Progress Illinois

On Tuesday night, the Reader's Ben Joravsky stopped by the first of Chicago's three mayoral budget hearing to find out how the city was planning to deal with it's $400 million budget shortfall. While talk shifted between city service cuts, political hiring, and the police budget, Joravsky highlighted a question from a concerned resident about the possibility of Chicago taxpayers footing the bill for the 2016 Summer Olympics. Daley's response echoed earlier claims: There will be "no public money for the Olympics," he said. "There will not be any money used for the Olympics."

Joravksy isn't buying it:

Whew, what a relief. Silly me, I'd thought we were on the hook for at least $500 million ever since last year, when Daley, at the urging of the United States Olympic Committee, got the City Council to, you know, authorize up to $500 million for the games. I believe the USOC called it putting some governmental "skin in the game."

Of course, there's always the possibility that Mayor Daley forgot about that $500 million authorization. Just as it's possible that he forgot his more recent proposal to borrow $85 million to buy and demolish Michael Reese Hospital so he can eventually build the Olympic Village there.

Daley's lack of transparency and consistency on this issue is why the work of groups like Communities for an Equitable Olympics 2016 is so badly needed. If the cash for an Olympic village is ultimately coming out of our pockets, let's make sure there's some guarantees about jobs and housing for our own.

Last week, Mayor Richard Daley took the media to task for their coverage of police brutality charges, suggesting that the risk of bad headlines is making Chicago cops timid. During the rant, he said: "Remember how long you kept beating the police? That affects them. They’re human beings. They can’t take it. I’m the mayor. You can beat me up every day. That’s your job." Take a listen:

Internal mp3

But maybe he can't "take it" after all. Yesterday, Daley appeared to ask reporters to pay more attention to their brethren and less attention to politicians like himself:

News media too often portray communities as crime-ridden, Mayor Daley told journalists at McCormick Place on Wednesday. "Don't look at the politician. Look at the journalists and what they are reporting continuously, 24 hours a day, seven days a week," Daley told black, Hispanic, Asian-American and Native American journalists at the UNITY '08 conference."You have to be able to balance." WLS-Channel 7's Linda Yu, co-host of the UNITY '08 ceremony, responded: "Thank you for the reminder."

(H/T Beachwood Reporter)

Yesterday's "Tuesday Commentary" on WTTW's Chicago Tonight went toTribune columnist Dawn Turner Trice, who voiced her hope that Chicago police will "step up" in the face of the city's rising violence without resorting to brutality. She also took aim at Mayor Richard Daley's ridiculous statement last week that fear of unfair media coverage has made officers timid, calling this suggestion "nothing short of shameful." Watch it:

Also of note, in a Sun-Times op-ed last Sunday, Chicago activist and journalist Jamie Kalven (full disclosure: he's my father) responded to Daley's remarks:

It is a first principle of our democracy that public officials in whom we vest substantial power must be subject to public scrutiny. This principle applies every bit as much to the police officer on the street as to the high government official.

We give the police great powers -- to arrest and detain, to use force, and, under certain circumstances, to kill -- and we allow them considerable discretion in performing their duties. Public scrutiny is the necessary antidote to abuses of those powers.

For Daley to suggest that officers must be sheltered from core democratic principles in order to show up for work is a diservice to both the police and the communities they serve.

Here's The Reader's Ben Joravsky on the underlying reasons for Mayor Daley's insistence that the Chicago Children's Museum move to Grant Park:

Compared to the waste and destruction promised by the Olympics, the Children’s Museum is chump change. After all, the museum only affects one little part of one park. And if it gets built after the inevitable court battle, it’s going to cost the public just $4 million or so a year in the form of a Park District subsidy. The Olympics, on the other hand, threatens to devour prime lakefront parkland from Irving Park Road on the north side to 63rd Street on the south and will undoubtedly cost the public hundreds of millions of dollars. Furthermore, the Children’s Museum will at least be open to Chicagoans. The only way average residents will get into any Olympic events is if they’re selling popcorn. The games’ real legacy will be the bill.

Let’s put aside for a moment the pros and cons of moving the museum to Grant Park. The fight waged in the City Council last Wednesday was really about Mayor Daley flexing his political muscle to assure the IOC [International Olympic Committee] that his word is law in Chicago. If there was ever any hope for a check to keep the mayor from exercising unlimited power it was the council, which by law has the final say on just about every major project he proposes. But that hope died during the June 11 debate, as alderman after alderman rose to affirm his subservience.

Read the whole thing here.

Chicago aldermen George Cardenas (12th Ward) and Tom Allen (38th Ward) are up in arms over an example of what they call wasteful government spending -- a problem city reformers have decried since the dawn of time. Problem is, these guys picked the wrong fight.

