Harvey needs to figure out how to continue offering public safety services

It will be interesting to see how suburban Harvey manages to keep its public safety services – as in police and fire – operating at a time when it can’t even pretend to have the money needed to pay for them.

Is Harvey really 'rising?'

Many of the financially-challenged municipalities that comprise the greater Chicago area have budgets that are primarily police and fire departments, with little else left for any of the amenities that might make for an interesting community in which a person would want to live, by choice.

BUT HARVEY HAS delved down to a lower level. It really doesn’t have money left to juggle around its budget so as to keep things running as usual.

That is why the south Cook County municipality is facing layoffs – some 18 firefighters and 13 police officers already have been let go, with more cuts likely to be made in coming days. That’s about half of the existing police and fire departments – which I’m sure already felt like they were understaffed.

Now I’m sure some people are going to think, “Who cares?” They don’t live in Harvey and may not know anyone who ever has. They may think this has little or no effect on them.

But on one level, it does. The reality is that suburban fire departments are all tied into each other. They offer assistance to each other.

Fewer officers will be wearing ...

MEANING ANY SHORTFALL in Harvey means that fire departments in surrounding areas will wind up picking up the slack. They’ll have to answer the calls for assistance that come out of Harvey, which could detract personnel who otherwise would be focusing on protecting their home communities.

I’ve already heard officials in those surrounding towns and villages say how they’re having their attorneys check into the law to see how obligated they are to respond to Harvey. Because I wouldn’t be surprised to learn Harvey figures its neighbors will fill the gap in providing firefighting services.

Meaning we’re bound to hear some accusations of selfish suburbs refusing to fulfill their end of public safety agreements. Although there are those who think it is Harvey refusing to meet its financial obligations that have brought its financial problems on itself.

... these emblems

For it seems that Illinois state government, in the form of state Comptroller Susana Mendoza, has withheld nearly $1.5 million in assorted state funds that Harvey theoretically was entitled to.

THE HARVEY POLICE Pension Fund filed a lawsuit, and a court ordered money withheld, because the city hasn’t been making the payments that ensure its future police retirees will have their retirement plans covered.

The suburb’s Fire Pension Fund is planning to take similar legal action to ensure that the city eventually provides the funding it was supposed to do.

Which, of course, means that people aligned with long-time Mayor Eric Kellogg are now more than willing to blame Mendoza for the problem, while others will say it is Kellogg who’s to blame for Harvey’s financial struggles.

If you get the impression that a situation has evolved in which everybody is blaming everybody else, and that nobody is willing to take responsibility for the very real problem that has developed, that would be the one absolute truth.

This vision of Harvey is a long-distant memory, if not fantasy for modern residents

SO WHAT’S GOING to become of this situation? I fear it will be nothing.

Because Harvey has become one of those communities that many people are more than willing to pay little attention to. They may think of it solely as the place where the one-time Dixie Square mall sat vacant for some three decades before it was finally torn down – and may be better remembered for being used in a scene from The Blues Brothers that made it look better on film than it ever did in real life.

Harvey has become a community where some people can talk about a history in which it was an intriguing blue-collar community, but one that has devolved in recent decades to the point where modern-day residents have no recollection of “the good ol’ days.”

They think a community lacking in the basic services that usually define “quality of life” is the norm. In which case, they may think the lack of police and fire is somehow acceptable. Which is the saddest commentary of all.

  -30-

EXTRA: Pop tax falls flat, while judicial temperaments soar sky high

Friday was the day that the Cook County tax on sweetened beverages (a.k.a., the pop tax) came to an end. With it being a new fiscal year for county government, a new budget takes over the finances.

Cost declines 21 cents

And this is the budget that made some $200 million in spending cuts to replace the revenues that were expected to be raised during Fiscal 2018 through pop sales.

A GREAT MANY people are trying to pass off the county’s action to rescind the tax as some heroic measure by which the Cook County Board listened to the electorate and took away that tax of 1 penny per ounce.

Which usually boosted the price of one of those plastic pop bottles by about 21 cents.

But there are those who are upset by the fact that the entities that comprise Cook County government got their spending cut. One of those is Chief Judge Timothy Evans (remember back when he was supposed to be Harold Washington’s successor, but wound up losing to Richard M. Daley?)

Evans is suing Cook County government, and in fact a hearing was held Friday on that lawsuit – although Friday’s hearing which will resume Tuesday was on the merits of bringing in a judge from outside of Cook County to preside over the case.

EVANS CONTENDS THE Cook County Board has no legal authority to cut employees from the courts payroll. He wants some 100 people restored to his payroll, and the county to find somewhere else to cut the $26 million it contemplated whacking from his portion of the county budget.

