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Chicago is facing a whopping $635 million budget shortfall next year, and it will rise to $790 million by 2014 if City Hall doesn’t fundamentally change the way it does business, aldermen were told Friday. † Targeting the Chicago Police Department by eliminating “unnecessary layers of management” and supervisory benefits, reducing “chronic absenteeism” and redrawing maps of police districts and “strategizing beat staffing” based on the U.S. Census, 911 calls and relevant crime data.

 The jaw-dropping deficit figure wasn’t a surprise. Mayor Rahm Emanuel talked about it throughout the mayoral campaign and ever since he took office on May 16.

The question now is what the mayor intends to do about it. Chicagoans should know more after a mayoral news conference later today.

In an unprecedented move, Emanuel personally briefed some aldermen about the budget.

“Obviously, it’s a pretty daunting gap, but what I’m heartened to hear is that the mayor is not gonna engage in any more one time fixes or kick the can down the road temporary solution,” said Ald. Joe Moore (49th).

Asked what it would take to close the gap, Moore said, “A lot of sacrifices.”

Earlier this year, the Civic Federation offered Emanuel its road-map to financial stability for the city. It included everything from cutting the City Council in half and privatizing Midway Airport to doing away with the elected posts of city clerk and city treasurer and targeting the previously sacrosanct police and fire departments. Its suggestions included:

† Cutting the Chicago Fire Department’s $526.5 million budget by re-evaluating everything from minimum staffing requirements for fire apparatus and the number and location of fire stations to possible out-sourcing and ways to reduce disability absences. The review would be the first since the largely-ignored, 1999 report by the Tri-Data Corp.

† Developing a “water management plan” to accurately determine all expenses, including infrastructure needs, so rates can be adjusted to “recover the full cost of delivering water service.”

† Divide the city into “franchise areas” and hire a private waste hauler for each to service residential buildings and businesses that don’t get city garbage pickup.

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Source:  The Chicago Sun-Times

The Chicago Federation of Labor on Tuesday served up a smorgasbord of ways to cut the city budget by $242 million — by eliminating redundant layers of middle management, improving efficiency and having city employees do work currently doled out to politically-connected contractors.

Conspicuously absent from the menu of ideas presented to Mayor Rahm Emanuel were the work-rule changes the new mayor said he needs to avert 625 layoffs.

Instead, the report prepared by Pennsylvania-based Public Works focuses on labor’s longstanding beef that City Hall has been quick to farm out work formerly done by city employees and too slow to eliminate unnecessary layers of supervisors, many of them earning six-figure salaries.

If City Hall asked its supervisors to oversee just one additional employee, Chicago taxpayers would save $37.5 million, the report states.

The city’s Department of Family and Support Services — the super-agency that merged multiple human services departments — has 203 supervisory employees overseeing 334 frontline workers, the report states. That’s an astoundingly inefficient ratio of 1 manager for every 1.4 employees, the report states. The optimum is somewhere between 10 and 15 to 1.

The report also suggests establishing apprenticeship programs to reduce labor costs and having selected city crews work ten-hour shifts, four days-a-week to improve productivity.

The report estimates that a managed competition between city employees and private contractors would easily save taxpayers $40 million or ten percent of the $400 million the city spends each year on professional, technical, skilled and general labor contracts.

When the city’s Department of Aviation retrofitted gate lighting at O’Hare Airport’s Terminal 2 to make it more energy-efficient, a private contractor bid $941,962. City workers won the job with a bid of $539,775, saving the city more than $400,000, the report states as an example.

Other contracts that could be done cheaper in-house are electrical work at city facilities and maintaining the brooms that remove snow from runways at O’Hare and Midway airports. Vendors charge $140 an hour to do the electrical work, while city employees can do it for $75 an hour, the report states. The city could save $800 per broom by using city employees.

Aviation employees also under-bid private contractors by a combined $1 million on four other airport projects that include ramp lighting and other repairs.

To generate revenue, Emanuel should also empower 100 supervisors to issue citations and authorize city laborers to pick up small business trash carts they drive by every day. If only 100 small businesses agreed to pay $75 each month for the service in each of the 50 wards, the city would raise $3.7 million annually.

