Entries associated with the tag "Billy Ocasio":

Aldermen did actually debate for a couple of hours before they voted on Mayor Daley's 2009 budget, but not about whether it should be approved—that was a foregone conclusion under the pressures of an imploding economy, a domineering mayor, and a shortage of alternative ideas, as the 49-1 head count eventually showed. So instead they went back and forth about what was wrong with it even though it had to be passed.

Sixth Ward alderman Freddrenna Lyle described it as a “bad-news budget” but said the council had fought for and won important revisions since the mayor introduced it last month. “We’ve done our homework,” she said. But the Fourth Ward’s Toni Preckwinkle didn’t think she and her colleagues had done enough homework. She called for an additional week of budget hearings next year. “How can we run through 40 departments in two weeks?” she asked. “I don’t think it leads to a very thoughtful process.”

And so it went on issues large and small. Ray Suarez (31st) said he still didn’t like the new fee for dumpsters, which essentially taxes businesses and multi-unit apartment dwellers, but he was grateful that a newly formed council subcommittee would discuss it further and possibly replace it in the coming months. Helen Shiller (46th) then urged Suarez and everybody else to broaden the dumpster discussions to include the city’s recycling and waste management policies. Scott Waguespack (32nd) said this budget was the best the city could do in dire times, but ripped the administration for poorly managing department mergers and not planning ahead; he was followed by George Cardenas (12th), who lauded the administration for being smart and responsible. Howard Brookins (21st) praised the atmosphere of cooperation that had led to a plan to reduce layoffs; Bob Fioretti (2nd) demanded that the administration work more collaboratively with aldermen next year. While Richard Mell (33rd) lamented the demise of the old industrial economy, Manny Flores (1st) encouraged everyone to work on building a new green one. Mary Ann Smith (48th) blamed the federal and state governments for not doing enough to stanch the economic bleeding, but to James Balcer (11th) the real problem is the country’s addiction to foreign oil.

The lone nay vote came from 26th Ward alderman Billy Ocasio. “Yes, these are hard times, but I think in this budget we haven’t been that responsible,” he said. Ocasio was angry that the city could find money for Millennium Park and the 2016 Olympics bid but not for communities like his, and he accused the administration of axing productive low-level workers instead of unnecessary middle managers. “For the reasons mentioned—the wrong people being laid off, my community being taken for granted, all the false promises, and the fact that this administration believes that everything and everyone is expendable—I vote no.”

It was, ironically, almost the exact opposite of—or, given the spirit of the times, the perfect complement to—a speech Shiller had delivered a few minutes earlier. For several years in the late 1990s she was the one who cast the lone no vote on Mayor Daley’s budgets, but this time she made a plea for collaboration and dialog during the rotten economic climate. “Often the City Council is looked as a body, that if we all vote one way or another, it’s a rubber stamp,” she said. “But that doesn’t fit the times.”

Not surprisingly, no members of the council argued that it was, in fact, a rubber stamp, and, amid the usual political rhetoric about how it might be the media's fault but it certainly wasn't theirs, they found common ground on several other critical issues. They repeatedly reminded each other that real live people across the city are losing their jobs and their homes and feeling desperate. They agreed that this is nothing short of a disaster, and they agreed that, frighteningly, next year will probably be worse.

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, ‘Yes, Papi.’ And that to me was showed me what this was about.”

Toni Foulkes, 15th Ward: “I have to agree with my colleagues—it’s all about the children. I remember when I was young, going to see the King Tut exhibit. My friends and I took the Green Line downtown by ourselves. That one ride got me out of my comfort zone, going somewhere else by myself. Kinds in our communities like West Englewood need to get out of their neighborhoods.”

Ike Carothers, 29th Ward: “I come from a community where I really believe young people will relish the opportunity to come downtown. … And my colleague from the 42nd Ward, I’ve got to tell you, I hope you’re buying us all lunch, because this debate has kept us here a long time.”

Over the last several years dozens of states and universities, and a handful of cities, have decided to drop all their investments tied to Sudan as a protest against its genocidal campaign in the Darfur region. Among those who’ve pledged to divest are the state of Illinois, the University of Illinois, and Northwestern University.

Not the University of Chicago. The school’s administration has determined that divesting would be akin to making a political statement that could have a “chilling effect” on its mission of creating an environment of completely free and open intellectual inquiry.

And not the city of Chicago. No city officials seem to have given it much thought.

On Thursday, a handful of aldermen on the City Council’s Human Relations Committee conducted a 90-minute public scolding of the school for refusing to divest. But they didn’t say a thing about the city’s own possible ties to Sudan.

“I don’t see how the University of Chicago can take a position of genocide,” said 26th Ward alderman Billy Ocasio, the committee's chair. “I mean, we have someone I don’t admire at all—even President Bush has condemned it.”

The City Council has waded into the U. of C.’s response to the Darfur crisis at the prompting of Second Third Ward alderman Pat Dowell, who used to teach and work at the school. She says she was moved and concerned when a group of students asked for her help in pressuring the university administration to change its position.

