Archive for June, 2008

Political disputes in Chicago are, of course, always about who has power, money, and clout. But two of the biggest battles of the last few months erupted over questions about the appropriate use of public park space. I recently sat down with Erma Tranter, president of the advocacy organization Friends of the Parks, to get her take on the ongoing discussions about the Park District’s partnerships with the private sector, the system’s funding and infrastructural needs, and her organization’s own controversial proposals to create an uninterrupted public lakefront from the far north to the far south sides of the city. (Listen to the full interview: )

You’ve got a news clipping in front of you about the Lincoln Park-Latin School soccer field controversy. Critics are saying that, along with the Children’s Museum’s plan to move into Grant Park, it would have set a precedent for turning public land over to private entities.

On the Lincoln Park soccer field, Friends of the Parks opposed that proposal when it came before the community in 2003, when a different [Park District] administration talked about a soccer field at the same site, with a quarter-mile track around it. And there was opposition for a number of reasons, number one that this site is fairly small. It was a meadow and it was intended to be a meadow. In addition to that, this was not a public-private partnership that was in the best interest of the public. There are some partnerships that do benefit the public, such as when the Cubs or Sox build a new baseball field for kids, or when Nike sponsored soccer fields on the south side—they’ll pay for it but not use it themselves. In this case it was building and using taxpayer dollars for a private institution that should be looking to buy its own land.

So it died in 2003, and when it was resurrected without any community involvement in October of 2006 no one had a clue at first. I was really taken aback—I only saw it because we saw the agenda on a Tuesday for a Park District meeting on Wednesday.

It resulted in a new group being formed to litigate, and they got a judge who saw this as a public land deal that was bad for the public. So that’s a case that shows that the Park District has to really rethink this kind of public-private partnership where you give public land to benefit private institutions. It’s wrong, and it’s been declared wrong by the courts.

You do want the recreational fields—we have great need for them. Soccer, for example, is a growing sport. But you need a plan—how large a space will it need? What areas of the city really need it? Is there accessibility for people to get to the location?

The Children’s Museum is a little different. Museums historically are part of our park system. For Friends of the Parks—and it was different for a variety of groups—we were looking at legal precedents that govern Grant Park and say no above-ground buildings can be built. We wanted to protect those covenants.

The museum did agree to put more of the new building underground.

We saw three iterations of their design, and after every one of them we met with them and said, “It’s still a building.”

Why does the Park District need to rely on private partnerships? Is the money coming in just not enough?

We have an aging park system and they have a lot of capital demands in almost all neighborhoods. For example, they have like 500 children’s playgrounds. They were all rebuilt between ’88 and ’93, but the life expectancy for a children’s playground is 15 years, so hundreds of their playgrounds have exceeded their life expectancy—hundreds. And we have limited park space—7,000 acres for the whole city. So the parks we do have are overused.

It makes sense for the Park District to look for these partnerships, but to discern between those they should be working toward and those they shouldn’t even have a discussion about. I don’t see in their budget that they get a whole lot of private grants, and I think that’s something they could grow. [Superintendent] Tim Mitchell has been looking to find state support. And they are looking for aldermanic money—to say, “The park advisory council wants a new playground, and you, alderman, need to kick in for it [out of your menu budget].” And what we’ve been saying is that the district needs to push for its share of TIF money—they should be getting 7 percent of it.

Now there’s another issue with the public use of park land. The Park District recently approved two new schools being built in public parks. We need good schools, but the Board of Ed should be looking elsewhere—there’s a lot of vacant land in the city. This is an encroachment on limited green space.

The second trend that’s emerged in the last few months is that the city’s Department of Aging has capital dollars, and they apparently didn’t get land to build senior centers on so they’re negotiating with the Park District [to build] one at Wildwood, on the northwest side, and a second one at Warren Park up north. Why is parkland free land for them? We do really think the Park District is beginning to be considered the local land bank. We need our Park District to stand up right in the beginning—the commissioners should be our protectors.

We do think the park facilities themselves should have top-of-the-line senior programs right within our park buildings. We used to have them and lots have been cut back, but most of these buildings are vacant until kids come in around 2:30.

Is there anything the Park District has been doing well?

They’re doing more natural areas—planting more native grasses and things so you have more habitat for small critters and certainly migratory birds, and they’re beautiful to see. They have some spectacular gardens in regional parks. I think their overall maintenance and beach cleanup is good. And the last several years the Park District’s summer activities—the movies in the park have been terrific, and there have been more concerts in the park.

