Chicago Reader: Politics

A Kink in the Campaign

mail@chicagoreader.com (Hunter Clauss) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 04:00:00 -0600

If his challenge to Deb Mell's nominating petition succeeds, state rep candidate Joe Laiacona just might run unopposed in the Democratic primary. But can a leather master actually win in the general election? by Hunter Clauss Most people who signed Joe Laiacona's petition to run for state representative of the 40th District probably had no idea they were supporting a historic campaign. That's because Laiacona didn't tell them. One evening in August I followed the 62-year-old as he hoofed it down Sacramento between Irving Park and Addison. Wearing a short-sleeve plaid shirt tucked into jeans, he said almost exactly the same thing to anyone who'd open the door: "Hi, I'm Joe Laiacona. I'm running for state…]]> [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Joe Laiacona's Challenge to Deb Mell's Petition

mail@chicagoreader.com — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 04:00:00 -0600

The full document]]> [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Transparency in Action

mail@chicagoreader.com (Ben Joravsky) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 04:00:00 -0600

How a bill intended to expand the state Freedom of Information Act was bastardized to expand the mayor�s shadow budget by Ben Joravsky In his November 11 op-ed in the Chicago Tribune, Mayor Daley once again assured us he's doing everything he can to protect us from a tax hike in these tough times. "Because people are struggling, I decided against increasing taxes of any kind," Daley wrote. Apparently, as hard as I've tried to explain it—and I've tried really, really hard—Mayor Daley just can't grasp how this property tax thing works, particularly in relation to tax increment financing, his favorite economic development…]]> [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

The Active Transportation Alliance Does an About-Face on the Parking Meter Deal

mail@chicagoreader.com (Mick Dumke) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 18:52:00 -0600

[image-1]

Five months ago the city’s largest bicycling and transit advocacy group released a report ripping the Daley administration for entering into the parking meter privatization agreement. Yet Monday night the Active Transportation Alliance inducted Mayor Daley into its “hall of fame,” and the group will soon release a new version of the report—screened beforehand by city officials—that will recant many of the criticisms it made in June.

"We made some key mistakes in how we analyzed the agreement" the first time, says Rob Sadowsky, the group’s executive director. "But it gave us an opportunity to step back and have a dialogue with the city."

]]> [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

October Surprise

mail@chicagoreader.com (Ben Joravsky) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 04:00:00 -0600

Mayor Daley says he�s not raising property taxes. But he is. Here�s how. by Ben Joravsky The bad news arrived in the mail the other day: my property taxes went up. Again. Between this second installment of my 2008 tax bill and the one I received in March I'm on the hook for almost $7,000 in property taxes this year, about $850 more than I paid for 2007. Over the last five years the annual tax bill on my north side home has gone up 101 percent. Just so you know, my income hasn't kept pace.…]]> [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

A Round of Really!?! With Mayor Daley

mail@chicagoreader.com (Mick Dumke) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 04:00:00 -0600

We have some follow-up questions to the questions other outlets have been asking him about our stories. by Mick Dumke Since he proposed his budget for 2010, Mayor Daley has been busy with reporters' questions and increasingly louder calls for reform of the city's tax increment financing program. The TIF program is complicated—but no one is going to understand it any better by listening to Daley talk about it. In his comments after a tree-planting event on the southwest side this weekend and during a wide-ranging interview with Chicago Public Radio that aired November 1, the mayor played fast and…]]> [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Fall Books Special: The Night Fred Hampton Died

mail@chicagoreader.com (Jeffrey Haas) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 04:00:00 -0600

An excerpt of a new book on the Black Panther leader's death and its aftermath by People's Law Office cofounder Jeffrey Haas by Jeffrey Haas The Assassination of Fred Hampton: How the FBI and the Chicago Police Murdered a Black Panther JEFFREY HAAS (Lawrence Hill) Maybe we all have points at which our consciousness changes and we cannot return to our former path. For many political activists, that dividing line occurred in the late 1960s. We were fed up with a system that thrived on war, racism, and patriarchy. We were young people who at first hadn't understood why the United States was waging war…]]> [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Clout on the Calumet River

mail@chicagoreader.com (Ben Joravsky) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 04:00:00 -0500

