Illinois Government Consultants Incorporated

Chicago taxpayers will pay a $7.5 million price in the next few years for former Mayor Richard M. Daley’s decision to require city employees to take unpaid furlough days and accept comp time instead of cash overtime, the city’s inspector general has concluded.

At the end of 2010, the accumulated balance of comp time hours owed to city employees — not including police officers, firefighters, paramedics and Inspector General employees — had ballooned to 201,000 hours, a 144 percent increase from the 140,000-hour balance in 2008, said Inspector General Joe Ferguson.

That’s a $7.5 million “liability” that Chicago taxpayers will be “obligated to pay over the next several years,” Ferguson said.

“This illustrates that a major effect of the substitution of compensatory time for overtime pay is to postpone the cost of overtime — either in payments to city employees or in paid time off — to future years,” the inspector general wrote in a report released Wednesday.

“Regardless of whether the city has to pay for these hours directly or give employees paid time off, the cost to the city whether in cash or lost productivity is the same. … This is a significant future obligation that should be factored into and publicly disclosed as a consequence of furlough as a budget strategy.”

Contrary to his own prior reports, Ferguson also concluded that the furlough plan dramatically reduced overtime. He did not detail whether that savings in overtime offset any of the comp time liability.

Although key departments were forced to operate short-handed while co-workers took unpaid days off, overtime payments through June 30, 2010 in six key departments — Streets and Sanitation, Transportation, Water Management, Aviation, Fleet Management and General Services — declined by 24 percent over the same period the year before.

In each of the last two years, city employees were required to take the equivalent of 24 unpaid days off and substitute comp time for cash overtime.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel has condemned the furlough days as a “morale killer” and ended them for the entire city workforce. That blew a $31 million hole in the city’s 2011 budget that the new mayor plans to fill with 625 layoffs now that union leaders have spurned his demand for cost-saving work rule changes.

In earlier studies, Ferguson concluded that, although the furlough plan cut costs, the savings was actually $11 million less than Daley claimed because of the liability absorbed by grossly under-funded city employee pension funds.

The inspector general also complained that Chicago Fire Department brass got more than $335,000 in overtime they were not eligible for over the last two years, wiping out the benefits from the furlough plan.

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Source:  The Chicago Sun-Times

The protracted, clout-heavy fight over a multi-million dollar contract to run the restaurants and stores in O’Hare airport’s international terminal moved a step closer to being resolved today.

The City Council Aviation Committee endorsed Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s recommendation by voting for a contract with Westfield Concession Management LLC, a subsidiary of multinational shopping mall and concessions developer the Westfield Group.

As she has at prior hearings on the O’Hare plans, Aviation Commissioner Rosemarie Andolino testified that Westfield – which runs concessions at several airports around the country — provides the most realistic revenue projections.

Aviation Committee Chairman Ald. Michael Zalewski, 23rd, read letters from officials at both United and American Airlines in support of the Westfield pact.

The 25-year Westfield proposal guarantees the city at least $5.1 million in annual rent as well as $26.2 million in renovations and new construction to the concession area.

If approved by the City Council next week, Westfield will replace Chicago Aviation Partners, the company with ties to former Mayor Richard Daley that has run terminal 5 concessions since 1993.

Aldermen were close to voting on the O’Hare contract near the end of Daley’s term, until Emanuel sent word he wanted a chance to review the proposals after taking office. Emanuel came out in support of Westfield early this month.

The committee vote was 14-1, with Ald. John Arena, 45th, the lone dissenter. Arena said aldermen didn’t have time to accurately assess the bids, because information on the plans was only released to them by the Emanuel Administration this week.

“I just wasn’t convinced the process was clear and transparent. The numbers just didn’t add up for me,” Arena said.

Both CAP and Westfield have City Hall connections.

Westfield’s lobbying team includes Tim Dart, brother of Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart, and Demetrius Carney, president of the Chicago Police Board.

Among CAP’s shareholders is Jeremiah Joyce, one of Daley’s closest political advisers. Former Cook County State’s Attorney Richard Devine lobbies for the group.

Joyce, a former alderman and state senator who has kept a low public profile in recent years, testified briefly. He urged aldermen to look closer at the proposals.

“You have this hocus pocus, mumbo jumbo numbers thing going on,” Joyce said. “And if I sat where you guys sat – or ladies – I would ask for some sort of a forensic audit on these projections and find out what the numbers really are.”

And Devine argued CAP’s $11.5 million annual minimum rent guarantee is far from the pie-in-the-sky promise Westfield supporters have said it is. But city officials have said CAP has always fallen short of revenue projections under its current contract.

