The Chicago City Council started this morning four days of hearings
that will examine the proposed 2013 budget that Mayor Rahm Emanuel
released last week.
At a community meeting on the Northwest Side last night Ald. Robert Fioretti (2nd) said that, “The annual budget is the most important aspect of public policy. It tells us who we are as a city.”
Perhaps
to the chagrin of Fioretti, Chicago is a city that mostly lets the
mayor write the budget. Unlike the U.S. Congress or Illinois General
Assembly, the 50-member city council essentially plays an advisory role.
The
public also played a small role under previous mayors through community
hearings, but Emanuel scrapped those this year. So a group of six
aldermen representing the council’s progressive caucus held a public
forum last night that attracted about 200 people. Read more »
Bah, humbug! 
Protesters organized by Stand Up! Chicago staged a “die-in” yesterday
at Chicago's City Hall lying motionless on the floor to represent what
they say is the devastation that Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s budget will
inflict on Chicago neighborhoods.
Dozens of custodial workers from O’Hare International Airport filled
the fifth floor of City Hall Friday in protest of a recent city contract. The Emanuel administration recently awarded a new five-year janitorial contract with a company that may replace more than 300 union jobs at the airport with non-union,
lower-paying positions by next month.
A new report suggests that the city of Chicago has not fully kept
track of some of its patients amid the closing of mental health
clinics.
The Chicago City Council will likely 
If there was any part of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s proposed 2013
city budget that aldermen might question, it was the number of police on
the street. Murders are up this year citywide and several aldermen 
The Chicago City Council will hold hearings on what are rumored to be
80 to 120 neighborhood school closings, according to Ald. Latasha Thomas (17th),
head of the council's education committee.