Chicago Federation of Labor President Jorge Ramirez said if Emanuel agrees to even a fraction of the recommendations in the 31-page report, he will have the $10 million in savings he has said he needs from organized labor.

“The commitment that we had from the mayor is that, if our efficiency models did handle that amount of money he was seeking for his 2011 problem, that all the work-rule discussion and all the layoffs would go away,” Ramirez said.

“Before you outsource anything or before you look to cut anything or look for anything else from your workers, you should at least be managing the city in a way that taxpayers really demand. And that’s as efficiently as possible. What this report attempts to do is highlight some of those inefficiencies.”

Tom Villanova, president of the Chicago Building Trades Council, added, “We went to great lengths and cost to do this. It wasn’t 20 ideas written down on the back of a napkin that were dreamt up two days ago. … $242 million is a huge amount of money. … It’s not pie-in-the-sky ideas. These are realities that can be done.”

Emanuel welcomed the report and wholeheartedly agreed that the city has too much middle management. In fact, he has already cut 350 middle-management jobs to save $22 million-a-year.

But the mayor said the suggestions made by organized labor do not avert the need for work-rule changes to address the $31 million hole in this year’s budget and the $700 million operating shortfall in 2012.

“Every part of the budget has to be open to review for one simple reason: Doing the same things over and over again and expecting you to close the budget gap won’t get you there,” the mayor said.

“I appreciate their ideas about management. Been there, done that. Will continue to do it. And they’re right. Middle-management deserves review. Top management deserves review. Service delivery deserves review. But it doesn’t mean we avoid doing work rule reforms. … When you have the private sector paying time-and-a-half for overtime, why should we pay double-time?”

In a letter sent later in the day to union leaders that began, “Dear Partners,” Emanuel said he appreciates the Chicago Federation of Labor’s efforts and plans to “review the report with my team so we can begin to discuss how to incorporate these and other ideas in a way that best serves” Chicago taxpayers “in 2012 and beyond.”

“Not only do I agree with some of what I read in the CFL report, I have already taken action on some of the suggestions,” Emanuel said.

The mayor noted that he has cut the annual payroll of the mayor’s office by 10 percent, eliminated 100 non-union jobs in senior and middle-management and frozen hiring for 175 other such positions.

“These three actions save $21 million. And my administration is not stopping there,” the letter said.

Emanuel has honored a campaign promise to eliminate unpaid furlough days he called a morale-killer. But that blew a $31 million hole in former Mayor Richard M. Daley’s final budget, which assumed a full year of savings from union concessions not yet negotiated.

On July 15, the new mayor said he would send layoff notices to 625 employees — and put off 61 blocks of curb and gutter improvements and 76 blocks of sidewalk repairs — after union leaders refused to agree to work rule changes or identify alternative cost savings by an extended deadline.

Cement Masons Local 502 has since agreed to accept time-and-a-half for overtime, instead of double-time, saving the jobs of six members targeted for seasonal layoffs.

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Soure:  The Chicago Sun-Times

As City Council heavyweights prepare to redraw ward boundaries in a once-a-decade exercise that will reshape Chicago’s political landscape, a group of independent-minded aldermen is raising money to pay for its own high-tech map room.

It would be outside City Hall — and not run under the rules of the power structure within it. Aldermen or their aides would be welcome to use the computers to arm themselves with demographic details, said Ald. Joe Moore, 49th, one of the leaders of the Reform Caucus, a loose affiliation of more than a dozen aldermen not beholden to regular Democrats.

“We just want to make sure everyone has free and unfettered access to this information,” said Moore, who contended that 10 years ago aldermen could peek just at their own wards and then only “with someone looking over your shoulder.”

The Reform Caucus isn’t the only group searching for a leg up as the remap gets under way. Both the Hispanic Caucus and Black Caucus plan to hire consultants, even as influential Ald. Richard Mell, 33rd, sets up the official map room on the second floor of City Hall.

