Was I bought off by the White Sox?

Perhaps I have a disclosure to make – I attended Chicago White Sox Opening Days of 1998 and 1999 courtesy of the ball club.

This particular game view from the 2016 season I paid for all by myself

My brother and I went with tickets that were provided by the team as part of an effort to try to build up more good will amongst the local news media. We sat in one of those private suites whose very existence offends some sports fans, had food and beverages brought to our seats, and to his dying day my brother, Chris, thought that the dessert cart wheeled around in the seventh inning was about the most incredible thing he ever saw in a ballpark.

I BRING THIS up because I’m still not sure what to make of the Chicago Sun-Times report Wednesday about the City Council’s board of ethics, which has made it be known that aldermen will be in big trouble if they accept freebie tickets the team was willing to provide them for Opening Day this season.

It seems that while the price of the ticket is considered minimal, when mixed in with all the luxury amenities that the team was going to provide for the aldermen, it pushes the total value above the $50 standard that they’re not supposed to accept.

I kind of like the idea that the board of ethics is trying to do something to put restrictions on all the freebies and perks that pols are offered. But this is a case where I wonder if it goes too far.

Because I’d hate to think anybody could truly be “bought off” for the price of a ballgame ticket.

ALTHOUGH I’M MORE bothered by the fear that the board of ethics is going to find a lot of chicken-little perks to complain about, while doing nothing to penalize pols who take some more serious payoffs that truly influence their government activity.

Besides, I can’t help but wonder how little good will the White Sox would be obtaining in exchange for letting a few aldermen into the ballpark on Opening Day (April 3 against the Detroit Tigers).

I certainly don’t think they gained much from letting a few reporter-types into the ballpark all those years ago. In fact, I remember the dominant theme of the stories that resulted from those Opening Days was how they had less-than-capacity crowds in attendance.

They let us in for free, and we still wound up finding ways to ding them.

IN MY CASE, I was working for United Press International back then. My then-editor and I actually wrote a column of trivial and gossipy tidbits that caught somebody’s eye.

Hence, our invitation, which my editor had no interest in using. Which is how I wound up getting both of the freebie tickets and taking my brother along.

He wasn’t a White Sox fan, but enjoyed baseball enough that the thought of a live game wasn’t repulsive to him. Particularly since he got to experience the more luxurious amenities of the ballpark now known as Guaranteed Rate Field.

But did I really do something unethical by taking a freebie pair of tickets from the team? I’m sure the board of ethics would argue I’m not an elected official, but might claim the act itself is unproper.

I JUST CAN’T help but think somebody is overthinking this issue way too much.

Although I do admire those aldermen who said they turned down a political perk and went ahead and bought their own tickets for the games on Opening Day.

Actually, the whole situation reminds me of that wisecracking joke reporter-type people often tell about bribes and people trying to influence our news coverage with little gifts.

The mark of a truly professional reporter, we’d joke, is that we take their payoff, then still manage to write something critical.

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Matter of ethics? Or ugly aldermen taking space from Hollywood glitter

The World Series returns to Wrigley Field on Friday, and there won’t be any aldermen in attendance. That is, unless the aldermen are willing to dip into their own pockets and pay the ridiculous fees that are being sought by ticket scalpers.

Not like World Series of days of old at Wrigley

Much indignation has been spewed in recent weeks about the fact that the Chicago Cubs included City Council members on the list of people who would get the chance to purchase tickets for the World Series games to be held at home this weekend.

THE PERK IS that even before the limited number of tickets that went on sale to the general public were put up for grabs, the aldermen were among a class of so-called important people who could have the chance to buy some seats.

Note I’m saying “buy.” Nobody was talking about giving aldermen the tickets for the ball games. Which is a concept I suspect offended at least some of the aldermen – who probably think they’re important enough to warrant freebies.

Also keep in mind that the official prices charged for World Series tickets are not the same as those charged for Cubs games during the regular season. They’re higher – a few hundred dollars per seat.

Which is cheap only when compared to the scalper prices – I have heard figures ranging from just under $1 million per seat if you want to sit in one of those prime seats up close to the action and where everyone watching the games on television will be capable of seeing you, to as low as about $5,500 per seat if all you want to do is stand in the upper deck in spare space and be able to say you were inside the building when the World Series returned to Wrigley Field for the first time in 71 years.

PERSONALLY, I DON’T think that kind of money is worth the experience. I think it borders on criminal that anybody thinks they can charge it. But then again, I have never thought Cubs fans had all that much sense, so perhaps they’re willing to give up a chance at retirement and can reminisce about the games they see this weekend when, in future years, they’re reduced to eating cans of cat food.

 

Won't be able to ignore Murray

But back to the aldermen, who had their perk taken away when the public got outraged – seemingly out of the belief that aldermen were getting free tickets from the ball club. Then, the council’s ethics board declared that accepting the ticket perk was something that bordered on unethical.