Why does it seem that some of the facilities are so much better in some places? Lincoln Park is the obvious example—it’s strikingly different from Garfield Park or Washington Park just in the way it’s kept up.

Parks on the west side and south side are receiving capital dollars. In Washington Park they just did a huge playground initiative and they did the lagoons. They spent millions of dollars restoring the Garfield Park conservatory, in partnership with Garfield Park Conservatory Alliance, an organization that we formed, and it’s because there’s a powerful community there. It takes a strong community to work with the Park District to really maximize the use and benefit and look of a park. Lincoln Park has all kinds of stewards, they’ve got volunteers, they’ve got two advocacy organizations—there are a lot of citizens involved. Washington Park does too—the Washington Park Advisory Council has started a conservancy, and there are capital dollars going down there.

But I’ve walked each of these places recently and the differences jump out at you.

It takes a lot of volunteers, I guess. I’m trying to think of some of the greatest parks—one is Wicker. It’s tiny, but my god, they have a garden club, they have an advisory council, they have a force of nature there named Doug Wood, and I can’t believe how much time he devotes to that park. Just this Sunday they had 2,000 people in this tiny park because they had a farmers' market, they had garden walks, they had historic tours, they had a trio—a jazz band—and it was all community-based. There’s another one, Commercial Club Playground, further west off Chicago Avenue. They do yoga classes—they raise the money. They do art classes for kids, and no holiday passes without a party for the kids there. So I think it does take a strong community to work closely with the Park District. The Park District can’t just go into some place and say, “We’re going to restore this playground” without the community. You need the volunteers, you need citizens who care, you need citizens to be the voice and the advocate, and the Park District needs to recognize those people and facilitate their work.

Speaking of community voices, you heard quite a few of them in meetings the last couple of weeks where you presented your plans for the far north lakefront. And a Sun-Times columnist wasn’t particularly charitable about the exercise. What’s going on?

The Burnham Plan’s anniversary is coming up next year. Well, we have 30 miles of lakefront from the Indiana border to the Evanston border. Over time people have decided the lakefront is going to remain free for everyone—it’s not going to belong to the rich and it’s not going to belong to industry. It is public land. But in the beginning those parks weren’t there—they’re all lakefill. The lake came to Michigan Avenue here; it came to Clark Street up at North Avenue. You go west to Marine Drive at Foster—that’s all lakefill.

So we’ve done 26 miles and we’ve got four to go to complete the lakefront plan—two on the south side [starting at 71st Street] and two on the north side [starting at Ardmore]. Our goal is to show what the city would look like if we had the ability to accomplish this now or in 50 years or later. So starting in 2005 we went out to the community and had countless meetings. What we came up with is not a Friends of the Parks plan; it’s a community plan. And our architects, working pro bono, came up with something on the south side so that you could ride your bike south of 71st Street. And then on the north side, because you’ve got Edgewater with high rises and Rogers Park with low-rises, [we came up with a plan for] minimal connection of the beaches.

On the north side, the community in Rogers Park was the most vehement. Most people said, “We have these street-end beaches and we want to keep these street-end beaches.” The problem is that people from the west of Sheridan think of those beaches as private because they perceive the community as thinking of those as private. We heard from the community who wanted nothing—they like Rogers Park as it is. We also heard from people who weren’t intimidated by the shouting that “Yes indeed, we want it if it’s a minimal parkland that’s created—we certainly don’t want Lake Shore Drive [extended north of Hollywood], we want no marina, we want no commercial development.”

So you’re saying you’d like to see this open lakefront from border to border.

We want to produce a concept plan by 2009 for finishing the last four miles of the lakefront. We will have engineering studies done to support the feasibility of it. Ultimately, future generations are going to complete the lakefront, and we think this is an assist.

Have you heard from the city about this?

Before we started this, we met with the city’s planning department, the Park District, all the aldermen along the lakefront, and the U.S. congressmen. We talked about completing the lakefront being part of the Burnham Plan. They were supportive of us going ahead with it because we were going to the community with it.

"People don't want to hear it, but people act crazy when it gets warm, and it's too bad but something like this ends up happening," a police officer told me Wednesday when I asked what he thought was behind Chicago's recent burst of gun violence, including the fatal shootings of five civilians by cops in the last two weeks.