All that planning is a sign of the importance of redistricting, which takes place after every census to ensure fair representation. The obscure insider process can make or break individual careers based on a few clicks of a mouse. It can tip the balance of power, which makes it of keen interest to new Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

Because Democrats run Chicago, remap debates are about race and ethnicity, not party affiliation. They’re often contentious.

Much changed in the ethnic and racial makeup of the city from 2000 to 2010, when the population dropped to just under 2.7 million. A loss of about 200,000 people will shrink the average size of each ward to about 53,900 people.

The biggest decline was among African-Americans, whose numbers dropped by about 182,000 as the city tore down public housing high-rises, the foreclosure crisis left swaths of South Side and West Side communities vacant and blacks moved to the suburbs. The white population also fell, by nearly 53,000.

Meanwhile, the number of Latinos rose by about 25,000. The Asian population grew by more than 20,000.

If the ethnic and racial makeup of the city mirrored its population, the council would have 16 whites, 16 blacks, 15 Latinos and three Asians. But the way wards get carved up — by politicians trying to maintain or grow power while not running afoul of federal and state voting protections for minorities — is far from that simple.

The council now has 22 white members, 19 African-Americans, eight Latinos and one alderman of Indian descent — a combination well out of sync with the makeup of the Chicago following the 2000 census.

Based on the 2010 numbers, many Latino politicians say they deserve more seats. They would come at the expense of whites and especially African-Americans.

“It’s a tricky problem, in that African-Americans don’t want to give up any seats, and Latinos are due four to five seats at a minimum,” said political science professor Dick Simpson of the University of Illinois at Chicago. “They have been treated as junior partners at best, and they ought to be full partners in this corporation running the city.”

Mell, who as chairman of the Committee on Rules and Ethics will lead the redistricting effort, said he’s been through three previous remaps but this one could “be as challenging as it’s ever been.”

Emanuel is expected to get involved, largely with the aim of avoiding the lengthy, expensive court battles that have resulted from earlier maps. “There will be disputes, maybe big disputes,” an administration source said. “We want to avoid having it spill into other matters.”

The mayor also could be looking to protect allies and even win greater support on the council in the years ahead.

The council has until Dec. 1 to approve a map, under state statute. But if any group of 10 or more aldermen endorse an alternative, the competing maps go to referendum in March.

The most contentious recent remap followed the 1980 census. The map ended up in court for half the decade, and the end result handed Mayor Harold Washington control of the council amid the racially tinged Council Wars.

The next map, based on the 1990 census, was picked by voters in an unprecedented referendum measure. It resulted in a six-year court case that cost taxpayers $18.7 million and gave African-Americans one more seat.

Peace broke out 10 years ago, when aldermen approved a map that maintained African-American representation, slightly boosted the number of Latino wards and cut the number of white aldermen, even as it protected the interests of some long-powerful white Democrats.

This year, the equation seems more complex, with Asian interests thrown into the mix and the significant black and white declines bolstering the idea that Latinos are under-represented.

Although Asians in sheer numbers merit three wards, their population is more diffuse, and they have not previously waged the same kind of voting rights battles as other minorities. This year, however, they are getting more involved.

In greater Chinatown, the Asian population now tops 27,000, and there are three times as many voters as there were a decade ago, said C.W. Chan, head of the Coalition for a Better Chinese American Community.

Chinatown and nearby Asian blocks are now split between Aldermen James Balcer, 11th, and Daniel Solis, 25th. The neighborhood would prefer to be in a single ward, but Chan conceded that having two influential aldermen responding to the community’s needs has worked well.

“Neither alderman appears to be interested in losing Chinatown,” Chan said.

There also are significant numbers of Filipinos, Indians, Pakistanis and Koreans in the city’s Far North Side wards. The goal is to create one or more wards that are 20 to 25 percent Asian so aldermen have to take into account the community’s concerns, said Tuyet Le, executive director of the Asian American Institute.

“Whether the elected official is Asian-American or not is less important than whether that official is accountable or not,” she said.

