Entries associated with the tag "Mayor Daley":

There was an Olympic rally on the south side this morning, but it wasn't like the rallies staged by Mayor Daley.

Instead of bringing in out-of-town celebrities to join the mayor's chorus -- Olympics good, Olympics good -- the newly formed coalition Communities for an Equitable Olympics raised the possibility that maybe, just maybe, staging the games in 2016 wouldn't be such a hot idea for Chicagoans.

It was a glorious sunshiny morning, and many of the leading south-side community organizations were there: the Kenwood-Oakland Community Organization, Action Now, Centers for New Horizons, the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, and the Brighton Park Neighborhood Council.

Facing a horde of reporters and camera crews, they stood on the steps of Michael Reese Hospital, at 2929 S. Ellis, which the city -- as busted as it is -- is preparing to replace with a 37-acre development that could serve as the Olympic Village.

Think about this for a moment. The city's $400 million in the red, we're in the midst of a crisis in low-income health care, and the condo market's soft. But the mayor's gearing up to sink $85 million into a 7,500-unit condominium complex that will take the place of a hospital.

For the moment the activists are playing things diplomatically. "We're not here to hurt the Olympic bid," said Denise Dixon, a member of Action Now. "We're here to enhance it."

The coalition wants to force the city to sign a "legally enforceable benefits agreement" that would, among other things, guarantee that as much as 20 percent of the units in the Olympic Village development would be affordable for working-class and poor people who currently live in the area.

At the risk of sounding like the jaded old coot that I am, I don't know why they would trust any promise that the city makes when it comes to affordable housing. As best I can tell the whole point of the Olympics -- other than putting an international spotlight on the mayor -- is to move the poor people out of the south side.

I can only hope that if the city turns down the residents' demands they'll move to plan B: opposition. I say the sooner they get there the better. Until Mayor Daley can show how he would pay for the games -- other than with property tax dollars -- we shouldn't be spending millions to try to have them, 'cause we can't afford them.

When I think about it, there should have been people from the north, northwest, southwest and west sides at today's rally as well. After all, tax dollars are coming out of their pockets too.  

If Saint Paul didn’t convince us, Mayor Daley might: the latest converts often become the most aggressive evangelists.

I bring this up because the mayor has apparently realized that Chicago’s public transportation system needs some work, and he wants to make sure others are onto it as well. “You have to get this on people’s minds,” he said during a tour of Beijing’s system.

Actually, it’s been on our minds—those many thousands of us who rely on the CTA to get to work each day—for years.

But the mayor appears to have had his own blinding light experience earlier this year when the International Olympic Committee gave our system tepid reviews. The exposure of a major weakness in Chicago’s Olympic bid captured Daley’s attention in a way the frustrations of riders and a string of high-profile mishaps never could.

Now, the Trib reports, Daley would like to find a way to get CTA president Ron Huberman and others over to Beijing to check out their comfortable, high-tech transit network.

But some of his constituents are suggesting a far cheaper, more essential option: maybe the mayor should start taking public transit in his own city to see how it creaks along.

After all, if he continues to be inspired like this, the man who’s amassed the power and funding to “reform” the schools and “transform” public housing and “modernize” the airport can find a way to move buses and trains, if not mountains.

They won’t give an exact number, but city officials have been admitting over the last few days that they’re already looking at a substantial budget shortfall—perhaps as high as $400 million, or 6 percent of the $6.3 billion budget.

Budgets are essentially guesstimates about what’s going to happen in the year ahead. Apparently last fall’s were off by quite a ways. 

Acts of God and the economy have lots to do with it—budget department spokeswoman Wendy Abrams says she can’t provide specific figures because they’re so fluid, but the unusually long, messy winter cost the city far more than it had expected, as have rising fuel costs. And the rotten economy—especially in the foundering construction and real estate sectors—has slowed the rate of money coming in.

There are a couple ways to look at this. On the one hand, city officials couldn’t have predicted how many inches of snow were going to fall last winter any more than they can control national economic forces. Then again, maybe their projections could have been more conservative. Chicago hadn’t gone through a full-on winter in a number of years, and sooner or later it was bound to happen. The housing market was in a free-fall well before the 2008 budget was drawn up.

Yet the Daley administration laid out a budget plan last fall that assumed a mild winter and a stabilizing economy. A few examples:

·        The city’s Bureau of Street Operations, the division responsible for street cleaning and snow removal, had a 2004 budget of $89 million, but it was cut to $73 million by this year. (Over the same period, the budget for the Bureau of Sanitation, which handles garbage and recycling, grew from $142 million to $163 million.)

·        The Department of Fleet Management, which provides the fuel for city vehicles, budgeted just a little more (a couple million) for gasoline and diesel though prices were already shooting higher.

·        The 2008 budget predicted the city would bring in the same amount in real estate transfer taxes—$210 million—as it did in 2007, despite the sinking housing market. (And the city overestimated these revenues last year too.)

·        Same deal with the sale of city-owned land, which rises and falls with the pace of development and real estate speculation: the city projected making $16 million this year even though it only brought in $12 million in 2007.

·        Mayor Daley announced a shortfall at this time last year too.

