Entries associated with the tag "Mayor Richard M. Daley":

About the only Chicagoan who comes out looking good in Ryan Lizza's recent New Yorker profile of Barack Obama (yeah, it's in the issue with the cover) is Fourth Ward alderman Toni Preckwinkle.

She's depicted as a person of independence, integrity, and selfless dedication to her community -- one of the few politicians or activists in town who's not a sellout, hack, or Daley suck-up.

"Preckwinkle is a tall, commanding woman with a clipped gray Afro," Lizza writes. "She has represented her slice of the South Side for seventeen years and expresses no interest in higher office. On Chicago's City Council, she is often a dissenter against the wishes of Mayor Richard M. Daley."

Preckwinkle's quote about Obama, which closes Lizza's introduction, is particularly provocative: "'Can you get where he is and maintain your personal integrity?' she said. 'Is that the question?' She stared at me and grimaced. 'I'm going to pass on that.'"

Has Lizza's praise gone to her head? Has the prominence of her part in the profile changed her life?

"Not really," she says with a laugh. "I have been getting a lot of calls from the media."

And what are you telling them?

"Not much. I'm keeping my head down to avoid any more attacks of truthfulness."

Ouch. Who knew--she jokes . . . 

If you want to know why we're on the road to ecological destruction, head on out to Bensenville, only go there by CTA and bike.

I did it yesterday, along with Dave Glowacz, a freelance journalist also known as Mr. Bike. I was taking him to Bensenville to show him the Dead Zone for a segment of an Internet interview show we do together.

In his role as Mr. Bike--and, by the way, this guy has to know more about bicycling around Chicago than anyone alive--he had plotted our route with maps and the Internet.

As he explained it, Bensenville is about six miles directly west from Harlem Avenue along Irving Park Road. To ride there, we had a choice. We could pedal to Union Station, put our bikes on the train, and take Metra to downtown Bensenville. Or we could take the CTA to River Road and bike south around O'Hare Airport, slipping through Schiller Park and into Franklin Park before riding northwest into Bensenville.

I chose the scenic route.

So at about 10:45 in the morning we boarded the Blue Line at Irving and rode to River Road. In the good old days, when Harold Washington was mayor, it would have taken us, oh, I don't know, maybe ten minutes. This time it took us almost 20--I was timing it on a stop watch--because the tracks are falling apart and there are slow zones galore.

We got off at River Road, then biked south to Bryn Mawr, west to Milton Parkway, south to Balmoral and then--well, after that I didn't know where we were. I was just following Mr. Bike, who had the map. It seemed there were construction crews tearing everything up, like they were constantly rebuilding the same parking lot.

We hooked up with Franklin Avenue at its intersection with Scott Street and headed off on the last leg of our journey.

Remind me never to do it again. Franklin was hardly the warm, fuzzy bike-friendly road I foolishly thought it would be. It was like traveling through an industrial hell: a two-lane, potholed road bounded by a gravel-filled shoulder that's really rough on bike tires.

Cars and trucks whizzed by. Jets zoomed over our heads.

"There's got to be a better way to bike from Franklin Park to Bensenville," I gasped.

"This is pretty much it," said Mr. Bike. "Obviously, they weren't thinking of bike riders when they built these suburbs."

We stopped for water at Wolf's, a restaurant at the corner of Wolf and Franklin. The joint was packed with factory workers waiting in line for hot dogs, burgers, and fries. 

Five minutes later, we crossed some railroad tracks and rode into Bensenville.

Ah, Bensenville, glorious Bensenville--it's become my home away from home since I realized that Mayor Daley intended to plow over about 15 percent of it to make way for another one of his Great Ideas, in this case the O'Hare Modernization Program. Before our green mayor is done he will have spent well over $15 billion expanding O'Hare just in time for the collapse of the airline industry. Hey, how's that for planning?

We rode York to Roosevelt and then entered the Dead Zone, passing one boarded-up, abandoned house after another. Not surprising, it was the most bike friendly area we'd passed through all day. I could just imagine what it must have been like before Mayor Daley intruded--little kids riding their tricycles along tree-lined sidewalks and that sort of thing.