As the high profile O’Hare contract moved toward a vote by the full City Council, Emanuel’s office also announced they will enact previously discussed initiatives the administration says will make contract bidding more transparent and competitive.

Open online bidding for city contracts will allow companies to repeatedly bid against each other, driving down costs, according to a news release from Emanuel’s office.

And contracts to be awarded without open bidding will be posted online before the city’s Non-Competitive Review Board votes on them, to allow public comment.

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Source:  The Chicago Tribune

A new questionnaire that probes the “soft skills” needed be a teacher has resulted in what critics call the “blacklisting’’ of hundreds of potential Chicago Public School teachers — including some who already had job offers, the Chicago Sun-Times has learned.

Graduates of the Academy for Urban School Leadership’s teacher training program touted by Mayor Rahm Emanuel have, in effect, flunked the test. So has a winner of a prestigious Golden Apple scholarship. Likewise a special-education major who made the dean’s list at Michigan State University and was described as a “dream candidate’’ by a CPS principal who wanted to hire her.

Of the 3,900 CPS teacher applicants who have taken TeacherFit since June, 30 percent have scored low enough to be excluded from hiring — for the moment, said Alicia Winckler, head of the CPS Office of Human Capital. Some were told to reapply in 18 months, but CPS is now rethinking that 18-month time-frame and whether to grant some low-scoring applicants some leeway, Winckler said.

Winckler and a spokeswoman for the Chicago Public Education Fund, which spent $130,000 to develop TeacherFit for CPS use, say they believe strongly in TeacherFit’s validity and ability to identify strong teacher candidates. They note that similar personality-test-like job application questionnaires are common in the business world.

However, deans of 22 Chicago area colleges of education are requesting a meeting with CPS officials over the use of TeacherFit as a tool that can completely knock a candidate out of the CPS teacher applicant pool, said Victoria Chou, dean of the College of Education at the University of Illinois-Chicago.

“It’s smelling bad so far,’’ said Chou, who called some of the TeacherFit questions “crazy.’’ “I cannot help but think there hasn’t been enough evaluation undertaken before these high stakes are put into place.’’

The Chicago Teachers Union is asking CPS to dump the test completely, said CTU President Karen Lewis.

“It’s unacceptable,’’ said Lewis. “Any test can inform [the application process] but it shouldn’t drive it.’’

“No one should be blacklisted, in 1950s talk, simply because they didn’t score appropriately,’’ agreed John Butterfield, a former CPS principal and now assistant to the president of the Chicago Principals and Administrators Association. The association plans to “lodge a complaint’’ with Winckler, he said.

“I don’t think anyone’s career should be up or down based on one test,’’ Butterfield said.

Butterfield, Chou and other area deans of education say their email and phone lines have lit up since last week, when CPS teacher applicants started to be notified that their TeacherFit responses had knocked them out of the applicant pool — including some who had already been offered CPS jobs.

Sandy Traback, interim principal at Kozminski, said that only a few weeks before year-round classes start she was blocked from hiring a “dream candidate’’ who had two other CPS job offers as a special education teacher because of TeacherFit scores.

The candidate had made the Dean’s list at Michigan State and had received rave reviews from supervisors at two different CPS schools where she had student-taught and taught summer school. Traback even personally observed her summer school teaching and was impressed.

“Everybody said, ‘If you need a special education teacher, this is the one you want,’ ” Traback said.

But with the candidate sitting across her desk, Traback tried to select her on the CPS computer system and couldn’t find her application. She called CPS Human Resources, only to be told “she didn’t pass the TeacherFit evaluation. And I said, ‘what the hell is that?’ ”

“I could actually watch her teach,’’ Traback said. “I saw the quality of the work she was doing. . . . I am very concerned that some candidates have been caught up in this, and it’s going to be a loss to CPS.’’

The candidate — and many others — said she thought she was merely taking a survey when she filled out TeacherFit. She had no idea her career would rest on her answers, she said.

“Had I known, I might not have been as honest,” and instead given the answers she thought test evaluators were seeking, said the candidate, who asked to remain anonymous.

The CTU’s Lewis said the union complained about some questions during the TeacherFit development process because some seemed to probe for people who were “willing to work for free.’’ One current question asks candidates “how do you feel about a job that would require you to regularly work after hours?”

Other questions ask candidates to recall how frequently they did something — such as help their peers with a difficult task — over a 10- or five-year time frame. A 10-year span would take a 21-year-old teaching candidate all the way back to age 11, one education professor noted.