 
If the budget department was overly optimistic, it had allies in the City Council—40 aldermen voted for the revenue package (though just 29 for the portion of it raising property taxes), and 37 supported the spending plan.

Now the mayor is considering employee layoffs and unpaid furloughs, and aldermen have also been told to prepare for cuts in city services. There’s nothing remotely good about this for them. No one walks around singing songs of praise to their aldermen just because the trees are trimmed and streets are swept. But if people start noticing that little things aren’t being taken care of, they’ll bitch, and whoever’s sitting in the ward office will be held responsible for the decline of the neighborhood whether it’s actually happening or not.

So what is an embattled alderman to do? Thank God there's a Republican in the White House to blame, at least for now.

In the last few days Mayor Daley has been spreading the word that even though the city faces mountains of debt, there's absolutely no way he will raise property taxes.

Last week he and schools CEO Arne Duncan announced that the Board of Education would rather take $50 million out of reserves than hike taxes for the cash-starved system.

And today he proclaimed that he would mandate furlough days for nonunion city employees to help close a budget deficit he says stands at "a couple of hundred million dollars." But no new property taxes.

This is a surprising turn of events for the mayor, who hasn't been reluctant to hike taxes in the past. For instance, to help close last year's $293 million deficit, Mayor Daley raised roughly $276 million in fees, fines, and taxes, including $83.4 million in property taxes. And this was on top of his $113 million increase in what I call the TIF tax (which the mayor doesn't acknowledge because he's apparently convinced himself that TIFs aren't taxes even though we have to pay them).

So what gives this year?

Well, there are two theories bouncing around City Hall. The nice guy theory is that Mayor Daley truly cares about the little people of his town and he realizes that in these hard economic times they can't afford another tax hike.

"Chicago taxpayers have been generous and supported our school improvements, and they deserve a break," the mayor told reporters at a July 23 press conference where he announced no new property taxes for the schools.

Arne Duncan was even more direct. "People are hurting," he said at the same press conference. "They're having a hard time making ends meet. And we refuse to add to that burden....We will not raise taxes. It would have been the wrong thing to do at this time."

Then there's the more, shall we say, realistic point of view that goes like this. With just six months left before the city submits its official bid for the 2016 Olympics to the International Olympic Committee, the last thing Mayor Daley wants or needs is to risk igniting anything remotely resembling a property tax revolt. Not when he's trying to show the world that everyone in Chicago just can't wait to host the games. There will of course be plenty of chances to jack up taxes next year, when he won't have to impress the IOC.

So which theory do you buy: Mayor Daley truly cares about you, or he wants you to remain asleep? 

During last year's 49th Ward aldermanic election, Don Gordon came across as Mayor Daley's guy, taking the mayor's side on most of the issues -- big-box minimum wage, foie gras -- on which incumbent alderman Joe Moore had opposed the mayor. As a result Gordon was the target of a union-financed battle in which lines were drawn: If you want independence in the council, vote for Moore.

Well, that wasn't the Don Gordon I heard speaking at Tuesday's Park District budget hearing at the Loyola Park Field House. In clear and unequivocal terms he assailed the Park District for allowing too much construction on its property. He'd done his research. He had the whole list -- from the high school in South Shore's Rosenblum Park to the senior citizen center contemplated for far-north-side Warren Park to the Latin School soccer field in Lincoln Park to the Children's Museum in Grant Park and so on and so forth.

"We're giving parkland away," he declared. "My message to you this evening, [Park District representative] Matt Marino, to Alderman Moore, to [Park District] Superintendent Tim Mitchell, and to the mayor is: Stop!"

Hearing Gordon that night made me wish he'd been elected. Then again, he later told me that if he had been he'd be much less likely to pound away at the mayor's policies. "I'd exercise more tact," he said.

Great, just what we need. More tact from alderman when it comes to speaking out about the mayor's excesses. If we had one -- just one -- alderman willing to consistently speak as strongly as Citizen Gordon, then maybe Mayor Daley wouldn't get away with so much on Park District property.

Check that -- of course he would. I think the mayor can pretty much get away with anything he wants. But at least one clear and forceful voice in the council would make it harder to ignore what's going on. 

It’s now clear that the City Council questioning of police chief Jody Weis Tuesday had two purposes: (1) to send a message to the world, and particularly that small slice of it known as the International Olympic Committee, that Chicago’s leaders are going to crack heads and take care of this unpleasant gun violence problem (or at least make sure it’s banished from downtown); and (2) to allow the mayor to make a pointed argument—delivered via his handpicked police chief and surrogates in the council, who would not act on an issue like this without Daley's knowledge and consent—that the real source of this mess is an overly aggressive push to discipline police officers.

This second matter is the one most likely to impact the daily lives of people in Chicago. 

"I have heard from many officers that there is a degree of timidness--that people are not maybe as engaged as they should be because of fears of lawsuits, fears of [complaints registered] being put against them by criminals and by other folks who are just trying to impugn their integrity," Weis said, as quoted by the Sun-Times.

We’ve heard this argument many times before. “I understand there may be a few bad apples in the bushel, but there are gangbangers and drug dealers in the neighborhoods who learn how to file complaints against officers,” the 47th Ward's Eugene Schulter said in a hearing just last week that gave alderman an opportunity to tee off on the Independent Police Review Authority, the agency charged with vetting complaints about cops.