Driving by in his car was a grumpy guy from the real-estate management company that has a contract with Chicago to keep an eye on the area. He warned us that we'd better stay on the sidewalks and street because the property belonged to Chicago and we could get a trespassing ticket.

I was going to tell him that I was a taxpaying resident of Chicago so that, you know, technically, the lawns and homes belonged to me. But he didn't look like he was in the mood for conversation.

After about an hour, rain clouds were moving in and we decided to head home. I told Mr. Bike that I'd rather not deal with Franklin, so we took our chances with Irving Park. Man, it was like biking on the interstate--the cars and trucks were pushing sixty. At least it had a pretty decent shoulder to ride along.

At River Road we joined a line of sweaty, anguished-looking travelers getting off the buses from O'Hare. The CTA maps promised them door-to-door service from the airport to the Loop. But, of course, the final leg of the Blue Line is down, while workers repair the tracks.

On the train back to Chicago we sat across the aisle from a lady out of Syracuse, New York, who was in town for a teachers' convention. She said she wanted to make sure her stop in the Loop had an elevator or escalator because she had a bad back and she didn't want to carry her suitcase up the stairs.

Mr. Bike explained that the map on the wall showed which stops had elevators, but there was no way of knowing if these elevators were malfunctioning. It was pretty much a crap shoot.

As the train crawled along, she asked how much time she should give herself if she wanted to take the Blue Line back to O'Hare for her return flight on Monday. "I don't like to take cabs," she said. "But if the service is always like this, you know..."

For no apparent reason, the train stopped just outside Montrose, where we had the pleasant view of the expressway clotted with bumper-to-bumper traffic spewing exhaust.

We got back to Irving Park about 3:30. There's no elevator or escalator so we carried our bikes down the stairs.

There was no exit for bike riders--we obviously couldn't get our bikes through the revolving gate. But a CTA employee was nice enough to unlock another gate to let us out. If he hadn't been there, I don't know what we would have done--probably called the police.

"It's big cars, big airports, big highways," said Mr. Bike. "Just gas `em up `n go."

But, hey, at least we're not Detroit ...

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? 

Anyone who criticizes--who even questions--the mayor is often reminded that Chicago isn't Detroit. It's practically the local version of "Love it or leave it."

But a report in this morning's Detroit Free Press suggests that Motown (or some other parts of Michigan) could play Chitown on the big screen--in a film about Richard J. Daley that the current Daley administration won't allow to be made here.

A producer has been in touch with the Michigan state film office, director Janet Lockwood told the paper. The reason? "'Because of the new Mayor Daley,' son of the first Mayor Daley, 'Chicago probably won't let them shoot there,' Lockwood said."

No word yet from the Chicago Film Office on their version of what the deal is. No word, either, on whether anyone's planning to make a movie in Milwaukee about a big-city boss obsessed with hosting an international sporting event while his city's infrastructure is crumbling.

The other night a couple of coworkers and I were headed north for drinks with Reader proofreaders past, present, and soon-to-be history. There we stood in the Red Line subway station at Grand, next to a corroded metal support with a shallow brown puddle of mystery fluid beside it. The train arrived with a screech.

My colleague Jerome is kind of claustrophobic, and he doesn't much enjoy traveling underground. As we stopped and the doors went through their routine of closing, opening, closing, then opening again while the canned CTA message about how improvements are under way blared, he grumbled, "Man, just get us out of this tunnel," then alluded to the National Transportation Safety Board's scathing recent report on last year's Blue Line derailment. "Makes you feel really safe, doesn't it?" he said.

Finally, we reached Fullerton where the night sky surrounded us rather than rust-streaked walls, and who should board the car but Ron Huberman, the former Daley chief of staff who replaced the much-hated Frank Kruesi earlier this year as president of the CTA (the mayor, by the way, continues to defend Kruesi). Huberman's a lot more buff than he looks in a suit, and his fierce expression gave him the look of a Guardian Angel. He prowled the length of the car, made some notes on his Blackberry, stalked back, and sat down by the door. Some people go crazy sighting Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. Me, I haven't been so psyched since I saw Lisa Madigan eating lunch with her family at Los Nopales. (She looked tired and a little crabby.)