Marina owner Mike Olsen has reason to fear the city will force him out of business to the benefit of his competition. by Ben Joravsky All right, readers, time to test your knowledge of Chicago politics. There are two marinas on the Calumet River on the far southeast side of the city. One's owned by a consortium of well-connected investors, including a Bridgeport insider who's donated to politicians all over town and owns a trucking company that was paid tens of thousands of dollars in Mayor Daley's scandal-plagued Hired Truck Program before the program was phased out in 2005. The other marina is owned by…]]> [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

The Shadow Budget

mail@chicagoreader.com (Ben Joravsky) — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 04:00:00 -0500

The Daley administration commands an off-the-books kitty of taxpayer money equivalent to a sixth of the official city budget. Now we�ve got documents that show what they want to do with it. by Ben Joravsky Here are some of the documents referred to in this story--the portions of the proposed TIF budget (PDF) city officials provided to aldermen Robert Fioretti of the 2nd Ward, Rick Munoz of the 22nd, and Scott Waguespack of the 32nd. Budget items are categorized as �appropriated,� meaning (according to a city spokesperson) that the transaction has already been approved or finalized; �committed,� meaning it�s �locked in� or expected to be shortly; or �pending,� meaning it's been proposed. Under the project…]]> [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Fact-Checking Mayor Daley's Budget Address

mail@chicagoreader.com (Mick Dumke) — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 14:53:00 -0500

As predicted, Mayor Richard M. Daley proposed a $6.1 billion budget this morning that would be balanced by cutting city jobs, slowing services, and dipping deeper by hundreds of millions of dollars into the pot of money generated by leasing the parking meter system.

Most aldermen I spoke with after the mayor’s somber, half-hour budget address said they didn’t like the idea of using the meter reserve funds, but they bought the mayor’s argument that it was the only viable way to maintain core city functions like policing and garbage collection without a major tax hike.

]]> [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Who�ll Decide How Much You Pay?

mail@chicagoreader.com (Ben Joravsky) — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 04:00:00 -0500

A look at the cast of characters running for the obscure but critical office of Cook County assessor by Ben Joravsky "I'm running for Cook County assessor," Andrea Raila tells passersby—most of them rushing for the train—at the Davis Street el stop in Evanston on a sunny Tuesday morning. "This is a chance for some reform." "You mean it's already another election?" says one woman who stops to sign her petition. Yes, it's petition-passing time, the opening round of the 2010 Democratic primary season. The actual election's not until February 2, but the gears have been in motion for the last…]]> [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Lessons From Our Olympic Adventure

mail@chicagoreader.com (Ben Joravsky) — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 04:00:00 -0500

Someone stood up to Mayor Daley and lived. by Ben Joravsky Now that the International Olympic Committee has saved us from ourselves and Mayor Daley's Olympic dreams have been dashed (one more time: thank you, thank you, IOC!), let's have a little chat, Chicagoans. Just amongst ourselves. What the hell were we thinking? Have we lost our freaking minds? I won't burden you with another diatribe about what was at stake. The bottom line is that we signed on to a multibillion-dollar train wreck that likely would have closed off the…]]> [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Everyone Is Implicated

mail@chicagoreader.com (Deanna Isaacs) — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 04:00:00 -0500

My Kind of Town, John Conroy's unforgiving new play about the Chicago police torture scandal, gets a reading at the Chicago Writers' Bloc New Play Festival. by Deanna Isaacs The trial of former Chicago police commander Jon Burge, slated to begin later this month, has been postponed until January. We'll have to wait till then to see if Burge is found guilty of lying under oath about the interrogations-by-torture he allegedly conducted at Area Two headquarters in the 1980s. But on October 12, we can get a look at the latest work on the subject of police torture by John Conroy, whose reporting in the Reader exposed a situation…]]> [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

They Didn't Think of the Children

mail@chicagoreader.com (Deanna Isaacs) — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 04:00:00 -0500

