Tuesday, August 19, 2008
News / Clout City Charge it to my account
Posted by Mick Dumke on Tue, Aug 19, 2008 at 7:43 PM
Faced with the prospect of major budget cuts, some aldermen are now saying they’re willing to forgo their salary increases—but hands off their office expense accounts.
Aldermen use the accounts to pay for things like rent, utilities, supplies, newsletter printing, and sometimes staffers on top of the three they're already budgeted. (Committee chairmen get funds to hire additional people.) For the last couple years each alderman was allotted $33,280 to cover annual costs, a sum that many said was simply too small to run an office on; some who could afford to dipped into their political war chests for extra funds.
But last fall the Daley administration, needing votes for its package of tax and fee increases, agreed to boost the 2008 expense accounts to $73,280 apiece, at an additional cost to taxpayers of $2 million total. And now aldermen don’t want to go back to the old days of nine months ago. “That's money you use to add more staff or help your constituents,” 25th Ward alderman Danny Solis told the Sun-Times.
Solis is right on this one—at least, he could be right. One of the many reasons the City Council rubber-stamps the mayor’s agenda is that most aldermen don’t have the resources to be fully engaged legislators—they and their staffs spend most of their time dealing with neighborhood housekeeping such as parking regulations, business signage, and zoning requests. On the council floor aldermen merely say yes or no to the mayor’s proposals; coming up with their own takes extra research, legal expertise, and time that most simply don’t have—even if they were willing to use it.
Having the will is even more important than having the money, though, and it’s not at all clear that aldermen use the funds they already get as responsibly as they could.
According to expense reports submitted to the city’s finance department, aldermen spend their office funding on a range of stuff—from nice cars (SUVs have been quite popular) to long-distance phone calls (not itemized between business and personal use) to pizza (one office liked theirs with half plain cheese, half pepperoni).
What follows are summaries of the 2007 expenses submitted by three different aldermen from south, west, and north sides of the city. (Note: The totals for the first two are larger than $33,280 because some of the expenditures were later covered from another city account.)
Alderman 1
| PHONE | $ 10,234.40 |
| COMPUTER CONSULTING | $ 7,200.00 |
| RENT | $ 4,612.94 |
| COMED | $ 4,117.64 |
| CAR PAYMENTS | $ 3,718.96 |
| GRAPHICS | $ 2,518.33 |
| MISCELLANEOUS | $ 2,385.80 |
| OFFICE SUPPLIES | $ 1,886.97 |
| CAR GAS | $ 1,700.53 |
| INTERNET | $ 1,310.42 |
| LIGHTING FIXTURES / ELECTRICAL SUPPLIES | $ 884.21 |
| BOTTLED WATER | $ 746.69 |
| PEOPLES GAS | $ 720.39 |
| NEWSPAPER SUBSCRIPTIONS | $ 482.35 |
| PARKING TICKET | $ 40.00 |
Alderman 2
| RENT | $24,275.59 |
| INTERNET | $ 4,667.84 |
| PHONE | $ 4,292.14 |
| COMED | $ 2,111.81 |
| OFFICE EQUIPMENT RENTAL | $ 1,710.54 |
| PEOPLES GAS | $ 1,443.13 |
| OFFICE SUPPLIES | $ 1,235.90 |
| ALARM SYSTEM | $ 203.70 |
Alderman 3
| RENT | $17,655.80 |
| INTERNET | $ 3,518.99 |
| COMED | $ 3,233.56 |
| PEOPLES GAS | $ 2,175.82 |
| PHONE | $ 1,728.33 |
| OFFICE SUPPLIES | $ 1,625.33 |
| MISCELLANEOUS EXPENSES | $ 1,220.87 |
| OFFICE EQUIPMENT | $ 332.00 |
| AIR CONDITIONING | $ 302.00 |
| GRAPHICS / PRINTING | $ 247.00 |
| RUBBER STAMPS | $ 34.00 |
Showing 1-22 of 22
so what's with the alderman 1, 2, 3 nonsense? give me a break you need a secret decoder ring to read the Reader?