She drafted a resolution that details Sudan’s murderous record in Darfur before going on to denounce the university and its board of trustees for not moving to divest. Forty of the council’s 50 aldermen signed on, among them Toni Preckwinkle and Leslie Hairston of the Fourth and Fifth Wards, which include the school.

The four aldermen who showed up for Thursday’s committee meeting—Dowell, Ocasio, 32nd Ward alderman Scott Waguespack, and, for a few minutes, 11th Ward alderman James Balcer—heard a series of university students and faculty blast their school for what they characterized as complicity in evil, and the aldermen often joined in the beat-down. University spokeswoman Julie Peterson was alone in defending the school, but with arguments like “For a university, it takes more courage to stand silent than to yield to the pressure and temptation to take sides,” she didn’t seem to persuade anyone.

“I don’t understand the university’s position on this,” Ocasio concluded.

Everyone, though, agreed that the resolution is a mostly symbolic measure that would probably have little real impact on the people of Darfur; Peterson emphasized that the university’s investments tied to Sudan probably amounted to $1 million or less.

So why is the City Council targeting one institution with relatively minor ties to the Sudanese government? Why not condemn major investment banks? Why not call hearings looking into the city’s own potential investments in Sudan? (The city’s finance and budget spokeswoman just told told me they’re trying to find out how much it might amount to.)

“This calls out one institution among many possible offenders because I heard about it from these students,” Dowell said. “It’s possible that [looking at others] could be the next step.”

Mayor Daley's budget speech Wednesday made one point overwhelmingly clear, if it wasn't already: He has no fear of Chicago voters.

Why should he? Back in February, the mayor was reelected by winning every single ward and 71 percent of the votes cast citywide. While voters in a few wards took out their frustrations on their aldermen, choosing to send would-be reformers to the City Council, the last few months have shown that Daley has more than enough council support to ram through just about whatever he wants, from a police reform initiative that gives him more power over who's investigating allegations of misconduct to a new Office of Compliance that most observers believe undercuts the work of the independent Inspector General.

Daley can hardly be blamed for thinking citizens of this city have given him leave to run the place however he sees fit. They have.

So here are some of the consequences: nearly $300 million in new taxes, fines, and fees, affecting just about everyone who lives in the city or even passes through. Own a home or even rent one? You'll be paying more. Enjoy having a beer once in awhile? The beer tax is going up. Have a car here? You'll be paying more for your next parking tickets, which, as anyone who's been here awhile knows, are pretty much impossible to avoid. Comforted by the idea that you might get police to show up for an emergency? The charge on your phone bill to cover 911 is going up.

Mayor Daley explains that the new revenues are essential to "keep Chicago moving forward." That's the same slogan he used as his campaign theme last winter, and the mayor's strategy for winning this round appears to be the same as the one he employed to hold onto his throne: Show everybody they've got nowhere else to go.

In his budget address, Daley repeatedly compared Chicago to "other cities" where services have been cut and the quality of life is, by his estimation, lower. The message is that if you don't want Chicago to become Detroit or Cleveland, you're going to have to place your trust in the Daley administration, along with more of your money.

"During these tight times, cities and states around the nation are increasingly under pressure to cut services and make substantial layoffs to balance their budgets, steps we've avoided in this budget, so far," Daley said. "I believe that the people of Chicago know that if we propose raising taxes it's because we've exhausted every other option. I believe they also know we've made real progress over the years because of their ongoing support and that we'll continue to invest their tax dollars to improve our quality of life."

In these "tight times," the mayor's budget grows last year's by tens of millions of dollars, which Daley said is necessary because of labor costs and the need to build more libraries. "Today, there are still communities without branch libraries in our city. They provide safe havens for our children and residents," he said. "For the first time, we would provide an ongoing, dedicated funding source for the library system."

In other words, you can blame the unions for the tax increases. Or you can decide to oppose them and punish the children.

All that was missing was a suggestion that opponents of the budget were racially motivated. 

Of course, this is a proposed budget--the City Council will be holding hearings over the next couple of weeks to scrutinize the plans in detail.

Expect some resistance. Aldermen know they'll be forced to take the heat from exhausted and embittered voters. Already, a few are shaking their heads "no."

Some aldermen noted that the payroll would only shrink by a handful of positions next year. One suggested that the administration work harder to dump ineffective or corrupt employees whose incompetence costs the city millions of dollars in legal fees each year. Others mentioned the high price of defending abusive cops.

Another alderman pointed out that Daley is proposing to save money by merging the Department of Buildings with the Department of Construction and Permits--four years after the mayor split them into two in a supposed cost-savings move.

"Who wants the title of 'The Best Unaffordable City'?" said Billy Ocasio, alderman of the 26th Ward. "Under this budget, we will be the most unaffordable, highest-taxed city in the nation."

That doesn't mean the council won't approve most of it. "We won't be, as you in the media like to put it, a rubber stamp," vowed 34th Ward alderman Carrie Austin, a Daley loyalist who chairs the council's budget committee. 

Uh-huh.