Jerome approached Huberman, confirmed that it was he, and remarked that as a long-suffering rider he appreciated the CTA head checking things out for himself. Huberman's job can't be much fun right now, what with the failure of the state legislature to pass Julie Hamos's transportation bill and the prospect of doomsday cuts, averted only through November. "Does it look cleaner to you?" Huberman asked.

Well, no. My stop at Morse still smells like piss, and I will never understand why they paint the stations white--as my colleague Whet noted this morning, it's asking for grime, like putting white carpet in your living room. Last Wednesday, after waiting more than 30 minutes at Morse as five north-bound trains passed, I had to pay $25 to cab to work on time. But at least Huberman was on the job--the mayor almost never rides public transport. We wished him luck.

I got a big kick out of Mark Konkol's story in Friday's Sun-Times about the downtown residents who are seething at Mayor Daley for writing them off as a bunch of bigots because they're against his plan to move the Chicago Children's Museum to Grant Park.

The best quote came from a black woman named Ariel Elliott, who figures Daley has a helluva nerve playing the race card. "Who is he to say we're racists," said Elliott. "He grew up in Bridgeport. Please. Give me a friggin' break."

Of course, what I don't understand is why downtown residents are suddenly surprised to discover that their mayor is a bully who's not afraid to hit below the belt. I mean where have they been for the last -- oh -- 18 years as he's shoved one stupid idea after another (Soldier Field, Meigs Field, the failed airport in Peotone Hegewisch) down the throats of people who didn't want them?

The residents kind of remind me of the slackers who showed up at a City Council committee meeting this summer to bitch and moan about the city's proposed tax on concert promoters. It's like those dudes rolled out of bed early one afternoon, stumbled over their bong pipes, and realized they were living in a city run by a not-so-benign dictator.

Maybe the downtown residents are feeling like spurned lovers. They were almost cultlike in their allegiance to Daley in February's mayoral election. In the 42nd Ward Daley won about 86 percent of the vote against Dorothy Brown and William Walls, racking up more than 90 percent of the vote in two of the ward's precincts.

I always thought these voters were inconsistent for ousting incumbent aldermen Burt Natarus for Brendan Reilly. As anyone in City Hall will tell you, Natarus was only following the fifth floor's orders on zoning and development deals. You'd figure folks in this ward would be smart enough to connect the dots. But, no, they punished the factotum and rewarded the boss.

On the other hand, I can sort of understand why Daley's miffed at them. By Chicago standards, they're highly ungrateful. After all, Daley plundered the tax coffers to build them Millennium Park. With most Chicago voters, you give them a garbage can and they're yours for life.

At an August 23 community meeting, Chicago Park District officials told residents that there was nothing they could do do stop the private Latin School from having exclusive prime-time use of a soccer field in Lincoln Park on public land. The Park District board had approved the contract -- it was a done deal.

But Marty Oberman, a former 43rd Ward alderman who opposes the Latin soccer field, has been around long enough to know that in Chicago there's no such thing as a done deal -- provided Mayor Daley's against it.  It's a lesson he learned back in 1975, when he was a rookie alderman dealing with Mayor Richard J. Daley.

The issue then was a series of parking meters the Park District decided to install, without community notice, along Stockton Drive near the Lincoln Park Zoo (not far, coincidentally, from where Latin intends to build its soccer field).

"The community was outraged, if for no other reason than there were no public hearings," Oberman recalls. Oberman says he helped organize an energetic campaign in which residents sent dozens of letters to Mayor Daley, asking him to reconsider the meters. 

Several days passed and Oberman never heard from the mayor. And then, just minutes before the City Council met to, among other things, vote to approve the parking meters, Oberman says he was summoned to the fifth floor. "I was sitting in the council chambers, waiting for the meeting to start when I got word -- the mayor wants to see you in his office," says Oberman.  "I got ushered into Daley's office and he says, 'You wanted to see me?' I said, 'Mr. Mayor, it's not good policy -- my constituents are furious.' He said, 'Why don't you defer and publish?' I said, 'Mr. Mayor, that will only delay the vote for another week.' He said, 'Defer and publish.'"

