Chicago News
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Aldermen are back to their regular schedule after two weeks of budget hearings Monday. City Council’s Finance Committee meets at 10:00 a.m. to consider annual abatements, a series of consumer protection measures from Ald. Ed Burke (14), and appointments to the city’s Catalyst Fund.
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Ald. Brendan Reilly’s (42) financial transparency ordinance, O2017-7153, was re-referred from the Budget Committee to the Council Office of Financial Analysis Oversight Committee Friday morning. That committee hasn’t met since July of 2015.
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When billionaire Joe Ricketts shut down DNAinfo Chicago and the Chicagoist Thursday, he didn’t just slash 116 jobs across a multistate network of journalists. He also hit the killswitch on 17 years of local coverage, which vanished from the network’s websites Thursday, leaving many unemployed reporters scrambling to salvage work. The shutdown came a week after newsroom agreed to join the Writers Guild of America East.
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NOV 03, 2017
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Cook County owns 19 million square feet of real estate, administration officials said Thursday. Commissioners spent most of the day’s budget hearings discussing what they could do with it to help fill the $200 million gap, including leasing office space, selling naming rights to county buildings, and mothballing branch courts. The President’s Office chipped in a $20 million idea: delaying some capital expenditures.
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Cook County elected officials that came up short on recommended budget cuts face a noon deadline to fully comply today. Those who don’t risk having their budgets slashed directly by commissioners. A letter again requesting the 10% cut went to the Assessor, Board of Review, Chief Judge, Clerk of the Circuit Court, Public Defender, Sheriff, and State’s Attorney. Those departments fell short of the mark, suggested cuts outside of their departments, refused to cut at all, or miscalculated their savings.
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NOV 03, 2017
Chicago Police Supt. Eddie Johnson faced a full day of laudatory remarks and softball questions from aldermen Thursday. The conversation barely scratched the surface of one of the biggest issues hanging over the department: ongoing contract negotiations with the union that represents all rank and file police officers, the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 7. It is the city’s largest collective bargaining unit.
A controversial Bill of Rights section that has been accused of fostering a “code of silence” and hampering misconduct investigations is a major part of that contract. The topic was also noticeably absent at Wednesday’s meeting with the the interim chief administrator of the Civilian Office of Police Accountability (COPA).
Instead, aldermen kept the questions granular and focused on quality of life issues: people parking on vacant lots or on their front lawn, staffing issues at the local precinct, follow-ups on specific shooting incidents or crimes, and concerns about increased drug sales. This gave Johnson and bureau chiefs time to focus their message on new crime-fighting strategies and initiatives to rebuild trust between officers and the neighborhoods they patrol.
“CPD entered 2017 with a revitalized and reimagined crime strategy as well as a number of planned reforms in the areas of personnel, use of force, training, transparency and community policing,” Johnson testified at the opening as he read from his prepared remarks.
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Interim COPA Chief Administrator Judge Patricia Banks spoke with reporters
after her testimony before the City Council Budget Committee. Credit: Claudia Morell
The one-month old agency tasked with investigating cases of alleged misconduct by Chicago Police officers is more than a million dollars under budget, aldermen alleged Wednesday. A spokesperson for the city budget office counters that aldermen are “misreading” the budget. -
NOV 02, 2017
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Cook County Medical Examiner Dr. Ponni Arunkumar told commissioners Wednesday that deaths from multiple gunshot wounds and the growing opioid crisis were a stressor on her office, and that the county was gaining a national reputation for the deaths. The Bureau of Administration, which oversees close to a dozen departments, held court for the entire morning at budget hearings. Questions from commissioners largely focused on the cost of those deaths, as well as the county’s position bargaining with unions.
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The License Appeal Commission is one of the city’s smallest departments with a 2018 budget appropriation of $186,667 and a staff of two. Its commissioner is Michael Fleming, and his staff assistant is Michelle Guzman-Flores. This is likely why Fleming had a quick, early morning hearing with few questions from aldermen.
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NOV 01, 2017
The Chicago Department of Public Health’s public commitment to prioritize behavioral health services in Chicago was called into question Tuesday when aldermen asked how it stacks up against an overall reduction in the number of city-run clinics and unfilled psychiatrist positions.
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Union officials representing county workers, hospital and clinic advocates, and fiscal hawks gathered for the second of several public hearings on Cook County’s budget Tuesday. Some pleaded with commissioners not to cut services, others warned not to negotiate contracts in public, and the Civic Federation’s Laurence Msall urged commissioners against taking the easy way out.