Latinos, meanwhile, are increasingly spread out across the city, making it more difficult than before to create Hispanic voting blocs within single wards. Also complicating those efforts is a Latino population that has fewer citizens of voting age than the city’s other ethnic and racial groups.

“We have to look at … how many wards we should get out of redistricting,” said Solis, chairman of the Hispanic Caucus. “It’s going to require some discussion and negotiation.”

Another reason that the number of Latino aldermen falls well short of the group’s share of Chicago’s population is that several wards with Hispanic majorities continue to be controlled by powerful white political leaders.

They include Ald. Edward Burke’s 14th Ward; Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan’s 13th Ward, where his ally Marty Quinn is alderman; Mell’s 33rd Ward; and the Far Southeast Side’s 10th Ward, which is represented by Ald. John Pope.

Solis said there’s nothing wrong with that. “I think our job is to get a good representation of the people in the wards of the city, and who the voters want to represent them is up to them,” Solis said.

By contrast, African-Americans tend toward greater concentrations in particular neighborhoods, making it easier to draw districts with a majority of blacks, said Ald. Howard Brookins, 21st, chairman of the Black Caucus. But he also acknowledged there may be fewer black wards in a new map.

“I think the jury is still out on how this affects us,” Brookins said. “There is a possibility that there is a loss of a seat — at least.”

The 10 wards that lost the most people between 2000 and 2010 all are represented by black aldermen.

“I think everybody wants to do what’s fair and what’s legal, and no one wants a protracted court case,” Brookins said. “We’re going to go into this without our eyes wide open in an attempt to do what’s fair, legal and respectful of everyone’s rights.”

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Source:  The Chicago Tribune

Weeks after he slowed down City Council consideration of a long-term lease to run concessions at O’Hare Airport’s international terminal, Mayor Rahm Emanuel said Wednesday he now wants aldermen to approve the leading bidder without further delay.

Emanuel said he was satisfied the proposal by Westfield Concession Management LLC would be the best deal for the city. If the City Council agrees, Westfield would oust Chicago Aviation Partners, the clout-heavy company that has had the contract at Terminal 5 since 1993.

Among CAP’s shareholders is Jeremiah Joyce, one of former Mayor Richard Daley’s closest political advisers. Both CAP and Westfield have strong City Hall connections, presenting the first major contract issue for Emanuel, who vowed to end insider deals at City Hall.

Westfield was selected earlier this year by a committee chosen by Airport Commissioner Rosemarie Andolino. Emanuel said he was impressed by the firm’s proposal and track record in Miami, Boston, Washington, D.C. and elsewhere.

“Those are all places they run and they run them efficiently and effectively,” he said.
Since aviation officials already approved Westfield’s proposal, Emanuel said, the city quickly take advantage of the group’s guarantee to boost city revenue immediately.

“If we started again, that means the taxpayers were losing $200,000 a month,” Emanuel said, explaining that’s the dollar difference between what the current CAP contract provides the city versus what the Westfield offer promises.

The Daley administration was trying to get the 25-year Westfield contract approved in the administration’s final days but Emanuel sent signals he wanted aldermen to slow down. Both Westfield and CAP flooded City Hall with powerful lobbyists.

CAP hired former Cook County State’s Attorney Dick Devine, while Westfield hired Tim Dart, brother of Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart, and Demetrius Carney, who Emanuel just re-appointed to the Chicago Police Board. The private law firms of House Speaker Michael Madigan and Chicago Ald. Ed Burke, 14th, also have represented suburban Westfield shopping malls.

“Everybody’s got somebody,” Devine said. “It really comes down to the question of what is best for the city and you have some very concrete numbers here showing this isn’t the best deal for the city.”

But Andolino said CAP’s proposal came with strings attached and it has always fallen short of its revenue promises under the current deal.

“If you are going to guarantee something you are going to have to produce the sales to support it,” she said.

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Source:  The Chicago Tribune

Mayor Rahm Emanuel is proposing another round of ethics reforms — this time to “reign in the influence” of City Hall lobbyists and lift the veil on their influence-peddling activities.