Oberman says he returned to the council feeling baffled. "I said to [fellow alderman] Jeremiah Joyce, 'I have no idea what just happened.' And Joyce said, 'You won. Do what he tells you. Defer and publish and it will all be over.' And that's just what happened. I made a motion to defer and publish. It got seconded, and that's the last we heard of the parking meters."

Later, he says, the full story came out: "The Lincoln Park Zoo wanted the parking meters and they had gone to [former park superintendent] Ed Kelly, and he basically OK'd it without asking me either because he didn't think he had to or because he didn't want to. The point is that it was done deal until Mayor Daley called it off."

Oberman understands that there are some differences between the parking meters and the soccer field. For one thing the Park District already approved the soccer field. But he says his tale has a lesson for current Lincoln Park residents: no deal's done until the mayor weighs in. "If Mayor Richard J. Daley can get a powerful institution like the Lincoln Park Zoo to back off, don't you think his son can do the same with the Latin School? I think so."  

Next Wednesday, Cook County Board commissioner Mike Quigley is taking his TIF act on the road, heading off to Springfield to address a private meeting of legislators, legislative aides, and gubernatorial advisers.

"I talked to the governor's office and they said, 'Leadership wants you to come to Springfield and talk about tax increment financing,'" says Quigley. "I assume that means the speaker [Michael Madigan], the senate president [Emil Jones] and the governor [Rod Blagojevich] will have people there. But I really don't know."

Quigley, who commissioned a report (PDF) critical of Mayor Daley's TIF program, is being intentionally circumspect about his role in the ongoing behind-the-scenes struggle between the state's most powerful elected officials. Here's what going on.

For the last several years Blagojevich has held his tongue while Daley and schools CEO Arne Duncan rip the state for not providing more money for Chicago's public schoools.

It hasn't been easy for Blagojevich to remain silent. As gubernatorial insiders have explained it to me, they're all for giving more money to Chicago's public schools, but they find it hard to call for more state funding knowing how CPS suckers the state for the money it already gets. It's complicated, as most TIF matters are, but the bottom line is that it's a schools scam: for roughly every property tax dollar the schools divert to the TIF districts, the state gives them about 70 cents in educational assistance. Effectively, Daley and Duncan are manipulating the state's goofy education-funding system to divert money intended for schoolchildren to TIF deals -- like the $58 million handout they're ready to give developers to build an 18-story tower on top of Union Station.

Up until now Blagojevich has stayed away from TIFs, allowing Daley to freely spend the money. But apparently this last session was the last straw. Not only did Daley not support Blagojevich's ill-fated business tax, he embarrassed the governor by sending Duncan and busloads of schoolchildren to Springfield to call for more state education funding.

As a result our governor has evidently decided to send Daley a message: Mess with me and I'll mess with your TIFs. Over the last few weeks Blago's aides have been contacting Quigley, no fan of the mayor's, to pick his brain on the TIF scam. Now they've quietly let everyone (particularly Daley aides) know that they're inviting Quigley to Springfield.

Among the many things that Quigley intends to talk about is the Central Loop TIF, a $100-million-dollar-year boondoggle that funds development in an area where developers don't need incentives. Created in 1983, it's supposed to expire this year. But Daley's been asking the state to extend it for another 12. According to statehouse sources, Daley and Madigan recently struck a deal on the TIF: Daley agreed to support Madigan's watered-down home owner's property tax exemption in exchange for the speaker's support for an extension.

Blagojevich has the power to cut off Daley's TIF slush fund. He could hold hearings on the program. He could oppose extending the Central Loop TIF. What's at stake for the mayor? The Olympics, for one thing. As folks in Springfield will tell you, Daley's looking to use the TIFs to pay for his games. If the state threatens to plug up his money pipeline, he'll have to figure some other way to pay for them.

Quigley says he understands there are larger issues at play. "I don't have any expectations about any of this," he says. "They asked me to talk about TIFs, and that's what I'll talk about."

In recognition of Mayor Daley's big reelection win last night, one northwest-side voter, otherwise known as GetRidda Da'Bum, penned the following tribute, to be sung to the tune of Steve Goodman's classic, "The Lincoln Park Pirates" (registration required).