TeacherFit co-author Neal Schmitt, a psychology professor at Michigan State University, said many of the questions involve “personality or attitude’’ items that try to get at the “soft skills’’ needed to be a teacher — student focus, planning and organizing, results-focus, perseverance and self-initiative.

Development of the test was paid for by the Chicago Public Education Fund, which counts as a board member Bruce Rauner, a wealthy venture capitalist and close ally of Mayor Rahm Emanuel and former Mayor Richard M. Daley. Rauner was a driving force behind the sweeping school reform bill that Gov. Pat Quinn signed into law last month.

Penny Pritzker, a member of the billionaire Pritzker family, stepped down as the fund’s chair after Emanuel named her a Chicago School Board member.

TeacherFit questions were field-tested on a sample pool of 867 CPS teachers, with an average work experience of four years, who were also rated separately by their principals. TeacherFit scores wound up correlating closely with how teachers were rated by their principals, Schmitt said.

However, CPS ultimately decided which scores would fall into what CPS calls a “red, yellow or green’’ category, with “red” being the lowest score, and what stakes to attach to results, Schmitt said.

North suburban academic powerhouse Stevenson High School also uses TeacherFit as a candidate evaluation tool, but not a blacklisting device, said Stevenson Township High School District spokesman James Conrey.

“No current candidate at Stevenson is excluded from consideration based solely on TeacherFit answers, and no future candidate will be excluded based solely on TeacherFit answers,’’Conrey said.

“TeacherFit is just one piece of the puzzle, in our view, not the be-all, end-all determining factor in deciding to hire teachers. We wouldn’t stand for a teacher basing a student’s semester grade solely on the result of one test, so why would we follow a different philosophy in our hiring practices?”

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Source:  The Chicago Sun-Times

Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration has refused to bar from city business a former top City Hall aide who admitted taking part in an illegal job-rigging scheme, the city’s top watchdog said in a report Tuesday.

Inspector General Joseph Ferguson takes issue with that decision. Ferguson also contends that the mayor’s office isn’t giving him the tools he needs to properly oversee city hiring, marking his first public criticism of the new administration.

“It is important that the new administration signal its intentions for ensuring the independence, integrity, and sustainability of this office,” Ferguson told the Tribune, adding that he understands Emanuel has only been in power for two months.

One key disagreement stems from the Department of Procurement Services to decline Ferguson’s recommendation about barring a onetime aide to former Mayor Richard Daley from getting city contracts.

Although Ferguson’s report does not identify the former official, the Tribune has learned he is John Kosiba.

In 2006, Kosiba testified — under grant of immunity from prosecution — that as the city’s sewer commissioner he helped get city jobs for political workers loyal to Daley. His testimony helped convict Robert Sorich, Daley’s former patronage chief, who is serving a four-year prison term.

The state Supreme Court in 2009 suspended Kosiba’s law license for three years based on his testimony at the Sorich trial.

Kosiba is now chief operating officer for SPAAN Tech Inc., a politically connected information and management technology firm that has four contracts with the city potentially worth several million dollars.

The Emanuel administration argues that Kosiba did not admit to a criminal offense, so the city does “not believe the city’s debarment regulations allow for debarment of his current employer,” said Jennifer Hoyle, Law Department spokeswoman.

Kosiba said he was unaware of the inspector general’s recommendation. “The testimony I gave at trial was truthful, and I’m happy the procurement department didn’t feel my conduct was such that it should bar me from doing business with the city,” Kosiba said.

Ferguson said he would “not preclude” an arrangement to end Kosiba’s involvement with city business that allows the company to keep its contracts.

Ferguson also states in his report that Emanuel’s administration is fighting in court his effort to prevent the Law Department from not complying with subpoenas related to the hiring oversight done by his office. “The issue is whether the inspector general can act independently,” he said.

Hoyle said the city is fighting to protect attorney-client privilege, not chip away at the inspector general’s subpoena powers.

The report also stated Ferguson needed three more employees to fully staff his division that makes sure the city complies with a federal prohibition on taking politics into consideration when making personnel decisions.

After its release, he received word that he would get two to three more employees, but Ferguson said he still seeks a meeting with officials to discuss a more “holistic” approach to his work that could save money.

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Source:  The Chicago Tribune

Determined to deliver suburban-style curbside recycling to 359,000 Chicago households without it, Mayor Rahm Emanuel said Monday he would privatize four of six service areas and allow city employees to compete in the other two.