“I want to re-establish the ties that have been frayed between the public and those of us in public service,” Emanuel told a news conference at the city’s Board of Ethics, 740 N. Sedgwick.

“Part of that is giving them a sense of confidence that we are conducting ourselves in a professional and ethical way. This is another building block or another brick in that foundation that, I think, is so important.”

During his first few hours in office, Emanuel signed a series of executive orders that, among other things, slammed the “revolving door” that has allowed city employees and mayoral appointees to lobby City Hall. They are now banned from doing so for at least two years after leaving their jobs.

Emanuel also swore off campaign contributions from city lobbyists and insulated city employees from pressure they had felt to give gifts or make political contributions to the mayor, department heads or city supervisors.

More recently, the mayor also posted an unprecedented amount of information about city lobbyists on the internet.

Now, he is prepared to go even further to minimize influence peddling.

At Wednesday’s City Council meeting, the mayor will introduce an ordinance limiting — to $50 per gift and $100 per calendar year —the value of gifts lobbyists can give to city employees.

City employees would also be prohibited from getting loans of from individual lobbyists or their businesses. Twice-a-year, lobbyists would be required to report their campaign contributions to city employees and elected officials.

Emanuel’s plan would also create, what the mayor’s office calls the “most comprehensive lobbyist disclosure database in the nation.”

Lobbyists would literally be required to disclose who they lobby and what they are lobbying for and post those disclosures online in “real-time,” so voters can access the information before legislation is approved.

It’s not clear what precipitated the ban on loans or borrowing from city lobbyists, a similar controversy arose more than a decade ago under former Mayor Richard M. Daley.

In 2000, the Chicago Sun-Times and the Better Government Association reported on mayoral pal Oscar D’Angelo’s backstage maneuvering at O’Hare Airport.

The newspaper reported that D’Angelo, an unregistered lobbyist, had collected at least $480,000 to broker a 10-year contract extension for British bookseller W.H. Smith.

The 1996 concession deal put two friends of Daley’s wife, Maggie, in business at O’Hare: Economic Club President Grace Barry and public relations maven Barbara Burrell.

D’Angelo had earlier embarrassed Daley by making $10,500 worth of interest-free loans to the mayor’s deputy chief of staff.

Although Emanuel has focused heavily on ethics reform since taking office, he is not prepared to push the City Council — either by empowering Inspector General Joe Ferguson to investigate aldermen or by pressuring aldermen to fill the job of legislative inspector general they created more than a year ago, but still have not gotten around to filling.

“I appreciate that, that position may be open. That doesn’t mean we won’t address it. . . . I’ll look into this. I’ll talk to the City Council about it. But, it doesn’t take away from what we’re doing today,” he said.

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Source:  The Chicago Sun-Times

The $4-a-month employee head tax despised by Chicago businesses would be phased out over four years, depriving the city of $19.6 million in annual revenue, under an ordinance quietly introduced by a North Side aldermen.

Ald. Tom Tunney (44th), owner of Ann Sather restaurants, has been on the warpath against the head tax since he was appointed to the City Council by then-Mayor Richard M. Daley in 2002.

Two years ago, Tunney and downtown Ald. Brendan Reilly (42nd) proposed a four-year phase-out to stop an avalanche of private-sector layoffs, only to have Daley reject the idea.

Instead, Daley proposed waiving the head tax for two years, but only for newly hired employees.

At Wednesday’s City Council meeting, Tunney re-introduced the ordinance, turning up the heat on Mayor Rahm Emanuel to honor a campaign promise.

Tunney said he’s well aware that Emanuel inherited an annual operating deficit approaching $700 million — and $1.2 billion when unfunded pension liabilities are factored in.

But, the alderman argued that $5 million a year should not be hard to find.

“Eliminating this tax is important to business. I think it can be done. In our search for cost-efficiencies and savings, we can find time to send a signal to the business,” he said.

“We’re gonna bring in businesses to hear what a negative impact it has on their ability to hire new workers. The most important thing we can do is to provide every incentive for people to add to their payrolls. This could be a job creator, which would help the business climate and, ultimately our budget issues.”