EVANS: Suing his own home county

Although county officials argue that the cuts they made to balance out the Cook County budget for Fiscal 2018 does not impact any front-line employees of the state’s attorney or public defender’s offices.

This is likely to be an ongoing argument. So for any of you who thought that the issue was resolved by reducing the cost of a bottle of pop back to previous tax levels, you appear seriously misguided.

And for what it’s worth, I’ve heard from some potential voters who say they admire county board President Toni Preckwinkle for at least trying to find a solution that didn’t involve cuts in government services.

PRECKWINKLE: She tried!

I DON’T KNOW exactly how this will all be resolved in the end – other than to say there are bound to be a few individuals for whom essential services wind up being whacked at in the name of balanced budgeting.

Just something to think about when you get all excited about saving 21 cents on a pop bottle – or 64 cents on those two-liter jugs some people like to buy!

  -30-

Cook: Somebody must pay pop tax

Cook County Board officials estimate that some $17 million in revenue was lost during the month of July – which is when the courts considered legal actions that challenged the legitimacy of the penny-per-ounce tax on pop and other sweetened beverages.
 

Must be vintage if bottle only a dime

So now that the courts have ruled that the pop tax has legal legitimacy, county officials are talking about forcing someone to cough up the amount of cash they were denied during July.

SPECIFICALLY, THE COUNTY has filed a lawsuit against the Illinois Retail Merchants Association – one of the groups that was supportive of the effort by anti-tax activists to challenge the legitimacy of a pop tax.

The one that was supposed to raise some $67.5 million through the rest of 2017, and another $200 million for the 2018 fiscal year that begins Dec. 1.

Money they insist is needed by the county if its budget is to come out balanced in the end.

So losing a month’s worth of revenue is a significant loss to the county, so much so that it wants to file the legal action that many see as purely punitive towards any group that would dare speak out against the county.

PERSONALLY, I DON’T expect the county ever will get any money from this lawsuit of theirs. I think it is more of an intimidation tactic.

As in when one considers that when a Cook County judge last week handed down the ruling that upheld the pop tax’ legitimacy, the retail merchants association made a point of saying it was “weighing our legal options,” then earlier this week filed their own appeal of Judge Daniel Kubasiak’s ruling.

One that was meant to get an appeals court to strike down the pop tax once again.

 

PRECKWINKLE: Willing to fight for pop tax

I suspect that when their appeals disappear, the county’s lawsuit against the association will also wither away.

SUCH TACTICS MAY be strong-arm tactics that border on intimidation – although to tell you the truth, it’s not like business-oriented groups such as the association aren’t capable of deploying their own collection of goons to try to intimidate government entities into going along with their demands.

But then again, I’m also waiting to see what becomes of the 300 or so county employees who were laid off from their jobs last month due to the financial shortfall caused by temporarily losing the county pop tax.

County officials weren’t exactly quick to say when those people would be restored to the payroll – which as far as I’m concerned is a sleazier move than any tax hike being imposed on people who just feel compelled to have their dose of a carbonated beverage as part of their daily sugar intake.

Perhaps this particular tax just doesn’t offend me much because it is for a product that we choose to enjoy, or can decide to do without. And realize that sentence was just written by someone who enjoys an occasional Coca-Cola. Although I also have been making my own effort during the past year to reduce the amount of pop I consume.

WE COULD CONTINUE to engage in a back-and-forth battle over the pop tax. Or maybe we could move on to issues of true significance instead of fighting over the resulting price increase.

Pop tax couldn't wind up here, could it?

Because the reality is that nothing costs the same as it used to. Everything is more expensive these days. Remember it wasn't long ago that gasoline cost less than $1 per gallon?!?

Yes, the idea of having to pay an extra 20 cents for that single-serve bottle of pop ($1.89 at a Walgreens, the last time I bought one) kind of stinks. It makes me think of when I was a young child some 45 years ago having to accompany my mother to a neighborhood laundromat and being allowed to buy myself a pop from the vending machine for about 20 cents.

As in the total price – not just the tax added on! I find that price hike much more offensive.

  -30-

Saving jobs? Or cheap pop!

Are we really on the verge of putting some 1,100 people out-of-work because we want to keep the price of pop and other sweetened drinks as low as possible?
 

Is this worth 20 more cents?

That’s the line of logic being offered up by Cook County government these days, where officials say layoff notices will have to be issued in coming days to a significant number of county employees.

THAT IS BECAUSE the penny per ounce tax increase on the carbonated drinks too many of us consume at too high a rate has been stalled by the courts, meaning it can’t be charged and Cook County government can forget (for now, at least) about raising the revenue it mentally had already spent to maintain its operations.

For the record, the county was expecting some $67.5 million for the rest of their fiscal year (through Nov. 30) and more than $200 million for the next fiscal year – which begins Dec. 1.