Within four months of the so-called “managed competition,” blue-cart recycling will come to 20,000 additional households in Wicker Park, Bucktown and Logan Square. Even more homeowners will get the service next year.

Six months into the competition, a cost-benefit analysis will determine how city employees measured up against two private contractors: Waste Management, which will service three of four private sector areas, and Midwest Metal Management, which will service one.

“When it’s comes to recycling, Chicago has been a tale of two cities. Half the city has had recycling. Half has not had recycling. I want to change that. But, to do that, we have to be price-competitive,” Emanuel told a news conference at a Far North Side Streets and Sanitation facility.

“My job is to make sure that we’re delivering services to the entire city — not parts of the city — and do it in the most cost-effective way for city taxpayers.”

City employees currently service 241,000 households at an annual cost of $13.8 million. Private sector companies offered to provide the same service for $6.6 million, Emanuel said.

Even so, the mayor said, “I have all the optimism that people who are on the city payroll can win, as shown in Charlotte,” North Carolina. But, even if they don’t, the mayor said, “I have an obligation to the city taxpayers — not to the city payroll.”

For now, at least, no jobs will be lost. Laborers and Teamsters currently collecting blue recycling carts will be reassigned to normal garbage collection. That will allow other laborers to return to the decimated Bureaus of Rodent Control and Forestry.

The decision to partially privatize household recycling was announced as top mayoral aides were holding a tense, 90-minute meeting with labor leaders furious about Emanuel’s decision to lay off 625 city employees without attempting to negotiate cost-saving work rule changes with local unions whose members would be impacted by those changes.

Chicago Federation of Labor President Jorge Ramirez said the recycling contracts “complicate matters” because the local unions were not notified.

“He didn’t do it in a way that is respectful of the process he wants to engage in,” Ramirez said. “He tells us he wants to be a partner and collaborate, yet the decisions over the past few days have been void of that process.”

Still, Ramirez said he was assured by Deputy Mayor Mark Angelson that, if a union consultant can identify $10 million in alternative savings, “Both the work-rule changes and the layoffs would go away.”

Teamsters Joint Council 25, one of only a handful of unions to endorse Emanuel, issued a statement in support of the mayor’s decision to “provide more services at lower cost.”

“We look forward to the opportunity to demonstrate that, when given the fair chance, our members will provide quality recycling services for the lowest possible cost while keeping our tax dollars in the city,” said union president John T. Coli.

Lou Phillips, business manager of Laborers Local 1001, responded to the mayor’s decision to partially privatize recycling by saying, “I wish we would have been part of [the decision]. I’m still hoping to. We’re hoping it’s a level playing field.”

He added, “If it’s costing them $13 million-a-year, you need to look at management.”

Emanuel’s decision to launch Chicago’s first-ever “managed competition” sets the stage for the city to do the same with normal refuse collection, as promised during the campaign.

Earlier this year, an independent arbitrator ruled that Emanuel is legally free to privatize household recycling, but that doing so would be a “shot across the bow” that would “stifle any realistic chance” to forge the partnership with organized labor needed to confront Chicago’s $1.2 billion-a-year structural deficit.

“The wrong signal will be sent if the city moves forward. . . .The labor unrest caused by any immediate move by the city to privatize the work in this case… will pale in comparison to what is on the near horizon,” Arbitrator Edwin H. Benn wrote.

On Monday, Emanuel said he opted to ignore that warning — days after saying layoff notices were going out — because he has a “series of things to weigh” that the arbitrator doesn’t.

“What is the best cost for the taxpayers? How do I make sure the whole city gets recycling in the most cost-effective and reliable and consistent way? That’s something I have to weigh — not the arbitrator. How do I make sure that I have a policy of recycling that’s on par with our reputation as a green city?” he said.

Last summer, aldermen from across the city demanded to know why curbside recycling has come to only one-third of Chicago households.

A few weeks later, the Chicago Sun-Times reported that at least 22,000 blue recycling carts — with a pricetag of $1 million — were stashed away in a Far South Side warehouse because City Hall bought them to make the citywide switch, but ran out of money one-third of the way through.

That still leaves 359,000 households in the lurch. Their only recourse is to bring their recyclables to drop-off boxes, an inconvenience many homeowners are not prepared to endure.

Earlier this year, former Mayor Richard M. Daley was poised to privatize recycling, only to have the Laborers Union challenge the move and pass the hot potato to Emanuel.

The union subsequently argued that private contractors would saddle homeowners with hidden costs, collection fees and late-night deliveries while depriving the city of millions of dollars in revenue from the sale of recyclables.

