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| LIGHTFOOT: Will she be the boss? |
Meaning
its supposed to be the 50 members of the City Council who really dictate policy
with the mayor being an administrative figurehead. A notion that is hilarious
in that we usually expect our mayors to behave like political bosses and the
aldermen merely serving as “rubber stamps” who sign off on what the mayor tells
them to.
BUT
IT SEEMS that we may get a change in the way our city government operates.
Lori
Lightfoot will begin on Monday the four-year term to which she was elected last
month. She’s already made it clear what her priority will be – she wants to do
away with the concept of aldermanic privilege.
That
concept is one of the underlying principles under which our city has operated
for decades. It’s the one that says that when it comes to zoning issues and
development that relate to a specific ward, the judgment of the alderman is to
reign supreme.
If
an alderman wants a project to be developed in his/her ward, the other aldermen
are expected to side with his/her desires. It gives the aldermen that little
bit of power that encourages them to go along with the desires of the mayor on
larger-scale issues.
CONSIDERING
THAT MANY aldermen think the neighborhood issues are the reason for their
existence, it reinforces the idea that they’re political “bosses” within their
own wards.
But
Lightfoot made it clear throughout her campaign for mayor she hates the idea of
aldermanic privilege. She sees it as aldermen acting like mini-dictators.
Not
so much that they stand in the way of projects that would provide serious
development to Chicago. But that it encourages aldermen to behave in ways that
require business interests to cater to political whims.
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| How hectic will things get at 'da Hall' Photo by Gregory Tejeda |
ALMOST
AS THOUGH aldermanic privilege is nothing more than legalization of political
bribery – a concept that the one-time federal prosecutor in Lightfoot finds
abhorrent.
It’s
almost like she’s still thinking like a member of the U.S. attorney’s office in
saying she wants to go after the source of so much aldermanic power and influence.
Lightfoot
has said her first order as mayor will be one that eliminates the concept of
aldermanic privilege. She says that the aldermen are going to have to think of
the needs of the city as a whole.
She
also points out that, having won a majority of the vote in all 50 wards, she
thinks that’s evidence she has the public’s support – and that many people will
be inclined to think that aldermanic objections to losing their privilege is
just a matter of being deprived a perk they should never have had to begin
with.
BUT
ALDERMEN AREN’T about to give up their influence so quickly. We may wind up
seeing them go out of their way to remind Lightfoot who the “boss” of Chicago
politics truly is.
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| New friend in Ivanka? Photo provided by White House |
Things
could get ugly, particularly after Tuesday, when Lightfoot is expected to meet
with the council to discuss the aldermanic privilege concept in greater detail.
It
may wind up being that the aldermen need some consoling to get them to pipe
down with their objections. Because it seems some aldermen are upset that much of
Lightfoot’s recent mayor-elect activity has focused on trying to win over the
enthusiasm of the D.C. crowd instead of catering to the aldermen. That
photograph of 5-foot, 1-inch Lightfoot being towered over by 5-foot, 11-inch
presidential daughter Ivanka Trump really turned off a whole lot of Chicago
political people.
Because
no matter how much Lightfoot wants to assert her authority over ego-overblown
aldermen, she’s going to have to remember how much she’ll need them if she’s
going to accomplish much of anything on issues – while Ivanka probably won’t
have much of anything to say the next time that Donald Trump feels compelled to
utter another of his tweets-from-a-twit against the concept of Chicago.
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