A procedural committee meeting convened Tuesday to put a stalled ordinance back on track developed into an intense debate over the city’s plan to help struggling renters and the council’s idiosyncratic process for passing legislation.

Wednesday’s Chicago City Council meeting Wednesday will take up standard ordinances on issues like zoning and licensing, but the elephant in the room will be what the city plans to do to reform its embattled police department.

A years-old proposal to build a 10-story senior housing facility in Portage Park is set to clear a hurdle that hobbled the plan last year, setting it up to fill an acre-sized hole in the busy Six Corners shopping district.

A City Council committee advanced a measure Monday aimed at protecting vulnerable renters from eviction, despite opposition from some aldermen who worried the ordinance would be too harsh on mom-and-pop landlords.

Chicago housing officials are set to introduce an ordinance Monday they hope will prevent an expected wave of evictions this summer, but housing activists say it doesn’t go far enough in protecting renters.

A non-binding resolution approved by the City Council’s Committee on Economic, Capital and Technological Development Friday will remove tax incentives from companies that are found to be “dishonest actors who have caused economic and environmental harm,” said Ald. Mike Rodriguez (22).

The resolution is a response to an April incident in Little Village where Hilco Redevelopment Partners demolished a smokestack at the century-old Crawford Power station, which sent blankets of dust over several blocks in the neighborhood. The company was fined for a total of $68,000, but many City Council members say the company deserves to have its tax breaks rescinded due to the environmental damage caused by the implosion.

U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minnesota) told a Chicago audience that she hopes the unrest following the killing of an unarmed black man in her state will create a legacy of “sweeping reform” of law enforcement.

“If we answer with silence, we will be complicit,” she said. If we answer it with defiance as the president has done, we will be monsters.” Klobuchar spoke Thursday in a virtual conversation with David Axelrod, the former senior adviser to former President Barack Obama and current director of the University of Chicago Institute of Politics. She took questions live from students but was mostly pushed by Axelrod to talk about her personal experience in Minnesota as the former prosecutor of Hennepin County where George Floyd was killed June 1 by a police officer.

Axelrod noted that Klobuchar, who earlier this year ended her campaign for the Democratic nomination for president, had been the county attorney for eight years before she entered national politics. He asked why police were never charged in dozens of cases involving allegations of police brutality in her county. At the time, Axelrod noted, the trend was not unusual for most county prosecutors’ offices across the U.S. Only recently, with the nationwide emergence of so-called “progressive” county prosecutors, like Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx , are police abuse cases getting serious consideration. This new generation of prosecutors are finding winning platforms with reforms they say are needed after decades of incarceration-driven practices and unfair prosecutions.

Klobuchar said that the cases she handled in Minnesota involved officer-involved shootings and deaths, while the majority of police abuse cases were handled by the city attorney.

Nevertheless, she said police received light treatment because the standard of proof required was too high. “You need a better way to bring these cases. When you change [charging requirements] from ‘necessary force’ to ‘reasonable’ force, it will make all the difference for justice,” she said.

Axelrod suggested a common problem is that many country prosecutors have an inherent conflict of interest with the police and see both their jobs as interconnected. Klobuchar said she supports bringing in independent outside prosecutors, such as the state’s attorney, involved in these cases. She also said the court system needs to acknowledge its inherent racism when dealing with prosecuting and sentencing juveniles. “The system can be wrong,” she said.

Her advice was to consider how harsh prosecutions for small offenses could damage a young person’s life — prevent them from getting a job and voting, for example. She also suggested strengthening clemency programs and pardons. “All of that allows us to not just make changes going forward with sentences, but it also allows us to look backwards, so we’re not just closing our eyes with what happened in the past,” she said.

Klobuchar and Axelrod agreed that one of the barriers to police reform is the Fraternal Order of Police and other unions that traditionally push back against proposed reforms involving local police departments.

Klobuchar said she expects “systemic change with these police unions” is around the corner. A sign, she noted, was a public statement released this week by Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest labor union, which blasted “America's long history of racism and police violence against black people.”

“That is a union. He was willing to be outspoken. You’re going to have members of other unions be strongly about that,” she said.

The inevitable question of the vice presidency came midway through the hour-long conversation when Axelrod asked if she wanted to serve under likely Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden should he make the invitation.

“I am not focusing on vice president issues. I really believe this is Joe Biden’s choice,” she said. “I know it’s not the answer you want. He’s going to decide who he picks. I have not broached it at all in any discussion. It’s up to him.”

Said Axelrod: “It’s not the answer I wanted, but it’s the right answer.”

City officials award dozens of tax incentives each year to spur new business and development and have rarely proposed undoing the agreements — until April 11, when Hilco Redevelopment Partners demolished a smokestack whose dust blanketed an adjacent neighborhood.

In a bombshell news conference Thursday, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot said that 13 Chicago police officers used a South Side congressman’s office to lounge for almost a full day June 1, when protests and looting were going on outside the door and throughout the city.

Aldermen advanced a measure Thursday aimed at accelerating the pace for restaurants to be allowed to serve diners on city sidewalks so that they can maximize business while meeting city and state health directives meant to slow the spread of Covid-19.

The CIty Council Committee on the Budget and Government Operations on Wednesday discussed the appropriation of federal funds the city has received to address the lingering Covid-19 crisis through the rest of the year.

City Budget Director Susie Park walked committee members through a list of requested appropriations for Chicago’s $1.13 billion portion of the federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act funds the city is receiving that will support eight major areas of city operation affected by the pandemic.

City licensing officials would be able to fast-track applications for restaurants and cafes to serve customers outdoors under a temporary measure set to be considered by aldermen Thursday.

The measure (O2020-2891) set to be taken up by the City Council Committee on Transportation and Public Way at its 2 p.m. meeting Thursday would empower Chicago Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection Comm. Rosa Escareño to unilaterally approve sidewalk permit applications for businesses that “meet the requirements.” That power typically falls to aldermen, who approve dozens of such permits during each meeting of the transportation committee.