“Stealth” Daley? An “advisor?” Or just a guy who likes to sleep in his own bed

You ask the typical person about the name “Daley,” and you’re probably going to get a lot of cheap rhetoric about Richard.

Cook County Commissioner John Daley at "work" with his South Side county board colleagues. Photograph by Gregory Tejeda

 

The real old among us will go back to “J.” While the bulk of us will be more likely to think of “M.,” as in the son who actually wound up surpassing his father’s stint as longest-serving mayor by just over a year.

FOR THOSE OF us who like to think we’re a little more politically astute, we’ll probably bring up William – the Daley son (and brother) who has been a presidential cabinet member (under Bill Clinton) and chief of staff (under Barack Obama).

He even likes to talk periodically about how he’d like to run for governor – even though he never seems to have the will to actually put together a campaign and run for the post on Election Day.

It’s only the most hard-core of parochial political geeks who will bring up John.

Yet he was the one who was celebrated on Tuesday.

FOR JOHN DALEY is the political person who serves on the Cook County Board – representing the Southwest Side and some surrounding suburban portions. And now, he’s been in that position for 20 years.

The county board on Tuesday gave Daley the political equivalent of a “surprise party.” They put together a resolution praising him, and arranged for his family to be present – all without him knowing (although he admits he should have suspected something when he saw his wife and daughter leave the house early on Tuesday).

Which led them to give him an emotional shock, then partake in an endless round of “debate” that seemed to be a competition amongst county board members to see who could plant the biggest rhetorical smooch on the Daley cheek.

Personally, I got a kick out of Commissioner Larry Suffredin, of suburban Evanston, calling him the “stealth Daley.”

WHICH IS TRUE enough. His political brothers are the ones who tend to make it onto the front pages. Plus the fact that Cook County government often gets ignored when it comes to the public perception. Everybody seems more interested in what happens on the west side of the block-sized building that houses City Hall AND the county government.

But hanging on to a county board post for two decades (and presiding over the board’s finance committee for 18 of them) is a way to get familiar with the gritty details of how government works.

Where the bodies are buried, so to speak. Although I’m not implying that Daley has buried any of them.

Some got amusement from the irony of listening to Commissioner William Beavers (from the far Southeast Side and suburbs such as Calumet City), who faces criminal indictment these days on federal tax charges.

BEAVERS IS THE one who claims the only reason he’s being prosecuted is because he refused to wear a wiretap for federal investigators to gain evidence against John Daley himself.

On Tuesday, Beavers offered up a brief “congratulations” for enduring the “back and forth” of 20 years at the county building, to which Daley quipped back, “You always try to advise me.”

Personally when I regard the Daley political people, I realize that they’re hard-core Democratic Party types. But I have also realized that these aren’t flaming liberals – no matter what trash-talk the ideologues try to spew.

Which is why I thought it accurate of Commissioner Timothy Schneider of suburban Elk Grove Village to say, “Your left toe leans a little bit right. You always try to reach a compromise on issues.”

PERSONALLY, I FIRST dealt with Daley back at the beginning of my stint as a Statehouse reporter in Springfield – he was still in the Illinois state Senate representing the Bridgeport neighborhood and surrounding communities.

He admits his wife has enjoyed having him back in Chicago, rather than having to live part-time each year in the Illinois capital city.

Although that desire to be “back home” seems to be why John Daley has never sought the higher political offices that his brothers aspired to.

As Daley put it himself on Tuesday why he didn’t run for higher office, “I enjoy sleeping in my own bed.”

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EXTRA: When “present” means “yes”

I once had an editor-type person whose hard-and-fast rule was to tell us reporter-types that a “present” vote is the same as a “no” vote.

FRITCHEY: Opposes political "plums"



After all, the number of “yes” votes it takes to approve something doesn’t change. A “present” vote does not add to the “yes” column. So it is just a weasel-ish way for political people to avoid taking a hard stand on an issue.

WHILE I AGREE with that particular editor’s concept that political people are capable of behaving in a weasel-ly manner, it seems that “present” doesn’t always mean “no.”

For the Cook County Board on Wednesday literally gave us an instance where “present” meant “yes” without actually having to take the embarrassment that a “yes” vote would have caused in this particular circumstance.

The specific instance was a measure meant to cut the compensation provided to the county’s Zoning Board of Appeals – which oversees zoning matters in unincorporated parts of Cook County.

The measure passed, but there was one part of it that failed – the idea that individual zoning board members should be limited to $20,000 per year for their work rather than the $12,000 limit that other such boards get.

THE IDEA WAS that the zoning board usually has more meetings in a given year, and should get more overall (even though the base of $500 per member per meeting would be applied to all appointees – regardless of board).

SCHNEIDER: Changing a "Y" to a "P"



In the end, the county rejected the $20,000 limit and went with the $12,000 limit – even though some said that might mean the zoning board would hold fewer hearings; which would require some people to travel farther to have their issues dealt with.

That $20,000 limit had five supporters and nine critics, with one county commissioner (Joan Patricia Murphy of suburban Crestwood) voting “present.”

Yet once the clerk announced the 5-9 vote, two of the commissioners who spoke out in favor of a $20,000 limit suddenly said they wanted their votes changed to “present.”

IT SEEMS THEY don’t want to be on the losing side of an issue. They probably didn’t want some future opponent concocting some nonsense campaign ad saying they voted to pay more money for positions that, by their own admission, were “political plums” used to reward friends.

BUTLER: The Iceman becomes Mr. Pro-bono?



So the vote went into the books as a 3-9 vote, with three others present. John Fritchey, D-Chicago, and Timothy Schneider, R-Elk Grove Village, were the two last-minute changers whose “present” vote shouldn’t be taken as opposition to the idea that these political appointees probably don’t need to be relying on the county for their health insurance or any additional credits towards their eventual pension.

Although I’m convinced the most honorable individual on the county board on Wednesday might well have been Commissioner Jerry “the Iceman” Butler. For he was the one who voted against everything on the grounds that none of these positions should be salaried, or per diemed, or compensated in any way!

“Pro bono. Nada,” said the man who gave us, “For Your Precious Love,” before adding, “They should all be pro bono.”

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