I can already hear the snide comments made about the absurdity of ethics from the Chicago City Council. But the bottom line is that someone decided to take the high road when it comes to political perks.

Although there are bound to be complaints. Take 31^st Ward Alderman Milly Santiago, who may well have created her moment of political infamy when she complained about losing the perk.

FIRST, SHE POINTED out that the seats she was being offered were those cheap ones in the upper-most rows of the top deck. Then, she said, “I’m a poor alderman. I cannot even afford to buy a $1,000 ticket.”

You just know she’s never going to live that line down.

Personally, I don’t think it’s a loss if there aren’t so many political people on hand. You know Fox television is going to be more interested in Hollywood celebrities who bother to show up at games.

Chances are, we’re going to be sick of seeing Bill Murray by the time Sunday rolls around. And if by chance Jim Belushi is among the Wrigley scene, you just know nausea will predominate among the television viewing public.

 

SANTIAGO: Poor alderman

THE KEY TO comprehending the crowds that show up at Clark and Addison this weekend is that they’re not going to be hard-core fans. Heck, even regular season Cubs games are more about the glitz, but this will be even moreso.

It may well be Chicago trying to put on a show of the kind of city that certain people wish it was, instead of what it really is.

If anything, the real reason to keep aldermen out of the ballpark is that it means there will be fewer ugly people taking up space that could better be used by whichever gorgeous starlet actor John Cusack decides to have as his date Friday Night for Game 3.

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Bad tickets? Too bad, considering the reason for issuing them was the revenue

I remember an early-morning (as in about 1 a.m.) moment I had a couple of decades ago in the South Loop when I took a wrong turn down a one-way street, and got pulled over within a half-block by a Chicago police officer for driving in the wrong direction.

Too overactive?

I got ticketed, and actually showed up in court about a month later – only to get one of the biggest breaks I ever got in my life.

FOR IT SEEMS that the officers in question who pulled me over had issued a few tickets that night whose legitimacy was questionable.

What wound up happening was that the state’s attorney’s office had to dismiss the charges against every single person who got a ticket on that particular night.

Including myself. My wrong-way on a one-way street wound up being tossed. The court clerk in that courtroom handed me back my driver’s license and I didn’t have to pay any fine.

I still recall the look of disgust on the face of the assistant state’s attorney in that courtroom, knowing she was going to have to repeat the same drill for so many cases because of a cop screw-up.

I WONDER IF she’d feel just as appalled at the Chicago Tribune report on Wednesday that said the video cameras erected at Chicago intersections to catch traffic scofflaws had managed to screw up, and that some $2.4 million in fines were not valid.

I’m sure there’s somebody within municipal government who had already spent that money, and is now desperately trying to figure out how to make up the lost revenue.

It seems the problem lies with cameras that were still active, recording traffic activity and issuing citations, even after hours when they were supposed to be turned off.

For it seems some of those locations only had restricted traffic flow at certain times of the day. Or in other cases, signs warning people of parking or traffic restrictions were written or erected in such a confusing manner that it could be argued that motorists really didn’t know they were doing something improper.

I’M SURE THERE are some people out there who are dismissing this as a petty flaw. There probably are some people outraged that I got away with driving for half-a-block the wrong way on a one-way street.

But it really does come down to that legal principle that we hold our law enforcement officials to a higher standard and will not allow flawed cases to proceed.

These improperly-operating cameras can’t be allowed to take over and impose all these citations upon us – even though I’m very sure the big reason for having those cameras is to catch as many violations as possible as a municipal revenue source.

The fact that catching those offenses might make our streets more safe for the public is probably a secondary concern.

ALTHOUGH I HAVE to confess that reading the Tribune report about all those tickets being tossed out and the revenue lost amused me in the same way that watching television re-runs of “Hill Street Blues” does.

How many times did the officers of the Hill Street station in that Chicago-like city (even though the real-life Maxwell Street station’s outside was used in select scenes) do some minor gaffe that wound up resulting in their whole case being thrown out?

Usually with the voluptuous public defender Joyce Davenport delivering the lethal legal blow; leaving her boyfriend-turned-husband Captain Furillo as frustrated as anybody else!

Think of these flawed cameras as the 21^st Century equivalent of a police gaffe, and we have to wonder how little some things change at all.

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No more cop quotas for tickets?

We’ve all made jokes at one point or another about having received a ticket for an offense so petty or miniscule that the only reason the police officer really bothered to write it up was because his municipality wanted the money – and not because we did anything wrong.

As in the accumulation of $100 and $200 fines from individuals that can accumulate to build up a significant part of some smaller communities’ budgets.

THE DREADED COP quotas for tickets. As in officers having to show they wrote up a certain number of citations, or else risk some form of professional discipline. Quite possibly even losing their job.

Well, it would seem that policy is withering away. Just this past weekend, Gov. Pat Quinn gave his approval to a measure that prohibits police departments in Illinois from having policies requiring their officers to issue so many citations.