D. Bradford Hunt's study of the Chicago Housing Authority, Blueprint for Disaster, argues that public housing projects like Cabrini-Green failed because they put too many children in hard-to-access towers. by Deanna Isaacs In the 1980s, D. Bradford Hunt was a Hinsdale high schooler tasting the freedom of a driver's license by tooling around Chicago in the family car. Nothing he saw on his excursions struck him as more interesting than the clusters of towers that made up public housing projects like Cabrini-Green, Stateway Gardens, and the Robert Taylor Homes. "I didn't even know what their names were at the time," he says. But "you couldn't help but go, 'Whoa!'" Crowds of people…]]> [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Dear International Olympic Committee

mail@chicagoreader.com (Ben Joravsky) — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 04:00:00 -0500

One last argument for why Chicago doesn't need, want, or deserve the 2016 Olympic games. by Ben Joravsky Dear Members of the International Olympic Committee: It's been almost six months since I last wrote to encourage you not to award Chicago the 2016 games. Back then, as you recall, I was welcoming some of you to town for your official visit. Now, of course, you're in Copenhagen, preparing to announce on October 2 which city they'll be held in—Chicago, Madrid, Tokyo, or Rio. I don't want Chicago to "win" for the reasons I mentioned last time: we can't…]]> [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Blagojevich: Think Socrates, Not Icarus

mail@chicagoreader.com (Mick Dumke) — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 04:00:00 -0500

The Governor isn�t mythological material, though it contains plenty of myth. But it�s a fine warning on the pitfalls of democracy. by Mick Dumke Everybody's already said his piece on Rod Blagojevich's book The Governor, and it's fair to say the reactions have been largely unfavorable. State rep Jack Franks told USA Today that the book, like Blago himself, was full of fibs. "His legacy is one of corruption, it's one of scandal, it's one of shame," he said. The Trib's John Kass mocked Blagojevich for his awkward and sometimes imprecise allusions to Greek myth and Shakespeare and posited that the book was nothing…]]> [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Ben Joravsky, Tool of the Man

mail@chicagoreader.com (Ben Joravsky) — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 04:00:00 -0500

The real story behind the first story on trouble between Governor Blagojevich and his father-in-law, Richard Mell. by Ben Joravsky In his new book, The Governor (see Mick Dumke's review), Rod Blagojevich blames Michael and Lisa Madigan, every legislator in Springfield, U.S. attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, and his own father-in-law, 33rd Ward alderman Richard Mell, for destroying his plans to help the hardworking people of Illinois. But the buck doesn't stop there: he also rips the press for disseminating reckless accusations against him to sell more papers and drive up ratings. And who does he finger for starting the media onslaught?…]]> [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Funds and Games: Chicago 2016's "Stewardship Report"

mail@chicagoreader.com (Ben Joravsky) — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 04:00:00 -0500

A new donor report claims transparency but obscures details on who�s paying for the Olympic bid. And then there's the question of why they're paying. by Ben Joravsky Over the past couple weeks news outlets across the country have run excerpts and mocking write-ups of Rod Blagojevich's new book, The Governor, which explains how he played the game of politics. Meanwhile the Chicago 2016 committee—the nonprofit, tax-exempt organization created to prepare the city's Olympics bid—finally got around to releasing its report on who gave it how much, and the media barely mentioned it. Blago continues to insist there's nothing inherently wrong with the state's top elected officials taking…]]> [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Ready, Set, (Property Tax) Hike

mail@chicagoreader.com (Ben Joravsky) — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 04:00:00 -0500

How will Daley balance the 2010 budget? Prepare for higher property taxes—but not till after the 2016 Olympics are sited. by Ben Joravsky On August 25, Mayor Daley officially kicked off the campaign to get his 2010 budget passed with a hearing at the South Shore Cultural Center. The mayor and his top aides hold a few of these hearings every year about this time, but this one was unusual for attracting hordes of reporters waiting to hear Daley say the city had "screwed up" the implementation of the parking meter privatization deal—language included in a draft of his remarks leaked the day…]]> [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]