"The police didn't have any choice," said his partner. "And everybody always talks about how they shot somebody 'multiple' times. That's because those people don't drop their weapons!"

"At least this isn't New York. They might've been shot 50 times," said the first one.

The officers said morale among the rank and file is low. Last year Mayor Daley created a new misconduct investigative body and hired a new police chief from outside the department, and ever since, these officers said, cops on the street are routinely second-guessed by citizens, the media, activists, politicians, and, sometimes, their superiors. "We're guilty until proven innocent," said the second officer.

The first made the "few bad apples" argument--that most cops are in the business because they genuinely want to help people, but a handful without common sense or regard for the neighborhoods they patrol cause all the problems. Most confrontations, he added, can be avoided long beforehand if officers communicate with people in their communities and get their help. He spoke of a colleague who's known and widely respected throughout the neighborhood where they work, even by gang members and drug dealers, because he takes the time to stop and talk to people. "He's not one of those John Wayne types kicking down doors," he said.

So how do you teach the John Waynes another way--or keep them off the force altogether? "Maybe that goes back to the police academy," he said. "Maybe you need to train them to interact with the community--to get them out here when they're training. Listen, you wouldn't put a reporter on the job if they didn't know how to talk to people and listen to people, would you? We shouldn't either. Especially us."

From Wednesday's Tribune:

"An 18-year-old man on probation for a weapons conviction was shot and killed by a Chicago police tactical officer Tuesday afternoon on the city's Northwest Side after police say he confronted officers with a loaded pistol.

"Some witnesses and family members told a different story, saying that Luis Colon, 18, had turned and was running from plainclothes officers about 5 p.m. when he was fatally shot in the 2700 block of North Kilbourn Avenue in the Belmont Gardens neighborhood.

"The incident was the eighth shooting by Chicago police officers in the last two weeks, and the fifth fatality."

Here's what the Tribune reported on April 27:

 "Mayor Richard Daley said Saturday he is backing a plan by his new police superintendent to equip all Chicago police officers with semiautomatic assault rifles, which Daley said would put officers on equal footing with armed gangs and criminals. 'Many times [the police are] outgunned, to be very frank,' Daley said....

"[Police superintendent Jody] Weis' weapons proposal is part of an overall crime-fighting strategy and not a reaction to the recent violence, police spokeswoman Monique Bond said. 'It's part of the superintendent's comprehensive plan to address violence and to ensure officers are equally equipped to confront threats against them and the communities they protect,' she said."

For all the ambitious politicians out there, here’s a tip: even in those many instances when you’re just carrying the water for your political boss or an interest group whose support you need, you should at least try to make it appear that you thought things through on your own.

I thought George Cardenas, alderman of the 12th Ward, had learned this already. In 2006 he delivered an ode to Mayor Daley’s leadership just before flip-flopping on the big-box minimum-wage ordinance. But by the time he gave a speech in favor of the Children’s Museum-Grant Park plan couple of weeks ago, he was almost artful, adding an anecdote about his daughter to an otherwise straight recitation of the mayor’s “It’s all about the children” argument.

On Tuesday Cardenas and aldermen Manny Flores and Toni Preckwinkle were flanked by activists from the Illinois Coalition for Immigration and Refugee Rights when they announced a City Council resolution condemning what Flores called the “race-baiting” portrayal of immigrants by right-wing TV news personalities.

Like all resolutions, this one is nonbinding—it functions as an official statement of outrage but doesn’t actually do anything about the issue.

Fair enough—legislative bodies at every level of government pass resolutions mostly so they can tell their backers they did. And in this case, no one in the room was willing to argue that Lou Dobbs, Bill O’Reilly, and Glenn Beck don’t misrepresent immigrants. Cardenas and his colleagues even appeared to have answers for skeptical reporters.

What’s gained if the City Council passes this resolution? “Well, it brings the issue to light,” Cardenas said. “We’re taking a leadership role on this. And maybe their consciences will begin to work. Maybe they’ll hear about this and listen.”

Isn’t this another case of the City Council taking on an issue beyond its jurisdiction? “It’s entirely appropriate for us to take on issues that affect people in our communities,” said Preckwinkle.

Have you considered writing or filing a formal protest with these TV broadcasters?

At this question, Cardenas looked stumped, then, reverting to his not-so-distant youth, blurted out that hey, it wasn’t his idea. “I don’t know—I mean, this is from the Illinois Coalition for Immigration and Refugee Rights,” he said. “I mean, maybe it’s that we want to get attention from the media. Maybe we want to have a discussion locally." 