Pressed to identify cuts that could be made to offset head tax relief, Tunney could not come up with any “off the bat.” But, he said, “The mayor is aware I’ve submitted this. He campaigned on reducing the head tax. We all have the same goal. I’m gonna try to help him in every way I can to find new revenue.”

Daley’s father, former Mayor Richard J. Daley, proposed the head tax in 1974 to ward off a city income tax. It has been a giant thorn in the side of business every since.

In 1994, Richard M. Daley lopped a dollar off the head tax, excused businesses with fewer than 50 employees and said it would be the first step toward a gradual phase-out.

It never happened. Three years later, union leaders agreed to a series of pension reforms intended to free up enough cash for a $20 million property tax cut, a $200 million bond issue for neighborhood improvements and another round of head tax relief.

Once again, the head tax promise was broken.
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Source: The Chicago Sun-Times

You won’t have to file a Freedom of Information request anymore to find out how much city employees and top brass are being paid.

It’s on the Internet for all the world to see.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel campaigned on a promise to shine the light on City Hall — and that’s precisely what he’s done when it comes to taxpayer-funded salaries.

The salary information is now available on the city’s website at: cityofchicago.org.

“I promised to have the most open, accountable and transparent government that the city of Chicago has ever seen,” Emanuel said in a press release.

The salary information is “another step toward this goal as we create an administration that is accountable to the citizens.”
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Source: The Chicago Sun-Times

Chicago is getting out of the Independence Day fireworks business.

There will be no city-run July 3rd or July 4th fireworks show this year — not even a scaled-down version — thanks to former Mayor Richard M. Daley’s decision to hand off the Taste of Chicago to the Park District to reverse $7 million in festival losses over the last three years.

That means Chicago’s only official fireworks will be the previously scheduled show at 9 p.m. July 4 at Navy Pier. That 15-minute show is paid for by the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority.

Chicago Park District spokesperson Jessica Maxey-Faulkner said the decision to cancel even last year’s smaller fireworks at three lakefront locations was a sacrifice demanded by the economic times.

It’s the same reality that forced the Park District to fold the city’s four least-popular music festivals — Viva Chicago, Country Music, Gospel and Celtic fests — into the Taste as one-day events focusing on local acts instead of making them stand-alone weekend fests with big-name talent.

“When the Chicago Park District inherited the Taste, we did so with an eye on cutting expenses and bringing the focus back to a family-friendly food festival,” Maxey-Faulkner said, noting that last year’s show cost $110,000, not including police expenses.

“Knowing that Navy Pier has fireworks shows scheduled for July 2 and July 4, we felt that was a reasonable expense to cut.”

Last year, declining city revenues and disappearing corporate sponsors claimed the annual July 3 fireworks extravaganza in Grant Park.

Instead of having one fireworks show on July 3 that drew more than 1.2 million people and stretched city services to the brink, Chicago held smaller synchronized fireworks shows on July 4: at Montrose Harbor and 59th Street to coincide with the previously scheduled show at Navy Pier.

City Hall hoped to cut security costs by making the switch, but it didn’t quite work out that way.

Policing three fireworks venues cost $756,476, including $251,377 in “regular tour pay,” $444,251 worth of “accumulated compensatory time” and $60,846 in overtime, records show.

The only venue that drew an overflow crowd was Navy Pier, where attendance was so big, police were forced to shut off access for the first time in history.

The Pier closing started at 7:20 p.m. and continued for “two or three hours,” barring even those who had reservations at Navy Pier restaurants.

“We stopped counting at 250,000” people, Navy Pier spokesman Jon Kaplan said of the record crowd on that day.

“Only employees working in Navy Pier stores and people with tickets to the theater or tickets previously purchased for boat cruises were allowed in.”

Two years ago, Venetian Night, the annual parade of illuminated boat floats, was sunk by Daley’s cost-cutting, ending a 52-year-old summer tradition.

Viva Chicago, Country Music, Gospel and Celtic Fests were next on the chopping block — at least as stand-alone festivals.

Now, there’s no more city fireworks show.