Schulter/Weis/Daley make a disturbing argument, but it’s certainly not the full story. Some thugs may actually file complaints to taint good cops and, as a result, undermine the process for disciplining not-so-good ones. Then again, it's also possible that some cops may actually rack up complaints from honest citizens concerned about their conduct.

From April through June the IPRA closed its investigations into 672 cases that involved either allegations of misconduct, reports of an officer discharging a weapon, or other “extraordinary occurrences” such as a suspect dying in custody, according to the authority’s most recent report (which can't be viewed on all browsers). The vast majority—at least 523—didn’t result in any finding against the officers. In fact, in 230 of these cases the person who filed the complaint refused to sign an affidavit, an assertion under oath that the testimony is true. This figure could underscore what Daley, Weis, and the aldermen are ranting about: if gangbangers are indeed filing frivolous complaints about cops just to screw with them, they’re probably not going to follow up by taking a trip to IPRA headquarters to sign affidavits.

And another 86 cases were closed after investigators ruled the allegations were simply “unfounded.”

Still, at least 203 were “not sustained,” which essentially means the evidence wasn’t substantial enough to prove misconduct or innocence.

And I can tell you from firsthand experience that it’s not that easy to file a complaint--and it’s far less easy to prove it’s justified.

A couple of years ago I was on the Red Line headed south of the Loop when a couple of cops stepped onto the car and immediately approached a teenager and asked for his ID. He provided it, and one of the officers glanced it over and then put it into his pocket. The kid demanded to have it back; the cop told him he’d return it when the kid got off the train—which, the cop said, would be at the next stop.

Sure enough, we pulled up to the 47th Street station and the officer shoved the teenager off the train, pushed him over to a support beam, and ordered him to put his hands up. As we pulled away, the officer was kicking the kid in the legs.

Maybe I don’t need to say this, but I will: I respect and admire the thousands of officers on the force who help keep me safe every day I’m in this city, and most of those I’ve interacted with appeared to be serious about their jobs because they cared about people they’d never met. But this cop’s behavior was way out of line. I wasn’t the only person who thought so—our train car was buzzing about what had just happened. So I took down the names and phone numbers of four or five others who’d seen the whole thing and put in a call right then to the Office of Professional Standards, the IPRA’s predecessor. I was told they’d look into it.

A few weeks later an investigator got in touch with me and asked me to come down to their offices on the south side. I hadn’t gotten the officer’s name or star number, and OPS couldn’t figure out which cops might have been on a southbound CTA train at the time of the incident, so the investigator needed me to take a look at the photos of a bunch of officers.

I had to take a half day off work to make the trip down there, wait awhile, wait some more, then finally get escorted to the desk of an investigator who pulled up a bunch of photos of officers on her computer screen . . . only to determine what you might expect: there was no way to look at someone’s head shot and honestly say yes, that’s the guy I saw once, several weeks ago, from several yards away, most of the time with his back to me, seemingly harassing a teenager who didn’t appear to do anything other than act like a teenager.

Many weeks later I received a letter from OPS in the mail. The complaint, it said, had not been sustained. The case was closed.

Our ongoing problems with violence demand action, including vigorous public debate. But I wonder if engaging in baldly political displays shows any respect for Chicago Police officers or the citizens they try to serve and protect.

My law enforcement sources up in Bensenville tell me that since I wrote about the Dead Zone last week in the Reader it's has become a tourist hot spot.

Apparently, people are driving through to gawk at the ghost town left in the wake of Mayor Daley's ambitious plan to clear out a chunk of Bensenville and turn it into a piece of O'Hare Airport.

There's a sense of urgency. At the moment lawyers for the city are asking Du Page County circuit court judge Kenneth Popejoy to lift his restraining order that keeps the city from bulldozing the houses it owns in the area.

Using real estate sales tactics straight out of David Mamet, the city pressured folks into selling more 500 pieces of property over the last two years. The city says the land is essential to the O'Hare Modernization Program.

Bensenville's fighting on just about every legal front, including arguing that demolishing the buildings will damage the environment. The city countered by hiring a consultant who's now testifying before Judge Popejoy that the demolition will have a minimal environmental impact.

The hearing ends on Thursday. If Judge Popejoy lifts his injunction, the city can bring in the bulldozers and give the Dead Zone the Meigs Field treatment.  Provided, of course, that Bensenville doesn't win another temporary restraining order with an appeal.

In any event, you should take the opportunity to experience the Dead Zone in all of its eerie ghostliness before it's too late. I think it's more fun -- and a lot more educational -- than a trip to Navy Pier, Millennium Park, or any of Mayor Daley's other tourist attractions.

Stay tuned for my bicycle tour of the area.

Did you hear the news?

The Chicago Yacht Club hosted a regatta last week. I know all about it because the Chicago 2016 Olympic Committee sent me a press release.

The Olympic Committee frequently e-mails me--and apparently lots of other reporters in town--PR with the latest. Somehow, no matter what the news, it always involves the Olympics.

Did you know that the Olympic Committee is operating a booth at Taste of Chicago? Well, they are, according to their June 30 press release. Let's hope they're not serving up salmonella.