He shrugged. "I’ll take this and see what happens.”

In a recent comment on a blog post, Paul N. Keller, one of my favorite TIF attorneys, suggested that I haven't read the state's TIF act.

Oh my god, that is just, like, so not true. The state's TIF act is one of my favorite reads. I keep a copy of it by my bed and read a passage every night before I go to sleep. It's terse, transparent, and immediately comprehensible to anyone with even a rudimentary understanding of English.

Plus, it's riveting. Sometimes after I turn off my light, I lie in bed and play back its words in my mind. Here's just one of my favorite passages randomly selected from this work of art:

"'Payment in lieu of taxes' means those estimated tax revenues from real property in a redevelopment project area derived from real property that has been acquired by a municipality which according to the redevelopment project or plan is to be used for a private use which taxing districts would have received had a municipality not acquired the real property and adopted tax increment allocation financing and which would result from levies made after the time of the adoption of tax increment allocation financing to the time the current equalized value of real property in the redevelopment project area exceeds the total initial equalized value of real property in said area."

Wait, wait -- there's more . . .

Cook County voters could be forgiven for not remembering they’re supposed to elect a new top prosecutor this fall.

Since her solid win in the nasty, expensive Democratic primary for state’s attorney, career prosecutor Anita Alvarez has kept a pretty low public profile. That’s because she’s been playing it safe and smart, traveling the county to meet with party committeemen and raise money. After all, if she gets the Democratic organization behind her she’ll win handily, especially with Barack Obama at the top of the ticket. Alvarez would have to do something outrageous—like explain why she and others in the state’s attorney’s office have never made a priority of prosecuting abusive cops, from the time Richard M. Daley ran it until now—to have a chance of alienating the party apparatus and losing.

Her Republican opponent, Tony Peraica, undoubtedly understands this. So he’s relying on the now-familiar strategy of campaigning against Cook County Board president Todd Stroger instead.

Who wouldn’t rather face Stroger? Voters in Palatine have talked about seceding from the county over the tax hikes he's engineered, and Stroger is unpopular even among the rest of us resigned to staying in it. Over the weekend the Trib ran a forceful editorial encouraging Cook County citizens to vote him out of office—even though he’s not up for reelection till 2010.

Peraica’s latest weekly newsletter quotes from the editorial and again reminds voters that he ran against Stroger in 2006, winning more votes than any previous Republican candidate for the seat. A couple of weeks ago he made sure readers knew Stroger had skipped a meeting with angry Palatine citizens (Peraica showed up and spoke to them instead); before that, he cited a Sun-Times story reporting that Stroger had hired ex-cons with political connections; before that, he trumpeted a piece revealing that Stroger required close aides to sign “confidentiality agreements” promising not to publicly discuss anything they see on the job.

In fact, since the February 5 primaries, Peraica has issued statements about Todd Stroger at least 17 times, by my count. Alvarez only got 14 mentions.

I recently spoke with a south-side politico who said he was worried that Peraica's grandstanding was actually going to knock Alvarez out. “Do you think he can do it?” he wondered.

Nah. A lot can happen in a few months, but not that much. When he’s not storming the county building with overserved followers, Peraica’s a skilled hatchet man. Still, when people don’t have Todd Stroger to kick around in the voting booth in November, they’ll stick with the Democrat or the woman. In either case, Peraica's not getting their vote. Tony, keep the anti-Stroger thing rolling a couple more years and you might get lucky.

Folks in City Hall have been e-mailing around TIFs for Tots, a devilish satire penned by Adam Verwymeren, a journalism student at Medill.

The primer manages to explain TIFs in language that just about anyone -- even your average alderman or City Hall reporter -- can understand.

Why is the City Hall crowd getting such a kick out of it? Partly because TIFs have always been an inside joke to planners, lawyers, and developers who still can't believe that so many adults remain clueless about the mayor's $500-million-a-year slush fund.

I give Verwymeren an A for his primer. It's accurate, clearly written, easy to understand, funny, and to the point. My favorite part is where he writes, "Some people say TIFs are like a big piggy bank for the mayor to use for whatever he wants. And these people say we can't trust the mayor."

In other words, "TIFs for Tots" is the opposite of the city's own primer -- The ABCs of TIFs [PDF} -- which is misleading, obtuse, and riddled with errors.

Verwymeren's a pretty smart guy. The city should hire him. But they wouldn't think of it. He's too honest.  