That’s a big hole to suddenly have crop up in the budget. I can see where county officials would be dismayed at the various restraining orders that have prevented them from charging the penny per ounce fee they wanted to start collecting back on July 1.

Those restraining orders, as of now, run through July 21 – at which time there will be more hearings in the Cook County Circuit Court and a judge could eventually issue an order that strikes down the pop tax outright.

 

Will county government services need to be cut?

NOW AS ONE who has experienced the “wonders” (sarcasm most definitely intended) of job layoffs, I’m not thrilled about the idea of any worker being let go for any reason – particularly one that isn’t their fault.

But I also don’t doubt that many people aren’t terribly sympathetic to the idea of the county wanting to preserve its operations – which some may have their own ideological hang-ups about in thinking have grown too big.

If you really are the type of person who thinks it’s a good thing that the county will have fewer workers, I’ll say you’re a cold-hearted person.

Having a pop not the same experience of old

But there may be those who view the tax bills they’re already paying and figure they don’t like the idea of paying one penny more.

WHICH IS WHY the notion of this particular pop tax being only one cent per ounce may sound terrible. Besides, that’s about a 20-cent increase in the typical plastic bottle of pop meant to evoke the image of the old glass Coca-Cola bottles we all used to drink from.

And as for the 2-liter bottles that are all so popular, that’s another 65 cents added to the price.

Personally, I don’t that’s overly excessive – although I’ll also admit that I have been making an effort during the past year to reduce the total amount of carbonated beverages I consume.

I still enjoy an occasional Coke, but have to admit to finding ice water equally refreshing, Maybe I’m just getting boring in my old age.

BUT SERIOUSLY, IT would not be the worst thing in the world if people would think twice about the amount of carbonation they feel the need to consume. Which, if you think about it honestly, can create a gassy condition that can’t possibly be good for any of us.

If you think I’m somehow trivializing this issue, keep in mind that this is the essence of all the legalese that eventually will be spewed in open court as attorneys argue on the merits of the county being able to use a pop tax as a revenue-raising source.

At some point, a judge is going to have to decide on the merits of carbonated beverages in general, and the right of an individual to have a Coke (and a smile, according to the old jingle) for as cheap a price as possible.

Is that really a right? In order to properly express my thoughts on that concept, I’d have to guzzle down a Coke or two in order to get the proper tone to my belch!

  -30-

An ugly scene from the companies we rely on for significant information

It’s not a pretty scene these days when it comes to the companies that we rely upon (even if we try to ignore that reality) for the information we have about our society.

How many people are going to think that shirt is worth more than the information contained in the news boxes? Photograph by Gregory Tejeda

 

The Tribune Co. issued financial reports about the 240 jobs it cut companywide during the summer quarter of 2013 (a fact that the Chicago Sun-Times felt compelled to tell us), while Tribune corporate-types admit there will be more cuts early in 2014.

THOSE ARE GOING to hit the Chicago Tribune itself, including the editorial staff – which can only claim to be the largest newspaper staff in the Midwestern U.S. because everybody else has also cut themselves in cost-saving measures.

Not that the Sun-Times (which usually is the best source for information about Tribune Co. that they don’t want told) ought to gloat.

There have been hints that the Sun-Times will engage in similar cuts to its editorial staff early next year – hints taken seriously enough by the Chicago Newspaper Guild that they have already threatened to file a lawsuit against the company on the grounds that the staff has already been whittled down to the bone marrow.

Then, there was the report this week from Robert Feder (the one-time Sun-Times media writer who now operates his own weblog loosely affiliated with the Tribune).

A chance to rebuild itself?

THE SUN-TIMES IS so anxious to come up with cash to help prop up the overall company that they’re considering selling off at least some of the suburban newspapers that they purchased in recent decades to strengthen the company. 

 

According to Feder, the Herald-News of Joliet is likely to be the first put on the auction block. Which might be for the best in Will County (the part of suburbia that is growing faster than any other part of the metro area).

Soon to be No. 1 again (even if it already was)

If they could get an ownership willing to invest in the publication and its website and other potential information distribution forums that we can’t even dream about yet, the Herald-News could again become a significant means of getting quality information about Joliet and its surrounding communities.

 

Because now, the Herald-News produces a few stories that also appear in the Sun-Times and its other suburban papers. Which is why it’s not totally ridiculous to think of the publications as one multiple-edition newspaper – the basis of all the claims in recent years that the Sun-Times actually has a larger daily circulation than the Tribune.

ACTUALLY, IT MUST be bad for the Sun-Times these days. Because if they’re willing to give up the claim to the Herald-News circulation as being part of their own, it means that their collective circulation is likely to drop behind that of the Tribune.

They won’t be able to make the “We’re Number One!” claim that anybody with sense knew was ridiculous. They’ll go back to being Number Two.