They're also asking "schools, churches and other community organizations to help increase minority participation" in swimming, according to a June 25 press release. That's nice. Let's hope that--having recently shelled out $22 million on a new Streeterville headquarters--the Park District has enough money to pay for instructors.

And the 2016 games will be "green-friendly" because the committee puts "great emphasis on environmental protection," according to another June 25 press release. Never mind the trees and plants that may be plowed over in Jackson, Douglas, Lincoln, and Washington parks to make way for Olympic arenas.

Oh yes, June 23 was officially "Olympic Day" in Chicago, according to yet another release. Silly me, I thought every day was Olympic Day in the great city of Chicago.

I expect that one morning I'll turn on my computer to discover an e-mail telling me the sun rose in the east, brought to you by Mayor Daley and Chicago 2016.

I have to give the committee credit. They've run an impressively relentless, upbeat, and sunny PR campaign, giving reporters and photographers an excuse to attend regularly scheduled photo ops featuring the happy smiles of local children. PR firm Hill & Knowlton works hard for its million-dollar contracts.

But what they don't tell you--what they'll probably never tell you--is that the games will costs hundreds of millions of property tax dollars that might otherwise go to schools and park programs for all those happy, smiling children. Mayor Daley still hasn't admitted that the Olympic Village will be built with TIF money--it took Fourth Ward alderman Toni Preckwinkle to let that cat out of the bag .

But no need to sweat the boring details of what the games will cost you, Chicago. Just don't forget to save the date: Chicago Believes, Chicago 2016's next fund-raiser, is coming up at Millennium Park July 14.

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."

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.

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.

You don't need to wait until aldermen approve the plan to move the Chicago Children's Museum to Grant Park to get a glimpse of how the city's executive and legislative branches continue to merge.

At every single meeting the City Council signs off on dozens of ordinances, resolutions, and appointments, most introduced by the mayor and almost all passed with a single "omnibus" roll call vote counted relatively early in the meeting. This means it's not even necessary for most aldermen to shout "Aye" more than once or twice a month to take care of city business. 

If we zoom in on the last full council meeting, on May 14, we see that:

 * Aldermen approved 47 pieces of "significant" legislation [PDF], according to the city clerk.

 * 35 of those 47 items were originally introduced by the mayor.

 * Of the 12 items introduced or co-introduced by aldermen, six addressed relatively routine matters in a single ward, such as changes in ownership of public driveway permits or liquor licenses. Four more of these items were nonbinding resolutions. 

 * Aldermen were original sponsors of two pieces of citywide legislation: one requiring certain retailers to set up plastic bag recycling programs and another repealing the ban on selling foie gras.

 * After Mayor Daley, the most productive legislator was Ed Burke, alderman of the 14th Ward and chairman of the finance committee. He sponsored or cosponsored one ordinance (plastic bag recycling) and three nonbinding resolutions (calls for hearings on (1) the feasibility of using cameras to catch speeding cars and (2) creating a citywide program to get rid of pharmaceuticals, and a request that the city look into building a monument to members of the armed forces killed in the war on terror). Tom Allen, alderman of the 38th Ward, was next with three.

 * The council had one divided vote: on revoking the foie gras ban. Thirty-seven aldermen sided with the mayor and voted for the repeal, six voted against it, six didn't vote, and 48th Ward alderman Mary Ann Smith wasn't at the meeting.

 * 65 new legislative proposals were introduced for future consideration: 34 from the mayor, 29 from aldermen, one from an alderman and the city clerk's office, and one more from the city clerk's office alone.

 * In April, the mayor introduced 38, the city clerk one, and aldermen 16. Twenty-seven of the mayor's ended up getting passed (71 percent), compared with seven of the aldermen's (44 percent). The clerk's didn't get through either.

I hope the International Olympic Committee saw Greg Hinz's recent story in Crain's Chicago Business about the latest development in the ongoing debacle of Mayor Daley's dream to build a superstation below Block 37.

According to Hinz, the project is so far behind schedule and over budget that the city's going to have to spend another $20 million in TIF funds just to pay off existing debt.

Again, this $20 million is just to pay back off existing debt. It isn't to complete the project -- the city still hasn't figured out how they're going to pay for that. With the new expenditures, the project -- originally budgeted at $213 million -- will have consumed about $320 million.

"Until even more money is found," Hinz writes, "the semi-completed station will be mothballed, much like an unfinished basement in a home whose owners has poured the concrete but can't afford to install carpeting, paneling and other finishing touches."

And even when -- or if -- the city figures out how to complete the project they still can't use it because it doesn't have any tracks to run on. The line is intended to provide high-priced express service for tourists, business execs, and other high rollers zipping between the Loop and Midway and O'Hare. But there are no tracks on which to run the express service. Eventually the city plans to seek bids from private companies looking to build the tracks and operate the line. Either that or the express service will have to share existing Blue and Orange line tracks so the high rollers save a few extra minutes on the ride downtown.

I remember when the City Council passed the funding for this project back in 2005. A few aldermen told me they voted for it because they had no choice--it was one of the mayor's pet projects. Keep in mind, the Olympics is another one of Mayor Daley's pet projects -- which everyone, including Barack Obama -- feels compelled to endorse.