In the past I've heard some Water Reclamation District commissioners say they'd love to get the Chicago River and canal system cleaned up, except the costs appear formidable--in the hundreds of millions of dollars, at least, for new technology to disinfect effluent from the wastewater treatment process. Now the agency is officially taking a firmer stand against new standards proposed by the Illinois EPA, as reported in this terrific in-depth piece by Northwestern grad student Lea Radick.

Some artists find inspiration in the human form; others in the human condition; others in the Chicago election board's voting booths. 

I used to stick with the train for my commute to and from downtown, but I’ve given up because construction makes it so erratic—sometimes my trip takes less than 30 minutes, other times twice as long, and after a certain point in the evening I can’t even catch the Red Line north from the stop nearest the office. Instead, I’ve started taking the 147 Outer Drive Express bus. While it often gets crowded with people who've apparently reached similar conclusions [go about a minute in], I’ve come to enjoy the ride home along the lakefront.

So after working dangerously close to the start of last evening’s NBA Finals game, I hurried to the bus stop and immediately concluded I was lucky. The 147 rolled right up—no wait for a change.

My luck continued as we cruised up Michigan Avenue far more quickly than usual. Suddenly we were through the light at Oak Street and dipping into the tunnel that leads to Lake Shore Drive.

We were already going about 50 miles an hour.

I don’t know if the driver thought he too might have a chance to see the Celtics practice shooting threes over a team once known as the Lakers, but he was gunning it. We shot onto Lake Shore Drive and veered into the next lane. We whizzed past cars, steered suddenly back into the right lane, then back over again. People around me cast each other looks combining thrill and terror. Air whistled through gaps where the windows were open slightly. We were still accelerating. We hit one of the many potholes on the drive, seemed to go airborne, and slammed down again with a crash that left some wondering if the bus might possibly break in two. Then we did it again. Since the driver managed not to crash, it was a blast.

The bus coasted off the drive at Foster, turned onto Sheridan, made a stop next to the Dominick’s, and suddenlyputtered to a complete stop. The lights and vents went off and an alarm began to beep. The driver stood up calmly and opened the front door as the couple next to me began to talk in low, concerned tones: What’s going on? Is something wrong? Is he just getting off the bus? Maybe we should get out of here. Somebody find out what's going on . . .

The driver moved casually toward the back of the bus. “I guess it overheated,” he said over his shoulder to someone sitting up front. “You guys can get the next one.”

Nice of him to wish us well, but there wasn’t a next one—at least not for quite a while. Fortunately for my sake, I didn't wait around for it. I joined the caravan of people hoofing it up Sheridan Road, and by the time I’d covered the last mile there still hadn’t been another bus.

A few days ago the Water Reclamation District officially asked state regulators to stop their push to clean up the Chicago River and other area waterways.

In a motion [PDF] filed with the Illinois Pollution Control Board, which essentially functions as a state environmental court, district attorneys argued that new water pollution standards proposed by the Illinois EPA would cost Cook County taxpayers billions of dollars "without any demonstration that it will bring about any appreciable improvement in water quality or benefit to public health." They asked the pollution board to end public testimony on the proposed standards until more research is done, including an $8 million study the district has commissioned with the UIC public health department.

The pollution board hasn’t ruled on the motion yet, but at a previously scheduled public hearing Monday night several dozen canoeists, kayakers, fishermen, and environmental activists urged board members to put the tougher standards in place as soon as possible—or risk losing money.

“People are yearning to use this river, and I hope there’s some ability to use the technology, whatever that is, to make the river a safer place, because I know the investment will pay off in multitudes over the years,” said Charles Portis, who leads an architectural paddling tour on the Chicago River.

Grant Crowley recalled that the water was full of trash when he opened a boatyard on the South Branch of the Chicago River in 1978. After storms the river would be inundated with raw sewage. “It was disgusting,” he said.

By now, though, the Water Reclamation District’s investments in new technology have improved things enough that people fish out of the river and build new homes along it, Crowley said. And his business has thrived, with 50 employees and $5 million in annual revenues. Cleaning up the waterways, he argued, would lure more boaters and fishermen who’d spend tens of millions more.

Just one speaker urged the board to go slow—Wally Van Buren of the Illinois Association of Wastewater Agencies, who took up the Water Reclamation District’s argument.