Not that I believe the policy will completely wither away. I merely suspect it will evolve into some other form. There are still going to be police officers writing out tickets while those of us who receive them wind up gnashing our teeth in anger!

Under the new law, which received very little opposition from members of the General Assembly, police departments can no longer require a specific number of tickets to be written in any given time period. Also, officers cannot have the number of tickets they issue used as any kind of criteria as to how good a job they are doing.

QUINN, IN SIGNING the bill into law, said he thinks it means tickets will be issued because people actually committed some sort of offense worthy of punishment. Police will be using their judgment in issuing citations – rather than trying to ensure they meet their goal for the month.

Somehow, I suspect that those officers who already were writing out significant numbers of citations will continue to do so. It is their judgment, and they may well continue to see many things being done that violate local municipal codes.

So those of you with a lead foot ought not think you can get away with driving around as though the whole rest of the world is supposed to defer to you. You’re still going to run into the cop who’s willing to ticket you.

The rest of us will be safer as a result, because you’re the type of motorist that the rest of us wind up shaking our fists at while spewing a string of obscenities because of your thoughtlessness.

ALTHOUGH THE PART of this that catches my curiosity is the fact that many police departments already were getting away from using numbers of tickets issued as some sort of professional criteria.

I know of police departments that require their officers to interact with people in the community – and go so far as to require their officers to record each and every incident.

Whether it’s just answering questions from the public, checking into a situation that looked like it could become heated or actually finding something that is severe enough to warrant a citation or an arrest, they all account for something equal.

That might actually be a better approach, because it puts into the head of the police officer that he (or she) is supposed to be there to serve the public – rather than there to be the constant eye watching over the public.

BUT I’M SURE that even with this approach, there will be people complaining that the police are only around when you don’t need them.

Because the one thing I have always noted about law enforcement is that not only do they do a difficult job (people tend to die when they screw up), it is one that doesn’t get them much public respect.

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City to expand surveillance camera use

This probably isn’t the best time to be asking me what I think of those surveillance cameras that have the authority to issue traffic tickets even if no human being witnesses the alleged violation.

The City Council on Wednesday made some last-minute changes to a proposal that will expand the number of such cameras in use in Chicago. Those changes resulted in the 33-14 council vote in favor of the expansion desired by Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

THERE’S JUST SOMETHING about the whole unstaffed aspect of these cameras that bothers me. I don’t like the idea of a computer interpreting video and trying to make a decision about whether or not a traffic violation occurred.

Because as any of us who have ever had a computer crash on us before, computers are inherently stupid. They only know how to do what a human being has programmed them to do.

But like I said, I have a bit of a conflict. Because I recently got my “first ever” ticket as a result of one of those things.

For the record, I was driving last month through south suburban Riverdale (en route to an assignment for a suburban daily newspaper I do some work for). I was at a red light on Halsted Street, and when I saw that the traffic was clear, I made a right turn.

THE COMPUTERS SOMEHOW decided that I did not wait a long-enough time period to determine that traffic was clear so that I could make the turn.

The still video images included with the ticket that supposedly are the incontrovertible evidence of my “guilt” clearly show there was no oncoming traffic, and that there were none of those signs saying “No Turn on Red.”

But these things fall into someone’s judgment that I clearly disagree with, but whom someone has decided is more credible.

So I wound up making out the check for the $100 fine – which as it turns out was due by Tuesday. So I not only had to pay up to the IRS and the Illinois Department of Revenue by that date, I also had to cough up money to the Photo Enforcement Program.

I’M NOT IN the mood of letting these things accumulate to the point where officials could legally tow my car away without warning.

I’m broke – and anxiously awaiting my next round of paychecks. I’d consider asking my employer for help on this ticket, except that I recently got hit with a $34 parking garage fee while on assignment and I’m not even sure they’re going to cover that.

So perhaps I’m just a tad biased about these cameras and their potential to issue citations. Because I also remember a now-former suburban police chief who told me he discounted any arguments against the cameras on the grounds that large signs were erected telling people where they are located.

“You have to be pretty stupid to not see them,” that chief told me.

APPARENTLY, ALDERMEN FELT the same way, particularly since the increase in these cameras was depicted as an improvement in public safety for our young people – since most of the new cameras will be erected on polls near schools and parks.

But the “pretty stupid” people who don’t pay the cameras much mind on main streets are just as likely to ignore them if they’re driving through a school zone.

If anything, I wonder if it will give some people a false sense of security in that they think people will drive safer – even though some are determined to drive like meatheads regardless of circumstances.

To me, it’s almost like driving on a road in the woods and a deer suddenly walks into the path of a car. The deer likely thinks you’re going to stop for it. The presence of a camera that catches the “moment of impact” wouldn’t change things.

TOO MANY OF us act like we’re the deer, hoping for something to save us.

When perhaps we should be more closely watching the surroundings around us to keep ourselves safe.

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