Let's hope the IOC gives the games to Rio. It will be a miracle if this bunch gets through the games without driving us bankrupt. 

To: Ministerial Acolytes

From: Mayor Daley

It has come to my attention that you are losing your minds in regards to Senator Barack Obama's presidential campaign.

First, Reverend Wright gives a couple of speeches, imitating how white people clap, and talking about the differences between white and black brains.

And now Father Pfleger is doing his Rich Little routine, imitating Hillary Clinton crying.

My advisers tell me you're subconsciously trying to destroy Obama's campaign because you're envious of the national attention he's been getting.

I understand the impulse. I've undercut the campaigns of many underlings I thought were getting too big for their britches (see Paul Vallas).

But you're missing the point. Just because I do something, doesn't mean you get to do it.

So one more time, here's how things work around here. I give you the city contracts and zoning changes you need to run your church fiefdoms. And in return you look the other way while I sweep police torture under the carpet, take money from the public schools and give it to the well-connected, keep public school students running in the hallways, and sell the west and south sides to the highest or at least best-connected bidders. Also, you do what I tell you (by they way, Father Pfleger, good job on the Children's Museum).

The problem is that you are scaring white people and, thus, hurting Senator Obama's chances to get elected president. So I'm ordering you: no more wacky speeches and, more important, stop imitating white people! You know how upset we get when black people mock us.

It's very important for me to have Senator Obama elected president. That gets him out of town so he can't be tempted to run against me for mayor. (By the way, I will, of course, need your continued help in marginalizing Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr.)

So stop the goofiness until the presidential election's over or I decide it's really in my best interests to see Obama lose. Remember, I'm the only one who gets to backstab Chicago's favorite son.

Since local SEIU leaders began mobilizing in 2006 to elect a City Council friendlier to “working families,” they’ve described their political work in Chicago as a potential model for labor across the country. And they came away from last year’s elections with something to show for it: nine new aldermen, most elected with the help of volunteers and cash from the union. (Not to mention a handful of incumbents grateful for SEIU's support.)

One year on, the impact of SEIU's efforts is open to debate [pdf]. The union, though, is getting ready to take the Chicago strategy nationwide: after this fall’s elections, members of Congress who fail to work for extended health care benefits and labor organizing rights may end up as targets of SEIU’s “Justice for All” accountability campaign--and the $150 million union leaders are willing to spend on it. (Of course, all of this is contingent on the plans winning approval at SEIU’s international convention June 2 to 4 in Puerto Rico, which isn’t a given, since dissension and discontent has stirred the ranks.)

I recently spoke to Tom Balanoff, president of the union’s Illinois state council, about the congressional campaign, Chicago’s rookie aldermen, and the union’s relationship with the always looming figure of Richard M. Daley.

MD: So you essentially want to take the 2007 Chicago model and apply it to Congress?

TB: We absolutely do. The alderman’s races were really an effort on SEIU and labor’s part to say "How do we establish an independent political base?" I think a lot of good things have already started happening in terms of creating an independent bloc there in the City Council, and I think a lot of good things came out of that for labor.

But it is really a question of specific issues—we want to establish some political power to get real results for working families on things like health care, the war, and the labor movement. I think the Democrats understand, especially Barack Obama, that we have to work to raise income. My father was a steelworker who managed to put four kids through college and buy a house. Now that’s a lot tougher to do.  I think we have real opportunities this fall, not just by electing Barack Obama but I also think we’re going to win [the races] down the ballot. And by "we" I mean primarily Democratic candidates who are backing issues for working families.

 
To be frank, though, organized labor is basically a special interest for Democrats.

We actually have a lot of Republican support, and we need it. We have to have real health care reform, and to do that we need Republicans on board.

 
You’re solidly behind Barack Obama, but his health care plan has been criticized for not being universal.

This whole question of mandates verses no mandates is a real issue, and we have to figure it out. We have to get a system together. But if we could get a system [like his] where we could get five million more people health care, I’d be willing to take it and start working out the kinks. To get where we need to get, there’s going to have to be some compromises. But we’ve got to do something. I mean, how long has it been? Sixty years since Harry Truman started talking about this?

 
Are you focused on any races right now in our area?

Here in Illinois, we’ll be focusing very heavily on three or four congressional seats we think we can turn Democratic--Jerry Weller’s seat, Mark Kirk’s seat, and Ray LaHood’s seat. We also here in Illinois are going to focus a lot on our neighboring states--Indiana especially. We’ll also be in Wisconsin and Iowa, working on voter registration. And we’ll be in Missouri.

 
You say you need Republican help to do something about health care, but you’re going after Mark Kirk, who’s widely considered a moderate.

I know Mark Kirk--he’s my congressman. And he’s moderate only in the context of how far the whole political spectrum has gone to the right. He gives lip service to a lot of stuff but he’s supported President Bush on a whole range of issues.

 
What lessons did you learn from the 2007 City Council races?

What we demonstrated is that we can put our members in motion--we can get our members to contribute, and we can get them out there to work. We demonstrated we had money, people, and time, and that’s pretty powerful.

There are shifting politics here in the city and the state. And I think it’s important from SEIU’s standpoint, from labor’s standpoint, that we did establish a bigger voice. Now you know Chicago--I could have elected every one of my cousins as a judge by now if I wanted that. But we’re trying to figure out how we move public policy to our issues.