Although considering how scrawny the Sun-Times has become despite having all these other publications on hand to prop it up, it probably doesn’t matter.

This whole situation could turn out to be beneficial to Joliet, if it means they get a better news source. Although I wonder if the whole Sun-Times experience has scraped them dry of any assets that could be used to bolster themselves.

ALL IN ALL, not a pleasant business situation – one in which some people take a little too much pleasure. Such as the Illinois Review – an ideologically-based website that seemed Tuesday to take a little too much pleasure in these facts.

Personally, it reinforces my belief that most people aren’t going to appreciate what is being lost until it’s gone and cannot be recovered.

I know too many people who claim they NEVER read the Chicago papers anymore. Then, when they show me the websites that they say have “replaced” the papers, they’re loaded up with stories that originated in the Sun-Times and Tribune.

I’m skeptical the Illinois Review could come up with stories of its own if it didn’t have other peoples’ work to feed off of. There’s only so much that one can get without a real-live full-time reporter doing their work – especially if you’re of the type whose objections to “liberal media” (a concept that really is a myth) are that they’re not spinning everything to your limited viewpoint!

  -30-

We love him, we love him not; what do we really think of Rahm Emanuel?

It was quite a way to start the working portion of my day Wednesday – stepping off a Metra commuter train at the LaSalle Street station to hear a chant echoing off in the distance.


Chicago was kept safe Wednesday from angry schoolteachers. Photograph by Gregory Tejeda

And as I walked up Clark Street (headed to the Daley Center courthouse for an unrelated event), their chant became clearer and clearer – Hey, hey. Ho, ho. Rahm Emanuel’s got to go!

YES, IT WAS the lovely batch of individuals from the Chicago Teachers Union, picketing the Chicago Public Schools offices before marching to the Thompson Center state government building (passing City Hall in the process) to let it be known they think it stinks that some 3,000 people (including more than 1,000 teachers) are about to be laid off.

The public schools system has financial problems, just like many other governmental units these days. The raw numbers for the Chicago system sound larger because the system itself is bigger.

More kids than any other school system. So they need more teachers.

So 1,000 Chicago teachers is probably the equivalent of some rural school district having to let a dozen people go.

IT HURTS! PARTICULARLY since many of those who teach in the Chicago Public Schools system have some sort of special dedication to education as a profession. Otherwise, they wouldn’t put up with the constant grief they are subjected to – and which they expressed publicly on Wednesday.

EMANUEL: Not the 'man of the hour'

Personally, the part of Wednesday’s protests that caught my attention was the police presence. That block was likely the safest place in Chicago in the morning hours.

I can’t help but think those officers could have been put to better use had they not been sent to a morning assignment that basically amounted to them standing around watching while school teachers picketed and chanted extremely off-key.

Then again, those officers probably felt a bit safer. Would they really have to venture off to assignments where they’d have to encounter real criminals? Or does someone really think that schoolteachers expressing their discontent with their treatment are criminal in nature?

NOT THAT ANY of this is new in nature. It was just this weekend that I picked up a copy of The Nation magazine – which featured on its cover an essay about the level of outrage that exists in Chicago toward “Rahm Emanuel’s austerity agenda.”

Which really is nothing more than Emanuel bringing his hard-headed tactics from his days in Congress and as White House chief of staff to City Hall.

This is the man who had organized labor and Latino ethnic groups suspicious of him because of the perception he didn’t really care about their issues, and wasn’t about to let their concerns hijack his own priorities.

Now, we can add the Chicago Teachers Union to the list of people who don’t have much use for Emanuel. Although I suspect Rahm himself prefers to look at it as gaining the support of people who’d prefer that the teachers union would just “Drop Dead!”

SO WHERE DOES Emanuel turn for some lovin’, or at the very least, someone who won’t publicly detest him?

About the only place that was willing to respect him on Wednesday was at City Hall. For the mayor on Wednesday made public his choice of a replacement for retiring 33^rd Ward Alderman Dick Mell.

Emanuel, after using a process he created to accept applications and review the qualifications of a dozen finalists, went along with Mell’s desire that his daughter, Deborah, get the post.

No one who pays attention to City Hall on a regular basis was shocked by the choice. In fact, the only real surprise would have been if anybody BUT Deb Mell had got the post.

BECAUSE THAT WOULD have been a sure-fire way to trigger a political brawl, since Dick Mell remains the Democratic ward committeeman and would have made life uncomfortable for any Emanuel-chosen alderman not named “Deb Mell.”

Along with the alderman himself.

And Emanuel has enough enemies these days without needing to accumulate any more.