Alderman #1 is Dewey Alderman #2 is Cheathim Alderman #3 is Howe
What's with the expensive internet? come on the fastest DSL only cost $40 a month. and ethernet cable is cheap. so that leaves either porn and/or Itunes. great, just great. they haven't figured out how to get music or nudes for free.
Was Alderman #3 in charge of buying last years rubber stamps?
Mick, You forgot to ask whether they were a Cubs or Sox fan. And yes, that was balls-less not to print the names of the alderman. What happened to mr. little bad ass , bublic has a right to know ?
Oreo, You Tom MF'r. Mick Dumke is the reporter that broke the Hiring Scandal. I think he used quite a few names. Mitchell, Reyes,Broderick, Mannion,Sanchez,John Daley,Jerry Joyce,Manny Flores,Jesse Jackson jr.....also I would like to know if they are Cubs or Sox fans. I'm glad I know Mayor Inbred is a Sox fan. 11th , eyes do thinks I can!
The sad truth is, uncovering corruption is over-rated, something the public pretends to care about in the abstract but shrugs off in reality. Witness the pending coronation of Emil Jones III, bequeathed a seat in the Illinois Senate by his father, Emil the Elder. This is cronyism at its baldest. You would think there would be outrage, given the disaster of John Stroger's son Todd inheriting the Cook County presidency, and the elevation to Congress by parental fiat of a non-entity such as Bill Lipinski's son Dan. But outrage has fallen from fashion, apparently. No jaw-dropping act by a Daley underling can dent the mayor's popularity, so long as he maintains a careful blindness while offering a steady stream of circuses, flowers pots and wrought iron fences. Caesar made himself dictator, and was killed by men who wanted a return to the republic. They didn't get that. Instead they got civil war, paving the way for Caligula, Nero and all the other emperors who presided over the ruin of Rome. We're stumbling down the same trail. One great, underappreciated American asset, hard to find in the rest of the world, is a distaste for corruption. You need not bribe somebody to get a driver's license. You need not have the right father to become a state senator. That is the ideal, one mocked by shameful breaches such as the coronation of Emil III. I feel antique even complaining about it.
I support these coronations. Shh, don't tell anyone! I'm an antique treasure that should be buried.
A BIG break, NOT these charlatans that PRETEND to be your advocate.
"Caesar made himself dictator, and was killed by men who wanted a return to the republic. They didn't get that. Instead they got civil war, paving the way for Caligula, Nero and all the other emperors who presided over the ruin of Rome." Don't you see, once Daley is gone, there will be civil war in this town. Mexicans, Blacks and Whites will all fight over the spoils and the City will go into great decline. Be careful what you ask for or you may get Detroit, Cleveland or Gary.
How about a little commentary about emil jones crowning his son to his senate seat? clout still rules in illinois.