There is now a group of aldermen in the City Council who are working a little bit more in concert on key issues. I do think it’s made the mayor a little more sensitive to issues that in the past he hasn’t been as sensitive to.

 
Still, at least some of the aldermen you supported last year have turned out to be regular votes for Mayor Daley.

I think there’s an understanding starting to evolve with labor that we need to build political power for ourselves and not for candidates, and the way we do that is to make sure we’re working on particular issues. The only permanent friends we have are those politicians who stick with our issues.

 
I’ve heard from several sources that the mayor has sought you out and offered an olive branch so he can have peace while he tries to win the Olympics bid.

The mayor and I have talked since the elections. We talked about broader public policy issues, the Olympics being one of them. And from our standpoint, and I said it even during the elections, that this isn’t about going after Mayor Daley. And there is a way we can have a more progressive impact by working together.

 
So you’re behind the Olympics bid?

We support the idea of the Olympics. We obviously have very specific concerns that there be labor agreements so that all communities, all workers, benefit from the building. And we hope that if we do get the Olympics, we hope that all of Chicago can benefit from it. I’m hoping that the Olympics will be an engine to help take care of some of our problems, like the CTA.

How long before the national media and Republican strategists start openly wondering if a guy who's allied with this city's mayor--with his long list of achievements and rhetorical flair--is indeed a "hack Chicago-style Daley politician"? 

"Anyone who pays a dime of city taxes should be dismayed by the conduct of these city employees," city inspector general David Hoffman said at a press conference at the federal courthouse Thursday afternoon. He spoke just after “Pat”—as he called U.S. attorney Patrick Fitzgerald—announced bribery charges [see links on right] against 15 people, including seven city employees, stemming from an investigation that started in Hoffman’s office more than a year ago.

“These employees of the buildings department and the zoning department are paid good salaries with excellent benefits,” Hoffman said. “Their jobs were to make sure that the building codes and the zoning ordinances were laws that protect city residents. But what they actually did with their jobs was to make sure the laws were violated. Everything was the exact opposite of the way it should be. The people who we the taxpayers were paying to protect us were actually using their jobs to make sure regular taxpayers got hurt and corrupt real estate developers benefited.”

To anyone who’s ever walked into a building in the city of Chicago, that’s serious stuff, and it should be encouraging to everyone sick of being shaken down for more taxes that at least a few sources of the waste may get it. Even better, Fitzgerald as much as said that there could be more charges on the way.

“There is a problem here bigger than the complaints issued today,” he said, and the investigations into it are not done. “If you were one of those people taking bribes the last few years, you ought to be uncomfortable right now.”

But reformers may not want to get too giddy over the new day coming.

When you read the complaints closely, it’s pretty clear that the feds are going after low-hanging fruit here. It’s rotten fruit, sure. But if there’s a culture of corruption in place—and Fitzgerald and Hoffman certainly sounded like they were describing one Thursday afternoon—I for one don’t see its roots being pulled up by these charges.

According to the feds’ primary source, an “expediter” and “bagman”—i.e., payoff guy—referred to in federal documents as CW1, developers and contractors regularly bribe employees in the city’s departments of buildings, zoning, and construction and permits to speed up the process of signing off on their plans. “Time is money,” as Fitzgerald explained.

In the complaints, though, this “scheme” sounds like it’s being executed by a bunch of louts in a B movie. Most of the bribes detailed are for $100 or $200, though some inspectors held out for bigger stakes: “CW1 advised that it is a common practice for contractors and developers to bribe city officials by providing tickets to sporting events and that CW1 has in the past attended Chicago Bulls basketball games along with certain City of Chicago inspectors.” In one case, an allegedly corrupt developer almost didn’t get his work pushed along because he wasn't sure he could come up with seats to a Bears game that a buildings department official wanted. He breathed a sigh of relief when the official had a death in the family that prevented her from being able to go, and got to work on rounding up Bulls tickets instead.

The feds said payoffs were made in such sinister locales as a Starbucks, the street outside a bank’s ATM lobby, and the entrance to a Payless Shoes store. It should be noted, though, that one was allegedly made outside of “Oprah’s place”—the Wishbone restaurant in the West Loop—because a city employee, Phyllis Mendenhall, no longer thought it appropriate to receive envelopes at her city office.

“I’m going to be stopping by to bring you something,” developer Beny Garneata allegedly told her in a phone conversation recorded by federal officials.

“You know, we can’t, you know we can’t accept anything now,” Mendenhall said.

“Pardon?”

“We can’t accept anything. You know, the, we got new rules.”

“Yah, I heard.”

“Okay, all right well. What time you’ll be by?”

And so go the “new rules.”

Which raises for me the real question out of all this: Who was supervising these people? Who, due to incompetence or something more malign, let this potentially dangerous and totally lame third-rate corruption go on? If there continues to be a culture of selling city services to even the lowest bidder, then who’s created it—who’s tolerated it? If the mayor really is the boss—if he can bully aldermen into making asses of themselves, parks officials into slicing off chunks of public land for private organizations (and then paying to keep them public after all), and planning commissioners into prioritizing his interests regardless of the public's—then how does this possibly exist without tolerance from the top? Really, I don’t get it—will someone please explain? Is it really that hard to get rid of this nonsense? Or is that just the cost of living in a city that’s not Detroit?