Last week, a federal hiring monitor awarded $75,000 to Jay Stone, the son of alderman Bernard Stone (50th Ward) as compensation for an unfair 2003 aldermanic election. In that 32nd Ward race, Stone advanced an independent, anti-machine platform that included term limits and other campaign reforms, but ultimately lost by a considerable margin to incumbent Ted Matlak:

Federal monitor Noelle Brennan believed Stone's claim that he didn't stand a chance against then-Ald. Ted Matlak (32nd) because Matlak had the support of a political army of city workers commanded on city time by now-convicted former First Deputy Water Commissioner Donald Tomczak.

Cardenas, who has long been bolstered by the pro-Daley Hispanic Democratic Organization, lashed out at news of the settlement, suggesting that Stone was an inadequate candidate who stood zero chance of winning:

"Somebody lost an election and, somehow, that's an injury the city is liable for? It's an outrage. This is crazy. What about all the people who lost elections against the union machine? This monitor has no clue."

Allen, a little more reserved, also rebuked the settlement:

"We've got potholes to fix. We spend $20 million on snow removal and the federal monitor decides in her infinite wisdom to give somebody $75,000 because they lost an election? Can I sign up for that program?"

But Cardenas and Allen miss the point.

(More after the jump ...)

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In the summer of 2006, the Chicago Tribune editorial board staunchly opposed the Big Box living wage ordinance passed by the Chicago City Council and ultimately vetoed by the Daley Administration. Calling it "one of the loopiest ideas we've seen from City Hall in a long time," they addressed the city's aldermen in a July 25, 2006, editorial: "[T]hink about those workers ... and think about all the other people still waiting for their chance. They're your neighbors and your constituents. They want jobs. You can help them get to work."

Two years later, the Tribune is beating the same drum, this time after "driving by" a vacant lot on 83rd Street that would have ostensibly housed the city's second Wal-Mart location had the big box fight never occurred. Thinking wistfully about Chicago's lone branch in the Austin neighborhood, they wonder how the South Side community of Chatham could have been transformed:

This thriving Wal-Mart is on the site of what had been a virtually abandoned building. The store provides jobs for more than 440 employees—it's currently hiring more—at average wages for hourly workers of about $12 an hour. In the 18 months the store has been open (through February), it has collected nearly $7.3 million in sales taxes alone—$1.9 million for the city, $3.9 million for the state, $917,000 for the RTA and $583,000 for Cook County. And it's a convenient shopping mecca for Chicagoans.

You would think the City of Chicago would want more of all of this: More jobs. More sales and property tax revenues. More convenient shopping opportunities. You would think the city would want fewer vacant lots.

Now, I didn't major in statistics, but something here just doesn't add up. If the average hourly wage at the Austin location is over $12, why on earth would the Daley Administration put up such a stink over an ordinance that would have raised wages and benefits to $10.75 an hour?

What's more likely is that this average is highly inflated, taking into account a few well-compensated higher ups. In fact, Simon Head of the Workplace at the Century Foundation found that "the average pay of a sales clerk at Wal-Mart was $8.50 an hour, or about $14,000 a year," a job that often comes with few-to-no benefits and little overtime. Another 2007 study from the UC-Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education reports (pdf) that 58 percent of all Wal-Mart part-time employees make less then $8 per hour nationally. The Tribune itself wrote on June 13, 2006, that the entry-level wage at Wal-Mart in Chicago starts at about $7.25 an hour.

The editorial goes on to trumpet the loss of sales tax revenue, but makes no mention of the loss in state funds stemming from Wal-Mart employees who -- because they lack decent wages and adequate benefits -- become reliant on public assistance. A 2006 University of Illinois at Chicago study pegged the cost to Illinois taxpayers at $40 million annually.

More after the jump ...

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In a column posted here yesterday, Amisha Patel recounted the 2006 effort to pass a City Council ordinance requiring Chicago's "big box" retailers to pay a living wage. The measure was ultimately vetoed by Mayor Daley, but as Patel notes, the widespread mobilization around the issue nonetheless spurred "tremendous change," including a statewide minimum wage hike and an electoral backlash against many aldermen who had opposed the ordinance.

Now we have more evidence of the living wage movement's ongoing effect on local policy.

Last Friday, City of Chicago Planning and Development Commissioner Arnold Randall rejected Wal-Mart's request for approval of a second store in the Chatham neighborhood on the South Side. Because of special zoning laws written in 2004, Wal-Mart-sized retailers require city approval before development can begin. In his statement criticizing Randall's decision, 21st Ward Alderman Howard Brookins helpfully spelled out the subtext of this decision: the city doesn't want another fight with the living wage movement. From the Sun-Times:

Brookins accused Mayor Daley of ducking the issue to avoid alienating unions that spent millions to elect a City Council more independent of the mayor.

“You would think that, given the state of the economy, we would welcome 500 new jobs to Chicago. Instead, we’re pushing ’em away because nobody wants to take the heat from certain unions that still have issues with Wal-Mart,” he said.

Following Randall's decision, Brookins and Wal-Mart must decide whether they want to take the proposal to the City Council, where they'll now face even stronger opposition.

But having reached this point, perhaps they'll realize there's another option: to simply raise their wages.