Hizzoner, Junior, Da Mayor
I'm your mayor, hizzoner, Junior
You voters all do what I say
I blessed Hired Truck
Though it went amok
I'll still win on election day
Cuz you guys are too scared to change me
I quintupled your taxes this year
Built Millennium Park
Using TIFs to embark
And all of Meigs Field to clear

[Chorus]
To me, way, hey
You voters must pay
So all that I wish can be mine
I'm such a spendthrift
With your unending gifts
But the voters still think that I shine
To me, way, hey
It's about me everyday
Raising each parking-lot price
Hiring back my old crooks
Don't care how it looks
My voters still think I'm real nice

I only do huge building projects
Cuz they keep you all in the dark
Without even a holler
You throw me your dollars
To destroy every one of your parks
I used to be state's attorney
Cops tortured, I let them all go
I won't fix the schools
CTA has no clue
But you still won't elect my foes

[Chorus]

I never consult my own voters
Their aldermen follow my lead
My patronage army
You may find them smarmy
HDO carries out my bad deeds
This makes all your taxes just soar
Museums, they used to be free
Now you can't afford them
So stay home, be bored then
You'll still give me a great legacy.

[Chorus] 

If there was any doubt about who really runs City Hall, it was cleared up last week with the latest twist in the case of Chris Kozicki.

Kozicki is the former building department employee who testified in last year's Robert Sorich patronage corruption trial that he had altered the interview rating of the 19-year-old son of a high-ranking union official to ensure that he scored high enough to get a building inspector's job. He also testified that he got his job through his connection to his Bridgeport neighbor John Daley--Mayor Daley's brother, a Cook County commissioner, and the 11th Ward Democratic committeeman. 

After he testified, Kozicki was given a newly created job in the planning department, and sometime between then and December he got a raise. Last month city inspector general David Hoffman, whose job is to root out City Hall corruption, recommended that Kozicki be fired from his $129,528-a-year job as punishment for falsifying records. 

The city rejected Hoffman's recommendation, allowing Kozicki to keep his planning department job on the grounds that (I'm not making this up) firing Kozicki might deter other employees from blowing the whistle on corruption. As if immunity from federal prosecution had nothing to do with Kozicki's decision to testify. As if that weren't enough.

"We think it would send a chilling message to other employees if he was fired based on his testimony," law department spokeswoman Jennifer Hoyle told the Trib yesterday.

I think the real chilling message is this: don't mess with the Daleys. 

"I don't expect Daley to stay on the ballot," boasted mayoral candidate William "Dock" Walls to the Sun-Times in December, after filing the first challenge to the mayor's nominating petitions since 1989. Walls claimed that his supporters had found problems with up to 19,000 of Daley's signatures, leaving him with fewer than the 12,500 required to stay on the ballot. Last week election officials decided to examine a sampling of about 1,200 signatures. The hearing is tomorrow.

If you're familiar with Walls at all, you've probably seen his name accompanied by the phrase "former aide to Harold Washington." That's not exactly magic dust. According to Fire on the Prairie, the account of the Washington years by former Reader staff writer Gary Rivlin, Walls was a gofer: "the man who took care of the tab, for instance, when Washington and a few aides stopped off for lunch -- and then handled his schedule for his first couple years in office. Washington grew frustrated with Walls's propensity for passing himself off as more important than he was, and fired him in 1985."

Here's what Walls told Reader contributor Mick Dumke recently when asked about being fired by parting ways with Washington: "At 25, I was considered one of the most influential people in the city. At 29, I was considered too influential. Everything flowed through me, and everyone was jealous. . . . I did my job too well." 

In 1987, when Walls ran for city clerk, he was trounced in the primary by Gloria Chevere (a deputy commissioner under Washington, now a subcircuit court judge deemed unqualified by all Illinois' bar associations). In 2003 he tried to run again, but incumbent James Laski (currently in prison on corruption charges) successfully challenged his nominating petitions and he was stricken from the ballot. Now Walls is taking a trick from the pros.

Does he stand a chance? I doubt it. But lotsa luck, Dock.

You don't expect an official bio to be honest, but the mayoral biography on the city's Web site is a hoot. I think it gives Daley credit for discovering penicillin. Wikipedia has the rest of the story.

Question of the day: Do the City Hall propagandists really believe this stuff?