I certainly won’t wait to get an answer from the mayor, and Patrick Fitzgerald and David Hoffman were both too cautious to address it in their press conference today. So I guess I’ll leave it open for voters. If you get it, please let me know.

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.

The last time I talked to Park district officials about the Latin School soccer field in Lincoln Park, they were telling me the deal was done, the contract was signed, and there was no going back.

I guess they got that wrong.

On Thursday Judge Dorothy Kirie Kinnaird approved a settlement between the Park District and the north-side residents who had sued to block construction of the field. Under the terms of the settlement, the Park District will void its contract with Latin and apply to the Chicago Plan Commission for permission to build the field, which is well over half completed.

Given its general spinelessness I'm sure the Chicago Plan Commission will go along with the field, even though the Park District thoroughly disrespected them by not seeking their approval in the first place. The commissioners would probably approve a toxic waste dump in Lincoln Park if Mayor Daley told them to. Come to think of it, the Park District probably wouldn't even seek the commission's approval for such a dump, since it likely fits their definition of an allowable excavation.

At the moment, no one's really sure how much this soccer field is going to cost us. Originally the Park District and Latin said it would cost $900,000. Now they say the price tag's about $2 million -- all of which the Park District, and not Latin, will be paying, since the old contract has been voided.

And construction costs are only part of the story. The Park District and the city have run up untold thousands of dollars in legal fees defending themselves against the lawsuit.

But wait, there's more. The Park District has agreed to pay $40,000 to the plaintiffs for their legal fees. And, according to the original contract, the Park District agreed to indemnify Latin "against any losses, costs, damages, liabilities, claims, suits, actions, causes of action and expenses" that they "may suffer."

According to a couple of lawyers I talked to that means we, the hapless taxpayers, are probably on the hook for Latin's high-priced lawyers as well. But we won't know for certain until the final nullification agreement between Latin and the Park District is approved.

Keep in mind at least three high-priced lawyers have been working on this case for the defendants: one for Latin, one for the city, and one for the Park District. When all's said and done, the lawyers may end up costing taxpayers more than the field.

Keep in mind that all of this would have been avoided if the Park District sought Plan Commission approval for the soccer field, as the Lakefront Protection Ordinance clearly requires.

But you know Mayor Daley's attitude toward lawsuits. As he put it the other day, they don't really bother him. "I don't why everybody is always worried about lawyers," Daley said. "You can never function at all, both in the public and private sectors, if you're worried about lawyers."

Of course, that's easy for him to say--he's got the taxpayers picking up the tab. 

Richard M. Daley showed us again Wednesday that he's not just skilled at leading a big city. He's also great at time management.

Here's what he told reporters about why he didn't allow any debate on the repeal of the foie gras ban:

“We’ve [already] had so much debate on this—it’s gone on forever. And everybody knew how they were going to vote.”

That’s right: the mayor is so efficient that he can not only cut off debate when he senses we're about to talk ourselves silly—he can also take care of that time-consuming voting thing way in advance.

Next meeting, he might want to find a way to get the City Council to stop wasting so much time passing legislation.

And just in case he does consider making a few changes, he should reexamine how our $100,000-a-year aldermen spent their four hours at the council meeting Wednesday, just to see if he can discover any more places to streamline:

2 hours, 17 minutes: Introduction and passage of various resolutions praising high school honor students, recently passed city icons, and valiant crime fighters, accompanied by eloquent aldermanic speeches.

1 minute: Mayoral oration on how the media never wants to cover anything about all the good things good people do in Chicago every day.

45 minutes: Reports on recent activity by City Council committees as aldermen drift in and out of the council chambers, chat, read, and accept instruction from mayoral lobbyists.

0.5 minutes: Mayoral quashing of proposed resolution condemning the possibility of an invasion of Iran, on the grounds that it could make things complicated for Barack Obama.

30 minutes: Introduction of new appointments and proposed ordinances by the mayor’s office, most of them sent to various committees for "consideration."

7 minutes: Introduction of proposed ordinances by aldermen, most of them sent to various committees for "consideration."

0.5 minutes: Invitation to finance committee chairman Ed Burke to announce the date of the next full council meeting.

1 minute: Acceptance of invitation; announcement that the next full council meeting will be held on Wednesday, June 11, 2008, at 10:00 AM in City Council chambers.

8 minutes: Legislative sleight of hand by aldermen Tom Tunney and Richard Mell that results in abrupt introduction to the entire council of repeal of foie gras ban.

1 minute: Rendering of expert opinion on parliamentary procedure by alderman Burke confirming that alderman Joe Moore, the chief sponsor of the ban, has no legal right to defer a vote on the matter.

0.5 minutes: Mayoral demand that assistant city clerk call for a vote.

0.25 minutes: Brief pause in roll call vote prompted by shouting from alderman Moore [advance to 1:15 in the film clip] about the lack of opportunity to engage in a floor debate.

0.25 minutes: Mayoral demand that assistant city clerk continue the vote.

3 minutes: Continuation of roll call voting while alderman Moore protests in the background.

