practiced in this city, (and county).
Are these the types of creatures the citizens of this city, (and county), truly want controlling the determining of the amount and expending of their tax dollars?
Are these the types of creatures the citizens truly want making the laws, rules, ordinances and regulations we must, under penalty of law, comply with?
Are these the types of creatures the citizens truly want to entrust with their safety, health, social and economic welfare, etc.?
Are these the types of creatures the citizens would even choose to allow anywhere near themselves and their loved ones?
The only thing that actually makes sense is to:
REGISTER TO VOTE
VOTE IN EVERY ELECTION
HAVE NO DOUBT, VOTE INCUMBENTS OUT
NOT REGISTER TO VOTE
NOT VOTE IN EVERY ELECTION
HAVE NO DOUBT, VOTE INCUMBENTS IN
NOT REGISTER TO VOTE
NOT VOTE IN EVERY ELECTION
HAVE NO DOUBT, VOTE INCUMBENTS IN