“The city is broke. We can’t afford the circuses. Perhaps fireworks are a luxury we can do without,” said Ald. Joe Moore (49th).

Civic Federation President Laurence Msall agreed that the fireworks fizzle is “a sign of the financial distress the city finds itself in.”

But, he said, “Although we understand the need to cut expenses, we’d like to see it tied to a long-term plan for all the city’s special events and promotional activities when it comes to encouraging people to come downtown and enjoy the lakefront.”
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Source: The Chicago Sun-Times

The buzzwords at City Hall continued to be “reform” and “change” as Mayor Rahm Emanuel presided over his first full City Council meeting Wednesday.

But after it was all over — including pomp and circumstance that featured an enthusiastic handshake between the new mayor and powerful Ald. Edward Burke — no one needed a revised roster to identify the power players.

Burke, 14th, maintained control of the Finance Committee, although he ceded some of his authority to Ald. Patrick O’Connor, who will head a new committee and continue as floor leader, a post he held under former Mayor Richard Daley. Ald. Richard Mell, 33rd, will continue to run the Rules Committee.

“It’s not who sits on what committee, it’s what we do,” Emanuel said after the meeting, raising his voice when asked if the new assignments he negotiated squared with his months-long promise to shake up City Hall. “It is whether we embrace change, whether we hide behind rules.”

Just minutes earlier, the mayor stepped off the council dais, walked over to Burke, shook his hand and whispered in his ear, a symbolic public act by a seasoned politician.

“I thanked him for the gavel,” Emanuel later explained, referring to a gift from the council, “and for his commitment to work as a partner in change.”

Burke, who supported Emanuel’s top foe in the election, also praised Emanuel.

“We are confident that you bring courage with you to this office,” Burke said. “You carry honor and determination to this assembly. … We are indeed pleased the people of Chicago have chosen you to lead them.”

But Burke also alluded to the tough times ahead by quoting Tip O’Neill, legendary former speaker of the U.S. House: “It is easier to run for office than to run the office.”

The exchange took center stage at the two-hour meeting where Emanuel never sat down. Instead, he stood at the lectern, running the meeting, much as does the presiding officer in the U.S. House, where he served before doing a nearly two-year stint as President Barack Obama’s White House chief of staff.

During the meeting, a council seating chart and pages of highlighted notes helped Emanuel run the proceedings. Emanuel seemed at ease, but occasionally leaned over to talk to Mara Georges, Daley’s city lawyer, for advice on the rules.

Afterward, the rookie mayor called the committee restructuring, a new set of executive orders aimed at raising ethical standards and budget-cutting mandates a “down payment … the beginning, not the end, of reform and change.”

Emanuel also noted that the new council rules approved Wednesday ban former aldermen convicted of felonies from entering the council chambers, where lobbyists sometimes ply their trade.

The mayor also hinted at his near-term game plan, saying he had asked unions to help him find a way to lower garbage-hauling costs across the city, something he has pledged to do. Emanuel said he told union leaders that “we have a set of outmoded rules and practices that are costing the city in ways that they don’t need to, and I expect you to come forward as a partner with ideas, since you’re on the line, so to say.”

That, too, was in keeping with Emanuel’s call for change. But Ald. Ricardo Munoz, 22nd, a veteran who did not snag a committee chairmanship, said he was not yet convinced.

“This is a reshuffling of the Daley administration heavyweights from before,” Munoz said, referring to the new committees. “The terms ‘hope’ and ‘change’ have been overutilized in the last couple weeks. I’m hoping there will be change. … I’ll give him 100 days.”

Other top chairmen maintaining their posts were Ald. Carrie Austin, 34th, of the Budget Committee, and Ald. Daniel Solis, 25th, who maintains control of a Zoning Committee with expanded authority.

Under the new system, O’Connor’s Workforce Development and Audit Committee will consider union contracts, city benefits, pension reforms, privatization of city services, business tax incentives and audits.

But Burke will maintain oversight of taxes, fines, fees and bonds. “This gives other members of the council a greater opportunity to participate, and I think the more participation we have, the better,” Burke said.