But those who preceded and followed him told stories of experiencing wildlife while paddling on the Chicago, River, then also coming home with rashes or eye infections from direct exposure to bacteria in the water.

“In decades gone by the joke was that communities downstream from Chicago weren’t going to take any more crap from the city,” said Tom Bamonti, a kayaker. “Well, we’ve cured that problem but we’re still sending loads of bacteria down the river. We owe it to our neighbors and we owe it to ourselves to disinfect the Chicago River.”

The issue won't be decided for months, at least. Another round of hearings is scheduled for September, and state officials would have to take several more steps before implementing any new rules. And that's without additional legal fights.

This just in . . .

Not only are we not Detroit, we're now the new Nashville!

Yes, that's right, Chicago's emerged as the political capital of America. It wasn't easy. We had to overcome Nashville and Little Rock. But, darn it, we did it!

And we owe it all to Mayor Daley because -- everyone together now -- our mayor is responsible for all that is good in the universe. Even Barack Obama.

So one more time: Thank You, Mayor Daley. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Over the last few years, Mayor Daley's boosters (like his father's) have had one standby response (see comments below posts) to any criticism of his reign: without him, we'd be Detroit.

It's a curious response. I know it's code for something, but I'm not sure what. I mean, of all the cities to compare Chicago to, why Detroit? Why not, oh, I don't know, Minneapolis or Seattle or Toronto?

Do the mayor's supporters really believe that whatever differences may exist between Chicago and Detroit come down to Mayor Daley and his leadership?

If so, what exactly has Mayor Daley done to keep Chicago from becoming Detroit?

For that matter, are there parts of Chicago that actually are like Detroit?

If so, why hasn't Mayor Daley helped them? 

Some critics say Barack Obama is too inexperienced and naive, while others say he’s too closely entwined with treasonous radicals. Months ago he could have countered both attacks at the same time by showing the country a religious mentor who knows how to talk like a progressive, appeal to the center, and quietly make political deals.

And he still could if, as Mary Mitchell speculates, he ends up joining the Apostolic Church of God.

I’m not questioning Obama’s sincerity as a spiritual seeker, but it’s obvious that Jeremiah Wright’s message of black liberation theology (and his congregation full of black politicians and other professionals) was attractive to Obama when he was looking for identity . . . and networking opportunities.

Now, though, his political success depends on his being able to distance himself from left-wing conspiracy theorists and cast himself as a reasonable centrist. (Just do a Google search for "Obama and Jeremiah Wright” if you need to remind yourself of the right wing’s strategy to cast Obama as an H. Rap Brown wannabe.) He couldn’t do better than finding a mentor like Bishop Arthur Brazier, Apostolic’s retiring pastor.

Brazier’s career is a study in social activism moving ever closer to the center. He once protested the segregationist education policies of Richard J. Daley; now, as hands the leadership of his church to his son Byron, he’s an ally of Richard M. Daley.

That wouldn’t hurt Obama at all. 

Wright seems mainstream to locals but like a firebrand to outsiders. For Brazier the reverse would be true. Insiders may consider him a Daley apologist, but to the rest of the country he’d seem like a direct, hardworking, grandfatherly figure. And he's a gifted preacher who won't sound too fiery to anyone who's nervous about that sort of thing. 

Brazier doesn’t believe in the racial politics of Jeremiah Wright; he was one of the first black clerics to endorse Daley as mayor after he defeated Eugene Sawyer in 1989. Brazier also wasn’t corrupt or dumb enough to trade his support for peanuts like so many pastors and community leaders who’ve gone silent under this mayor. He’s a proud, bright, tough old head, but in a fight he wouldn’t call the cameras in and start screaming -- he’d much rather let others do the talking while he makes a deal and gets somebody to do just what he wanted in the first place. He and his protege Leon Finney Jr. could always talk this Mayor Daley’s language: Look, we all want to build some new middle-class homes in Woodlawn, so let’s tear down the last half mile of the Green Line -- nobody who uses it can raise enough of a stink to stop us -- and call it the removal of blight. 

Over the years Bishop Brazier has given thousands of dollars to the mayor and various south-side political figures, including former 20th Ward alderman Arenda Troutman. And there were no doubts about who really led the ward; Brazier stuck with Troutman last year after she was charged with accepting bribes, but when she held up a big Woodlawn development project he backed he found somebody else: a former cop named Willie Cochran. Brazier didn’t do anything lame like endorse Cochran or stand next to him in a photo-op -- he ponied up more than $30,000 in a few weeks’ time and all but escorted his man into office.