  -30-

People won’t realize until too late that quality costs more, but also means more

I managed to miss the gathering of a couple dozen people who picketed briefly this week outside the Tribune Tower to express their disgust with the very notion that the billionaire (and highly ideological) Koch brothers could wind up as the new owners of the Chicago Tribune.

But while I don’t doubt the Kochs would do funky things with the content of our city’s larger newspaper (I don’t buy into the concocted math that the Chicago Sun-Times uses to claim it is bigger), I think those people who are concerned about the quality of the news reports we get ought to be more concerned about what’s happening these days at the one-time “Bright One.”

AS I WRITE this, I’m still trying to accept the Sun-Times’ announcement that it found another 20 to 30 people it can lay off from their jobs – the Chicago Sun-Times no longer employs photographers.

Which strikes the historian in me as ironic in that one of the Sun-Times predecessors (the Daily Times created in the 1920s) billed itself as the first Chicago newspaper to rely heavily on photographs to tell the news.

Not that there won’t be photographs in the Sun-Times. The newspaper (along with its websites and any other products the Wrapports company decides to create) says it will rely on freelance photographers, along with the possibility of its news reporters being expected to take a camera of sorts with them to assignments.

A reporter trying to comprehend the intricacies of public policy so as to explain it properly to the public will have to take pauses in their mental process to snap a picture.

AND IF THEY wind up having to spend too much time getting that exact right shot, they’re likely to miss details.

Trust me when I say that it is going to impact the quality of images in the newspaper/website/whatever, it will hurt the reporting as well.

I write this knowing full well that I am not capable of doing both, and I know I’m not unique. I realize there are some professional newspeople who can point to times in their careers where they worked for publications that expected them to do double duty.

But that is evidence of the fact those people worked for cheap publications – ones that were small-staffed enough because they didn’t expect to publish anything of any substance.

SOMEHOW, I DOUBT that the Sun-Times’ key to financial success is to publish a less substantial newspaper – which would lead to less substantial websites and other information-oriented products.

Because the reality of our news is that while an increasing number of people may want to read their stories on the Internet, the websites that are the most highly-read are the ones that are affiliated with existing newspapers or television stations or other newsgathering outfits.

They are the ones that can reappropriate the content for the Internet. And in cases where they first publish a breaking story on the website, it can be updated and rewritten for the following day’s newspaper.

Which can result in better copy – except in cases where editors think the printed word is supposed to be less substantial than what turns up on the website.

I DON’T DOUBT that some, if not most, of the freelance photographers the Sun-Times winds up relying upon will be the same individuals who were, until Thursday, gainfully employed by the newspaper.

Some of them may even draw so many assignments that the amount of money in their paychecks will be about the same as they were taking home before. But freelancers don’t get the benefits or job security that usually inspires an employee to take his company’s product seriously.

What this all comes down to is an attempt to reduce the budget by not having to cover health insurance benefits. Because these workers are now going to have to figure out how to get themselves coverage.

Which means that it would be a heck of a lot of nerve on the Sun-Times’ part if they take up the cause of ranting and raging against “Obama-care,” because they’re adding to the number of uninsured who will have to take advantage of federal benefits – all so they can try to bolster their financial bottom line.

  -30-

Does “Sox Park” need a new name?

U.S. Cellular is destined to become that big, bulky building where the Chicago White Sox play, rather than an actual business entity with a strong Chicago presence.

Will the name atop the scoreboard change  soon?



For it seems that the company is cutting back its Chicago operations significantly. Crain’s Chicago Business used its website Wednesday to report that while the corporate headquarters will remain within our city limits, there won’t be much else here.

THE COMPANY IS selling off its customers in several markets, including Chicago, to Sprint Nextel Corp. About 980 jobs will be cut, including 640 in the Chicago area.

Which makes me wonder how the White Sox feel at this moment – knowing they’re playing in a stadium that has been branded with the “U.S. Cellular” name. Because the Chicago Tribune reported that the name is going to remain in place, for the time being.

Now I comprehend in an intellectual sense how it doesn’t matter that the stadium is named for a company that is cutting back its local presence (not that I ever used U.S. Cellular to subscribe for cellphone service).

But it could be a matter of perception, and one in which the name becomes one of those unfortunate labels that people wish could go away.

WHAT AMUSES ME is that I remember back to 2003 when U.S. Cellular paid many millions of dollars for the rights to put their corporate identity on the building then known as New Comiskey Park.

That money was used by White Sox and state Sports Facilities Authority officials to pay for various cosmetic changes to the building that supposedly gave it more character than it had when it originally opened for the 1991 season.

Of course, it gave the building a rather “blah” kind of name. Then again, “U.S. Cellular Field” is less awkward than many of the corporate names that adorn sports stadiums these days.

It also helps that the White Sox situation hasn’t deteriorated to the point where the building name seems to change every couple of seasons. We’ve had a decade’s worth of games at U.S. Cellular Field (a.k.a., the Cell). It has kind of become a part of the ballclub’s character.