The arbitrator also questioned how private contractors “could realistically expect to produce the same level of service” with one-employee crews working 28 routes, compared to 45 routes with two-employee crews currently used by the city. He warned that there is a “potential for a public relations nightmare” if contractors don’t provide the same level of service now provided by city crews.

But Benn noted that, if the contractors “do not perform up to the city’s requirements, try to impose additional fees, make pick-ups at [inconvenient] times — even if the market for recycled materials steadily careens upward making use of city crews more profitable because the city can keep the revenues — the city can immediately terminate the contracts.”

Emanuel campaigned on a promise to cut the city’s annual garbage collection costs by as much as $65 million by implementing a four-step process that could end in at least partial privatization.

It would begin by establishing a “benchmark” price-per-ton after comparing the cost of collecting Chicago’s 1 million tons of annual garbage to costs in ten major cities.

“I wanted to do it in this space first. It is smaller, more manageable, No. 1. No. 2, it allows you to set up a grid, which is gonna be important if you decide to go that way for [all] garbage collection,” he said.

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Source:  The Chicago Sun-Times

The city of Chicago provides six cooling centers in addition to normally open air-conditioned facilities. Residents are asked to look out for their neighbors, particularly those in poor health. Any resident can request a well-being check for a neighbor at any hour by calling 311. Also call 311 to ask about cooling centers.

Cooling centers are open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. They are open from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Wednesday. Hours and days may be extended.

Garfield Community Service Center

10 S. Kedzie Ave.

312-746-5400

North Area Community Service Center

4740 N. Sheridan Rd.

312-744-2580

Trina Davila Community Service Center

4357 W. Armitage Ave.

312-744-2014

King Community Service Center

4314 S. Cottage Grove Ave.

312-747-2300

Englewood Community Service Center

845 W. 69th St.

312-747-0200

South Chicago Community Service Center

8650 S. Commercial Ave.

312-747-0331

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Source:  The Chicago Tribune

Mayor Rahm Emanuel is sending layoff notices to 625 city of Chicago employees whose unions didn’t agree to work-rule changes the mayor wants — or, in lieu of that, identify alternative cost savings — by a revised Friday deadline.

The decision to start a process that requires 30 days’ advance warning before layoffs begin escalates a high-stakes stand-off with organized labor that is only in Round One.

Even more concessions or layoffs will be needed to erase a $700 million operating shortfall in the city’s 2012 budget — and $500 million more when unfunded pension liabilities are factored in.

Cuts will come by privatizing benefits management, the water management department’s call center and all custodial services at city buildings, as well as by delaying miles of curb and gutter repairs. Custodial privatization will affect O’Hare Airport and Midway Airport and the city’s public libraries.

already, thousands of job cuts and a two-year city hiring freeze have forced the city’s Department of Streets and Sanitation to dramatically cut back rodent control and forestry services, slowing, for example, the removal of trees damaged by this week’s violent thunderstorm.

The new showdown is the second between Emanuel and labor leaders, who previously gave a cold shoulder to his campaign for mayor.

Last month, Emanuel’s handpicked school board determined that it can’t afford to honor the 4 percent pay raise included in teachers’ contract. The mayor defended the decision, arguing that teachers have gotten two types of pay raises since 2003 while students got “the shaft.”

Earlier this week, Emanuel made it clear he’s prepared to draw a line in the sand after bending over backward to avoid the contradiction of laying off city employees when the city has added 3,600 private-sector jobs since he took office in May.

Chicago Federation of Labor President Jorge Ramirez could not immediately be reached for comment on the layoff notices.

Other union sources called the mayor’s decision “premature,” a “mistake” and a scare tactic that would alienate rank-and-file union members who took a 10 percent pay cut each of the last two years.

Earlier this week, Ramirez warned that layoff notices could backfire.

“The smaller issue is a result of the furlough savings the former mayor put in,” Ramirez said Thursday. “We do not acknowledge that furlough money. It was never negotiated. It’s improper to assign it to labor. That number is offensive to a lot of our members.

“Here, you have a city workforce that participated in helping the city with the furlough lemon for the last two years. The last thing we need to do is scare them with layoff notices when we’re working diligently to come up with efficiency models.”

Two weeks ago, the Chicago Federation of Labor said it had hired a consultant to scour the city budget to pinpoint alternative savings. The federation said it needed more time to finalize that report.

Emanuel granted the extension, setting a new deadline — of Friday.