Bribe, Bully & Banish. Timeless techniques of the ruling classes. First they try to buy you. If that doesn't work, then they try to bully you. If that doesn't work, then they try to banish you. If that doesn't work, what's left for them to do? Besides trying to pretend that you don't matter? Pretending you don't matter doesn't work when you DO matter. We are seeing this pattern today. As we speak, the daley corruption machine has first been trying to buy the working members of the CPD, ie., the blue shirts, and, when that has proven to be ineffective, is now trying to bully the working members of the CPD, which is also not working, so now they are attempting to banish the working police members of the CPD, and that isn't working. And so, predictably, daley and his hand picked flunkies, will attempt to pretend that the working members of the CPD, the blue shirts, don't matter. We, the working citizens of this potentially great city, understand that, all the mumbling protestations to the contrary, the only people of the CPD who DO matter ARE the working members, ie., the blue shirts. And all the bullshit news conferences in the world, all the press releases filled with lies coated in all the right language, but devoid of substance and authenticity, all the pathetic denials and posturing, won't alter that fact of life, though the daley spinmasters are working hard to promote the opposite perception of reality. Daley created the TMA to insure that he has an army of loyal servants to write all those lucrative parking tickets, and his flunkies have been busy blanketing our streets with more and more creative ways in which to make a citizen parking their vehicle an 'illegal act', ie., a violation worthy of being fined. The red light cameras have also been developed and deployed to replace the human judgments of the working members of the CPD, solely to 'raise revenues'. And now we are hearing, once again, the daley wailing of the city's poverty. Somehow, with the highest taxes in the country, with the army of revenue agents swarming our streets with their little books of orange pocket-picking love notes, with the robot red-light cameras flooding our mail with similar notices of 'fuck you, pay me', somehow, there isn't enough of our hard earned dollars flowing into the hands of the mayor and his minions. Apparently, though, there is still enough to pay for corruption, still enough to pay for the briberies, still enough taxpayer dollars to dole out to the ruling class. All the dog and pony shows of public hearings mean nothing. When the mayor says he's listening to the voices of the people, all he means is that he knows he's got to sit and let the people speak, nothing more. His listening doesn't affect, in any significant way, what he's going to do. The only thing that will affect what the ruling class does is to remove them from the positions of authority which they use to rule over us. REGISTER TO VOTE VOTE IN EVERY ELECTION HAVE NO DOUBT, VOTE INCUMBENTS OUT
I agree with the last comment, that we should vote out incumbents. If that happens, more Republicans will win.
I assure you that we're not trying to hide anything--we left off their names because we didn't think it was fair to single out three of the 50 aldermen just because they seemed representative of the group.... But since everyone loved this so much, we'll post the whole list shortly.
That would be true, if the following three things happen: 1. Republicans pull their heads out of their asses and actually RUN for every city elected office, as in CONTEST for these elected positions. 2. Republicans authentically reject, repudiate and condemn every past, present and potential future engagement, within their party's ranks, with those political animals whose agendas are no different than the Democrats they publicly criticize. Crooks are crooks, no matter what political party they claim as their pedigree. 3. Convince the citizens of this city that they, the Republican challenger candidates, are, at the very least, much less dishonest than the Democratic machine hacks that they, the Republican challenger candidates, seek to replace. The citizens of this city and county are accustomed to being lied to by politicians. The Democrats have developed bullshitting the voters into an art form, albeit being helped by the cooperation of said voters penchant for apathy, lazy brains and gullibility. The Republicans also have been guilty of bullshitting the voters, on a county and state wide level. Were there to be a single, 3rd party, or no party, candidate for each city elected office on the ballot, what might the outcome of the election be?
I hope I won't have to layoff my girlfriend.
goes the spoils. I love you Mayor Daley. Fire more city workers, they work to hard and do not give cash anymore!
"I assure you that we're not trying to hide anything--we left off their names because we didn't think it was fair to single out three of the 50 aldermen...." GMAFB. Since when has the Reader and its J-School reject writers EVER worried about being fair. Thats a laugh.
Why don't we ask the city to disclose the professional service contracts with the city. The office of procurement headed by Daley's crooked bootlicker Montel Gayles,should be under Federal watch.
Mick, FOI the list of all City Contracted Consultants. You will find Orion "oreo" Daryl Mitchell on that list. Plus a whole lot of names that will blow your mind, including ex-Alderman, Double dipper City Workers, and ex-opposition leaders!
REGISTER TO VOTE VOTE IN EVERY ELECTION HAVE NO DOUBT, VOTE INCUMBENTS OUT YEAH, THAT'LL WORK......LIKE MAKING PEACE WITH THE TALIBAN. Once you vote that fool in, THEN the REAL RESULTS start to SHOW. And DON'T retort me with ANY of your CONDESCENDING BULLSHIT, HYPOCRITE.
"Yeah Right August 21st - 9:43 a.m. REGISTER TO VOTE VOTE IN EVERY ELECTION HAVE NO DOUBT, VOTE INCUMBENTS OUT" Thanks for helping spread the word.
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