AND NOW THAT character is going to be associated with a company that isn’t interested in picking up any more business in Chicago, and is going to wind up laying off some local residents.

How many White Sox fans are going to feel a touch of repulsion at the thought of going to ballgames at a building named for the company they no longer work for? If only they could ensure that the layoffs were restricted solely to employees who root for the Chicago Cubs.

They could go chew Wrigley-brand gum while filling out forms at the state Employment Security department to collect unemployment benefits.

Nah! I don’t really mean that. Because I can’t really joke in a convincing manner about the idea of people being put out of work – particularly when the reason for making the layoffs is a corporate interest wishing to make its bottom line just a tad bit better.

BUT BACK TO the stadium identity.

While I can’t stand the idea of stadiums whose names change every few seasons (I still think of it as “Enron Field” in Houston – even though that name is ancient history, buried beyond several subsequent names), maybe it’s time for a new name for the building at 35^th Street and Shields Avenue.

I always thought the “Comiskey Park” name should have been retired with the old building that was torn down following the 1990 season. So I don’t want that one brought back.

Yet a part of me wonders if we ought to make official the long-time informal reference to the stadiums. I recall as a kid many people who would say the Cubs played at “Cubs Park” and the White Sox at “Sox Park.”

MAYBE IT’S TIME to put that moniker on the marquee of the current stadium. Make it official.

White Sox Park. Or maybe, because of the building’s scale, White Sox Stadium. It has a nice “ring” to it.

  -30-

What does a company owe somebody when they shoo them out the door?

I don’t know Pat Bruno – the long-time (and now former) restaurant critic of the Chicago Sun-Times. And I’m really not interested in writing about the way he was let go from his position at the newspaper this week.

But what catches my attention is his comment that he is upset that a higher-ranking editor, if not the publisher himself, should have been the one who gave him the word that he was no longer employed at The Bright One.

I’D SAY HE was lucky to get the human touch at all.

I still remember when my final stint with United Press International came to an end just over six years ago. I got my farewell by e-mail from an editor in Washington.

It was succinct and told me how budgets had just been hacked to pieces and how the wire service could no longer afford to pay me.

It came on an “April 1.” For an instant, I contemplated that this was somebody’s warped idea of a gag. Then I remembered that for UPI, April 1 was the beginning of the new fiscal year.

APRIL 1 TO March 31. They began a new year without me and the commentaries I had written for the wire service about so-called Latino issues for roughly the last three of the dozen years that I purported to be one of those legendary UPI men who was “at the scene” wherever in the world news was breaking.

Then again, I remember my most recent lay-off – one from a company that monitored news broadcasts across the country. I was told face-to-face that I was no longer employed from a boss that was reading from a legal script – the point of which was to get me to sign a document saying I would take an insignificant severance offer and leave without contemplating legal action.

By comparison, an April 1 e-mail seems downright humorous.

Of course, I’m sure there are many reporter-types these days who can tell even harsher stories about being let go. I have never had to deal with a situation where I was escorted out of the building by security, without even being permitted to clean out my desk of any personal possessions.

FOR THAT MATTER, people of just about any occupation who lost their spot on a payroll so that management could bolster the bottom line and pretend that their profit margin still made them a successful company.

Which makes it kind of hard for me to sympathize with anyone who feels a little bitter that they didn’t get the appropriate send-off. Join the club. What makes you think you’re entitled to a fond farewell when so many other people are getting that doorknob in their derriere as security escorts them from the building.

I couldn’t help but notice in the news coverage of Bruno’s departure from the Sun-Times that he says, “I wasn’t expecting roses at my feet, …”

Actually, I’m surprised they didn’t hand him a bouquet of roses – thorns first so that he sticks himself in the process.

SO AS I wrote before, Join the Club! Here’s hoping that Bruno figures out a way to keep himself occupied while also managing to bring in bits of income – just as many people have managed to do with themselves in recent years.

In my case, it is publishing this weblog and its sister site, The South Chicagoan, as well as doing some work for one of the suburban daily newspapers (that in my busiest weeks can match my old full-time weekly income but in my worst weeks seems reminiscent of my old $190-a-week pay at the now-defunct City News Bureau of Chicago) and writing the occasional free-lance feature elsewhere.

I joke that I have become a literary prostitute. I write for whoever is interested in publishing me. I do it for the money.

And when I write for this site, I do it for the fun of keeping up with the news cycle while also asserting my presence in the public realm (which is probably about as insignificant a speck as Planet Earth is in the overall scheme of the Universe).

IF I’M REALLY going to have to endure a professional life of no security and erratic pay, I might as well do work that I personally enjoy and see a point to.