Frankly, I used to think Bishop Brazier was a sellout; now I see that he was one of the smartest operators around. I don’t understand many, many of his political decisions or his plans for scrubbing signs of poverty from Woodlawn. But even when he’s a bastard, he makes his views sound quite reasonable. That’s the kind of minister a relatively inexperienced black presidential candidate could use at his side.

Chicago is a big city that often seems like a small one, especially when you realize how many of its powerful political and business interests intertwine. The relationship between the city government and the Illinois Restaurant Association, the nonprofit organization that helps run the Taste of Chicago, is yet another example.

Remember way back in May, when Mayor Daley and some of his loyal aldermen muzzled the opposition, pulled out a parliamentary trick or two, and repealed the ban on foie gras faster than it usually takes the City Council to honor the month’s grade school spelling bee champs?

The worthiness of the ban isn't the point--as Mayor Daley has decreed, we're done debating that one for now. But no one's talked much about the fact that it was overturned at the bidding of a nonprofit city contractor that happens to make a lot of donations to a lot of elected officials--and will undoubtedly be weighing in on other issues before the council.

While the mayor mocked the ban for the cameras, the effort to get the council to repeal it was led by 44th Ward alderman Tom Tunney and the Illinois Restaurant Association, an trade and advocacy organization. Tunney, a restaurateur, was formerly the restaurant association’s chairman; Sheila O’Grady, once Mayor Daley’s chief of staff, is currently its president. 

Since 1984, according to the Mayor’s Office of Special Events, the restaurant association has been a "partner" of the city’s in running the Taste of Chicago and other summer festivals. Under the terms of their no-bid contract for "beverage and food management," the association helps pick which restaurants get to set up booths and then provides "the knowledge, information and training necessary to maximize their ability to participate in the Events for which they are selected." Translated, that means the association is supposed to make sure vendors are properly handling food, disposing of garbage, and--don't forget, guys!--making money. "I don’t think the Taste could exist without IRA doing their part," said Cindy Gatziolis, a spokeswoman for the special events office.

For these services, the city will pay the restaurant association up to $3.6 million this year, according to their contract. Gatziolis said most of the money will go toward festival supplies such as ice and cups. But the association usually keeps a chunk of the money as service fees. Last year it held onto $232,500; in 2006, $1.1 million. (After expenses, the Taste brings the city about $3 million, which it spends on other festivals, according to Gatziolis.)

Gatziolis said the contract isn’t put out for a competitive bid because no one but the Illinois Restaurant Association is qualified to provide these kinds of services. "It is the only one," she said. "They have that expertise."

The City Council voted 48 to 0 in December to sign off on 2008 summer festival funding, including the contract with the restaurant association.

The deal with the city accounts for the majority of the association’s annual revenues, according to federal tax documents. In 2006, the most recent year available, the association reported about $5.8 million in revenues, and about $3.8 million of it came from the Taste contract and other summer event fees. The association raised about $565,000 through member dues.

Under federal tax rules, the association is allowed to spend a portion of the membership money on political activities, and it does. In 2006 the organization spent more than $200,000 on lobbying and other “political expenditures,” and its political action committee typically hands out thousands of dollars in campaign contributions each year. Among the recipients since the beginning of 2007 are aldermen Leslie Hairston (5th), Sandi Jackson (7th), George Cardenas (12th), Ed Burke (14th), Lona Lane (18th), Howard Brookins Jr. (21st), Carrie Austin (34th), Rey Colon (35th), Brian Doherty (41st), Brendan Reilly (42nd), Vi Daley (43rd), Tom Tunney (44th), and Bernard Stone (50th). Of that group, only Colon voted against repealing the foie gras ban. 

In the last few years the association has also lobbied hard on other issues before the council. In 2005 its opposition helped weaken the city’s indoor smoking ban, and the next year it helped kill Burke’s proposal to prohibit restaurants from cooking with trans fats. It’s also weighed in on city and state debates about the minimum wage, liquor licensing, and tax policy.

O’Grady was out of town Friday. A spokeswoman for the association said she'd get back in touch with a comment but didn't. I suspect everyone was out for a long lunch.