1 minute: Mayoral gloating over the 37-6 vote in favor of repealing the ban, mayoral mocking of “alderman Joe Foie Gras Moore.”

0.5 minutes: Pronouncement/curse by alderman Moore that others will someday be rolled over by the mayor in the same manner.

0.25 minutes: Adjournment of the meeting.

0.25 minutes: Satisfied mayoral pounding of the gavel.

If you think back to the good old days of 2006, when the City Council was flexing a little muscle, there were two insurrections that drove Mayor Daley batty: the foie gras ban and the living wage bill.

After the council adopted them, Mayor Daley vowed to rescind them. And like a bounty hunter methodically tracking his prey, he eventually got what he wanted.

On September 13, 2006, Daley strong-armed three aldermen into flip-flopping and voting with him to kill the living wage bill, which would effectively keep new Wal-Marts out of town.

And then yesterday, of course, he rounded up 37 aldermen to rescind the foie gras ban.

Restaurants are now again free to peddle the livers of bird who have been tortured. And thank God for that -- isn't this the kind of freedom our revolutionary forefathers died to defend!

But curiously enough, the mayor hasn't been nearly so quick in bringing Wal-Marts to Chicago. On the contrary, in March he blocked a Wal-Mart from coming to the south side.

So what were those two fights really about?

Power. If anyone's going to ban Wal-Mart, foie gras, or anything else for that matter, it's going to be the mayor and only the mayor, and don't you forget it.

It was also about putting alderman Joe Moore in his place. Along with the city's leading unions, Moore put together the coalition of aldermen who passed the anti-Wal-Mart ordinance back in July of 2006. Daley made an issue of fois gras -- which he hadn't opposed in committee -- for the main reason of teasing, taunting, and humiliating Moore. In this way, he sent a message to other aldermen: here's what happens to those who dissent.

In the last few weeks the mayor's people have been telling aldermen that Daley's keeping out Wal-Mart in order to buy some peace with unions in these crucial months leading up to next year's decision by the International Olympic Committee as to which city will host the 2016 games. (In a bald-faced lie, the mayor has denied this.) If Chicago doesn't get the games, Daley won't need labor peace with the unions. Look for him to stuff a Wal-Mart everywhere he can, sort of like ramming an iron rod down the throat of a goose.

It's Daley's city -- and don't you forget it!

First the good news: The city deferred action on its latest proposal for licensing concert promoters, originally set for tomorrow's City Council meeting.

Some people have been naive enough to call it a victory, but don't be fooled. The delay doesn't protect all the small promoters and club owners and not-for-profits who want to throw fund-raising bashes. It's merely what one alderman calls a "tactical retreat" on the part of the mayor.

Here's the deal from several good City Hall sources, including an alderman or two.

The vendor's licensing bill (commonly known as the promoter's ordinance) has been resurrected because Mayor Daley wants it, and no one in City Hall has the guts to tell the mayor he can't have what he wants.

Daley wants it apparently because he's convinced himself that this is what it will take to prevent another E2 disaster--even though the first E2 tragedy could have been avoided if the city had simply enforced a judge's ruling and kept the club closed.

The mayor also wants the licensing fees. Don't underestimate his insatiable hunger for new forms of revenue. It takes a lot of money to run this town, especially when you're looking to spend billions on the Olympics and your TIFs are already devouring at least $500 million a year -- and rising -- in property taxes.

The mayor didn't get the vendor's licensing bill he wanted last July because big venues like the United Center opposed it. They feared it would force out-of-town promoters to opt out of the city and move concerts and circuses to suburban sites, such as the Rosemont Horizon.  

So this time around the proposed bill exempts arenas with more than 500 seats, including the United Center, the Chicago Theatre, and Northerly Island. The mayor sent the revised bill to the Committee on Licenses and Consumer Protection, which is headed by 47th Ward alderman Eugene Schulter, and Schulter pushed it through his committee last Wednesday because, like almost every other alderman in the council, he does what the mayor wants.

Daley and his aides seem to have figured that once the big promoters and venues calmed down everyone would. But they clearly underestimated the opposition the bill would generate. Now everyone who cares about live performance in this town, from club owners to musicians to promoters to fans is up in arms, shooting off e-mails, threatening to storm City Council meetings, and vowing to get friends and family to vote against any alderman who votes for this bill.

So Daley had Schulter defer action on the bill to buy the time he needs to figure out how he has to rewrite it in order to pass something, if only to save face. Remember this is the mayor who forced the council to defer enacting the ban on smoking in restaurants and bars for two years to make sure it wouldn't look as though he was compromising on his opposition to smoking bans.

Best bet for what gets changed? Look for Daley and company to cut the promoters' fee. He'll probably reword the language governing not-for-profits so PTA leaders don't have to shell out $500 and get fingerprinted in order to throw a freaking fund-raising dance. Then they'll try to figure out what they have to do to pare down the opposition from mid-size clubs like Metro and Martyrs' and bring them into the fold. Independent and underground promoters won't catch any breaks.

My advice to opponents of the bill is to protest at City Hall. You can't imagine how much the mayor and the aldermen hate it when citizens actually show up there. Lord knows what might happen if people saw how the city really works.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"This is a day to celebrate