Which might be the best advice I could offer anyone who is enduring these days a stint of collecting unemployment benefits – just like a former editor of mine who himself wound up losing out on his job just last week.

  -30-

Obama the real target of GOP’s Senate unemployment extension opposition

It has been four years since I last collected a check for unemployment benefits. Yet the flow of emotions is coming back to me as I prepare to sit back and watch to see just how the U.S. Senate will behave Tuesday with regards to the issue.

My own employment history became erratic during the past decade, as I twice have had job layoffs that resulted in my being eligible for unemployment.

SO I CAN comprehend how people feel who are stuck in a position where they have to rely on those biweekly checks for a few hundred dollars at a time, just so they can have a little bit of cash to pay some bills. In short, what unemployment does is helps to avert a person going broke financially at those times when they lose their jobs for whatever reason.

In my case, I had employers both times who decided that their own profit margins would be greater if they didn’t have to cover the cost of my salary or any kind of health insurance benefit. The apologies (so to speak) of how my talents on the job would be missed didn’t overcome that bitter sentiment.

As things worked out for me, I had two different experiences when I went for unemployment. Or should I say, when unemployment ran out. For that is the situation political people will be asked to confront when the issue comes up in the Senate to extend the amount of time that a person can receive such benefits.

My first time, I received new paying work literally at the exact time that my “benefits” ran out. In fact, it worked out that because of the delay from when one verifies they need a check and when it is received, I literally got to cash my last unemployment check at the exact same time that I cashed my first partial paycheck from the “new” job I wound up getting – a job that was part-time and which eventually disappeared in its own right.

I LATER MANAGED to land a full-time job – one that was not news-oriented. Technically, I got out of the news business for a year-and-a-half. That job disappeared due to layoffs – and that time, I wasn’t so lucky.

When my time came for benefits to run out, I could cite several rejections for full-time work, but no offers.

So what I am saying is that I know first-hand what it feels like to get a job in the nick of time, and also to have benefits run out and not have a clue where the next bit of income will come from.

To use a euphemism from my junior high school days, “It reeks.”

EVENTUALLY, I LINED up my current employment situation, which consists of a part-time job with a newspaper that throws a lot of work my way, occasional checks for the work I do in publishing this weblog and its sister site, and occasional other assignments that pay bits of cash.

It is not a large income, but it beats unemployment. Or more accurately, it beats having one’s unemployment benefits run out.

Of course, I’m sure that some political people – especially those of the Republican persuasion – want me to pipe down. The last thing they want to hear is from people who are going to be expected to keep paying their bills, even though they have been unable to find work significant enough to cover one’s expenses, so to speak.

If anything, I can identify with those people who, admittedly, were used by President Barack Obama on Monday to try to drum up political support for the bill pending in the Senate that would extend the amount of time that benefits can be received.

IT MAY BE political, but then again, it is no less blatant than the opposition being generated by those politicians who want to represent interests that want to believe anyone who loses their job must have done something to warrant such action.

That is a shallow attitude to have, yet it is one that is too common. Recently, a broadcaster whom I used to know personally when I lived/worked in Springfield, Ill., put on his Facebook “wall” as his status, “ … if you are out of work for more than a year, maybe the problem is you …”

I don’t doubt that my “friend” (who now works in radio in Indianapolis, along with a few, varied part-time jobs, as I understand) seriously believes that, or that he isn’t alone in having such thoughts.

What is ridiculous is the thought that anybody would seriously rather have unemployment benefits rather than work. Because I remember the size of the checks I would receive back when I collected them. They weren’t for much money.

NOBODY GETS RICH collecting unemployment.. Everybody has to scale back their lives significantly – some people more than others.

I still remember the second time I collected unemployment, I was eligible for about $260 per week, for up to 26 weeks. I would have complained about that amount, except that I remember I was filling out my application alongside a woman who was trying to support two children on a crummy-paying job, then lost it. I still recall she was eligible for barely over $100 per week (because of how little her last job that laid her off had paid).

I accept that many politicians (who have jobs) are going to vote agaisnt the extension on Tuesday. In fact, the partisanship is so intense that Democrats are forced to wait to vote on the extension bill until after Carte Goodwin is formally sworn in as senator from West Virginia – to prevent the issue from failing due to a filibuster.

The bottom line is that we will hear a lot of rhetoric Tuesday about high-minded ideals. In reality, it is nothing but cheap politicking – at a time when we have some people suffering significantly in this time of economic struggles.

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A DAY IN THE LIFE (of Chicago): $845?

I couldn’t help but laugh earlier this week when I saw that figure. It is the grand total of campaign contributions received by Sen. Roland Burris, D-Ill., during the first three months of this year.