You may have no idea what the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago does (it treats and releases the wastewater produced in most of Cook County) or why it's important to the environment (because otherwise we'd have a whole lot of untreated sewage in our waterways). Regardless, if you live around here, you're helping pay for its nine commissioners to cruise around in gas-guzzling SUVs and Crown Vics wherever they want, whenever they want. Last June commissioner Patricia Young spent at least $250 in taxpayer funds on gas as she drove 1,254 miles in her 2005 Ford Explorer (purchased for $27,325 in public finances)--and that was long before gas topped $4 a gallon. Was all the driving job related? Who knows? The district doesn't make her keep detailed records, and at the end of 2007 Young estimated that only 57 percent of the miles she put on the car last year had anything to do with district work.

Not to pick on Young alone . . .

Check out the story in this week's issue if you want to find out WTF.

By some counts, mean First Ward alderman Manny Flores decided not to help the children Wednesday, instead casting the first "No" vote on the Children's Museum's planned relocation to Grant Park. But by Thursday, he had moved on to other issues--such as what he's going to read to the children who come to story time in his ward in a couple weeks.

"I knew he had a 2-year-old son," Brownfield says.

They haven't finalized the reading list yet, though Brownfield is recommending Jack and the Beanstalk. Isn't that the one about a giant who walks around mumbling and smelling blood? That is, before he falls? Yeah, that might be interesting. How about, say, "The Emperor's New Clothes"? The Wizard of Oz? The David and Goliath story from the Old Testament?

Flores says he's probably going to pull from his son Teddy's library--maybe The Lorax (fitting for a rust belt city that wants to keep going green) or The Little Engine That Could. In fact, alderman, if that one goes well, would you think about taking story time elsewhere--like the next meeting of the Independent Caucus? 

Lobbying by the Children’s Museum and mayor’s staff obviously had a bigger impact over the last few weeks—especially the last few hours—than the push from 42nd Ward alderman Brendan Reilly and other opponents of the museum's Grant Park plan.

A couple of aldermen said Wednesday that mayoral aides offered them administration help for projects in their wards in return for their votes. While horse trading is part of politics, some of the projects probably would have—and almost certainly should have—received city help without the promise of a vote on a citywide issue. As one alderman put it: “I just wonder if they cashed in for too little.”

But this is why the mayor and his team are good: they don’t just ask (or tell) people how to vote. They also provide the goodies to help the decisions get made—and the arguments that can be used to defend them.

Way back when, Mayor Daley and allies like Father Pfleger suggested that opponents of the museum plan were essentially racist for not wanting black and brown kids in Grant Park. That didn’t go over too well, so the arguments kept changing. By the time of Wednesday's vote supporters were reciting another line: the museum will offer poor kids the chance to expand their horizons by getting out of their neighborhoods and visiting the city’s front yard, which some aldermen referred to as the city's "back yard." (The fact that schools already can—and do—take field trips to cultural institutions downtown was generally left unmentioned, as was the thought that they can currently visit Grant Park at any time.)

Shortly before the vote an alderman and a mayoral staffer each made versions of this argument to me. Then, during the debate on the council floor, almost every alderman who spoke in support of the museum plan offered a variation of it. I can’t state for certain that cheat sheets were circulated. And in fairness, opponents of the plan shared some arguments too. But the sudden frequency of the cultural enrichment defense was odd if it wasn’t planned. Some examples:

Billy Ocasio, 26th Ward: “I envision parents having the opportunity to spend the day to take their children to the greatest backyard the city ever had: Grant Park. It is our greatest backyard. It is a backyard a lot of our children don’t get to go to very often. It is a backyard where they could run, observe, and explore things they’ve never seen before. Our children in our poor communities of the city may never have a chance to get down there. If you talk about the neighborhoods, our children need an opportunity to explore. Our children need an opportunity to see the rest of the city—to get out there and imagine and be creative. That’s what this provides them. This is our backyard—let the children come here and kick the ball around.”

Emma Mitts, 37th Ward: “Why shouldn’t our children be able to have the opportunity to go and experience the cultural diversity that this city has? You know, if I’d had that opportunity when I was a child I think I would have had a better life. But now I’m not going to deny these children that opportunity.”

George Cardenas, 12th Ward: “I took my family to visit Grant Park. I wanted to do my homework—I wanted to make the right decision. So we went there. I took my two daughters. It was a Sunday, and we’d just had breakfast. And to me, it was important because it was for my daughters that I was going to be making this decision. And I stood in Bicentennial Plaza, looking toward the lake, looking south toward Grant Park. And I said to my daughter, ‘Isn’t this beautiful?’ And she said, ‘