Ald. Walter Burnett, 27th, said it’s notable that the Finance Committee maintains control of bond issues.

“The bonding guys make the biggest money in relationship to the city,” he said. “How you spread that out is very important, and that’s why we’re always pushing to make sure African-Americans get a piece of that.”

Most of the aldermen praised the committee assignments, worked out by Emanuel, O’Connor and Burke.

Ald. Michelle Harris, 8th, will run meetings in the mayor’s absence, and Ald. Ray Suarez, 31st, was named vice mayor. Ald. Brendan Reilly, 42nd, noted that the top four chairmen are longtime council veterans and that leadership in such posts historically has been based on seniority.

“I don’t see a big issue with that,” Reilly said of the top posts. “I think it’s more illustrative to look at the rank-and-file membership of each of these standing committees and how those are comprised, and I think that does show change.”
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Source: The Chicago Tribune

Standing behind a desk once used by former Mayor Anton Cermak, the architect of Chicago’s Democratic political machine, Mayor Emanuel on Monday signed six executive orders to strengthen city ethics rules in his first official act as mayor.

For 22 years, Mayor Daley used the desk that belonged to his father, former Mayor Richard J. Daley. The younger Daley took the desk with him when he left office on Friday, hoping that it would someday be the cornerstone of a Daley era exhibit at a Chicago public library.

That forced Emanuel to dig into the city’s storage closet for another desk — and he chose the one used by Cermak.

Anton Cermak was Chicago’s first-foreign-born mayor. He also forged the racial and ethnic coalitions that created the Democratic machine. Cermak died in office in 1933, three weeks after taking a bullet intended for then-President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Emanuel did not explain the significance of his furniture choice. But, he told reporters gathered Washington D.C.-style behind a blue velvet rope to witness the executive order signings that the desk contained a “beautiful note” left behind by Mayor Daley.

Asked to divulge what the note said, Emanuel joked, “It said, `Don’t ever answer any of Fran Spielman’s questions — especially if you read it from right to left.”

Turning serious, he said, “It was a personal note about the strength of our city, the strength of its people and that we are a city of optimistic people made up of immigrants from all communities and all areas and also a city that … is always ready for change being dealt with honestly.”

Emanuel campaigned on a promise to “change the culture” of corruption and cronyism at City Hall that gave birth to the Hired Truck, city hiring and minority contracting scandals.

The executive orders he signed Monday would slam the “revolving door” that has allowed city employees and mayoral appointees to lobby City Hall. They would be banned from doing so for at least two years after leaving their city jobs.

From this day forward, Emanuel said he would stop accepting campaign contributions from city lobbyists. And city employees would be insulated from pressure they have felt to give gifts or make political contributions to the mayor, department heads or city supervisors.

Emanuel also reissued three of Daley’s executive orders. They include: a ban on political contributions to the mayor from the owners of companies doing business with the city; a mandate that city employees comply with the hiring oversight rules tied to the long-running Shakman litigation and an order compelling city employees to report wrongdoing to the inspector general.

Daley swore off campaign contributions from city contractors in 2005, one year after the Chicago Sun-Times blew the lid off the Hired Truck scandal that branched out into city hiring.

The mayor’s former patronage chief and Streets and Sanitation commissioner were subsequently convicted of rigging city hiring and promotions to benefit the Hispanic Democratic Organization (HDO) and other pro-Daley armies of political workers.

The city was forced to create a $12 million fund to compensate victims of the city’s rigged hiring system — and spend millions more for a federal hiring monitor who has been riding herd over city hiring since 2005.

“This is basically to bring about a real sense of change. I want everybody to understand [who] works here that this is about the public and public service,” the new mayor said.

Emanuel likened the executive orders to a “new value system that reflects the honor that it means to be in public service.”

“The things that I pledged during the campaign … will bring about a new day, a change in political direction and be clear about the type of government we’re gonna run. I want a set of values as an example. We can’t [expect] people to have any sense in the entire city of that change if you’re not gonna lead by example,” he said.
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Source: The Chicago Sun-Times