A lot of people have been hitting hard the other figure that came out concerning Burris – the notion that 62 percent view him unfavorably and do not want him to run for re-election. That figure doesn’t concern me much. I would be shocked if it weren’t so high, considering how all the public talk about Burris has focused on the means by which he got the Senate appointment.

BUT BURRIS, WHOSE ego historically has been so bloated that I can’t believe he doesn’t view himself as a legitimate candidate for a full six-year Senate term in the 2010 elections, has to be shuddering at the thought of that latter figure.

Adding a grand total of $845 to his campaign fund means that he is irrelevant to the people who are considering opening up their checkbooks and giving a financial jolt to the political people whom they’d be inclined to support.

I almost wish I could have been on hand at the moment that Burris himself was forced to confront that figure. It must have been devastating to him.

I can already hear the spin that the Burris people will put on this figure. It’s early. There’s still time to raise money for a political campaign that most people haven’t given much thought to yet.

THEY WOULD BE correct, to a point. It is early. The serious fundraising that will be done by the campaigns of officials who want to run for statewide office in Illinois in 2010 will be done in the later part of this year.

I expect even Burris will get some donations from people who will want to maintain the goodwill of the incumbent junior senator from Illinois. There’s no way his disclosure reports for the rest of the year will be equally pathetic.

But if Burris has any sense, he will take this pathetic joke of a campaign fund figure into account (http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/clout_st/2009/04/us-senator-roland-burris-rod-blagojevich-raises-only-845.html) and give serious thought to the concept that he’s the filler for what is left of Barack Obama’s term in the U.S. Senate – and nothing more.

About the only person who could look at this positively is Gov. Pat Quinn. He finally has a Democrat who is a worse fundraiser than himself. What else is in the news along the shores of Lake Michigan?

THERE IS NO NEW ROYKO: How far have the voices of Chicago journalism sunk? I can’t help but think it must be pretty low, since Jimmy Breslin has signed a contract to write (http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6652274.html) a book about our now impeached-and-indicted Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

Not that I have any problem with the work of Breslin, who wrote his columns for four decades for just about every New York newspaper except the Times. I used to enjoy them, and forgive him for his final column that got everybody’s hopes up by predicting a John Kerry victory in the ’04 presidential election.

But the idea of a New Yorker being used to tell a story of Chicago and Illinois political matters is galling. I’d like to think that one of this city’s columnists who routinely pontificate on such issues ought to be capable of producing what should be the “definitive’ Blagojevich book (since his own tome is going to be little more than an attempt at revisionism).

Just think of how embarrassing it would have been for this city that likes to think it has a literary character in its working class roots if “Boss” (the Richard J. Daley story) were written by someone other than Mike Royko?

WHO’S LEFT IN THE NEWSROOMS?: The Chicago newspapers lived up this week to one of the long-lasting traditions of competitive journalism – if you want to learn about the business operations of a newspaper, you have to read the competition.

The Chicago Sun-Times couldn’t help but come off as gloating as they reported the story (http://www.suntimes.com/business/1525005,CST-FIN-trib14.article) that the competing Chicago Tribune was preparing for yet another round of layoffs, including some of the editorial talent that attempts to make the publication worth reading.

In all, the Tribune prepares to let some 90 people know they no longer have gainful employment. It comes at a time when Tribune Co. CEO Sam Zell goes around publicly saying his purchase of the media company was “a mistake.”

Yet leave it to the Tribune to engage in a sense of payback in reporting that the Sun-Times News Group is doing its own layoffs to reduce the payroll by 15 percent. None of those (http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-sun-times-layoffs-apr17,0,4201502.story) are Sun-Times people. The newly unemployed are the journalists (including some high-ranking editors) who staff the suburban newspapers that likely would be doing respectably financially if they weren’t tied into the morass that has become the Sun-Times.

WHERE’S LISA DERGAN?: Scott Podsednik, the base-stealer who hit the Game 2 winning home run of the 2005 World Series (I still have the Sports Illustrated cover of him swinging the bat just after at the moment of impact with the ball), is now a Charlotte Knight.

Which of course means that he’s back in the Chicago White Sox organization, and could wind up playing ball on the South Side if the Sox’ center field options all fizzle out.

The hope is that he gets sharp playing a few games for the Sox’ International League affiliate. Not that he’s done too much thus far. As of Friday night, he was hitting .125 (http://www.minorleaguebaseball.com/milb/stats/stats.jsp?n=Scott%20Podsednik&pos=&sid=t494&t=p_pbp&pid=325392) with two strikeouts in two games.

On the one hand, if Podsednik actually winds up getting called up to the White Sox, it would mean the on-field activity is pretty sad. But it could also be cheery to the U.S.
Cellular Field ambiance if Podsednik brings Miss July 1998 (a.k.a., his wife http://www.lisadergan.com/) to Chicago for the summer.

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