Sources said the coalition of union leaders affiliated with the CFL is expected to meet Monday to review the recommendations, followed by a meeting with city officials.

Former Mayor Richard M. Daley set the stage for a confrontation between his successor and organized labor by balancing his final budget with, what Emanuel has described “smoke and mirrors.” It anticipates a full year of savings from unions concessions not yet negotiated.

Two years ago, Daley threatened to lay off 1,600 city employees and ended up firing just 431 members of two unions that refused to sign off on furloughs: the Teamsters Local 726 and AFSCME Council 31.

At midnight on June 30, an agreement expired that required unionized city employees to take the equivalent of 24 unpaid furlough days each year and substitute comp time for cash overtime.

Two weeks ago, Emanuel ended furlough days he called a “morale killer” for the entire workforce and threatened to lay off 625 city employees unless their union leaders signed off on $20 million in work-rule changes by the June 30 deadline.

When the deadline arrived, the new mayor whose campaign got the cold shoulder from organized labor backed off.

Instead of sending out layoff notices, Emanuel authorized $20 million in non-union budget cuts and gave union leaders two more weeks to pinpoint alternative savings.

Last week, the mayor turned up the heat on labor by pinpointing three of the nine work-rule changes he is seeking. They are: time-and-a-half for overtime, instead of double-time; a 40-hour work week, instead of 35 hours and straight-time for prepping a vehicle at the start of a shift instead of time-and-a-half.

Those three changes alone would save the city $3.2 million and spare 200 union jobs, the mayor said.

The layoff notices still give union leaders 30 days to come around.

If they agree to those three reforms and select $6.8 million more from the mayor’s $19 million list — or pinpoint an equivalent amount of savings elsewhere in the budget — then the immediate crisis would be averted. At least until Round Two.

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Source:  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

Mayor Rahm Emanuel has quietly disbanded the $3.6 million-a-year Office of Compliance that former Mayor Richard M. Daley created in 2007 to get around an inspector general who had embarrassed him.

Last year, oversight over city hiring was transferred from the Office of Compliance to Inspector General Joe Ferguson to bolster the city’s case to get out from under the Shakman decree banning political hiring and firing.

A few months later, Compliance chief Anthony Boswell — the Denver attorney hired to oversee city hiring — resigned.

Federal hiring monitor Noelle Brennan and attorney Michael Shakman, the original plaintiff in the long-running Shakman patronage case, had accused Boswell of ignoring blatant violations, covering up hiring irregularities he’s supposed to correct and failing to discipline employees who refuse to toe the line.

Now, Emanuel has dispersed the functions that remained in the Office of Compliance — internal audit, minority contracting and certification, employee education and training, legal compliance and safety administration — to five city departments: Human Resources, Procurement Services, Streets and Sanitation, Finance and the Board of Ethics.

The re-organization — like several other departmental mergers proposed by the new mayor — has not yet been authorized by the City Council.

Daley created the Office of Compliance in 2007 — and hired an outsider to run it — because he didn’t trust then-Inspector General David Hoffman to oversee hiring after a series of investigations that embarrassed the mayor.

But, it wasn’t long before Boswell himself became an embarrassment to Daley.

Ferguson targeted minority contracting fraud and Shakman violations under Boswell’s watch. At the inspector general’s recommendation, Daley suspended Boswell for 30 days for allegedly mishandling an intern’s sexual harassment complaint against a 911 center deputy.

Boswell filed a lawsuit that contained the explosive allegation that then-Corporation Counsel Mara Georges led a “retaliation campaign” that culminated in the “illegal” suspension after Boswell blew the whistle on her efforts to manipulate hiring and promote her predecessor’s unqualified daughter.

The lawsuit was subsequently dismissed. Boswell resigned before Daley could act on another Ferguson recommendation — that Boswell be fired for accepting two years’ worth of Spanish lessons from a consultant over whom he had “contracting authority” on city time at taxpayers’ expense.

Chicago aldermen have long complained that Daley made a mistake taxpayers could not afford when he created the Office of Compliance in an end-run around the inspector general.

Ferguson said the same thing Wednesday, albeit more diplomatically.

“This office has issued numerous reports — investigative and program reviews — highlighting both the structural and operational problems of that office. That’s in addition to multiple federal and state criminal prosecutions of IGO-initiated matters, most notably related to the long-troubled minority business program,” Ferguson said.

“I don’t know whether the office should have been created in the first place. I wasn’t here. I don’t know what global concept Daley might have had in mind. But, you don’t dismantle something that’s working.”

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Source:  The Chicago Sun-Times

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