Understanding Government

Alex Keefe of WBEZ-Chicago Public Radio reports that Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel will lay off 625 city workers, “after labor leaders blew a Friday deadline to come up with a list of cost-saving measures in order to avoid pink slips.” Emanuel is dealing with a major municipal deficit and has a legitimate beef with some city workers, who are not making reasonable concessions that would save the city some money. However, Emanuel is the “Scott Walker of Chicago” in who the mayor said he would lay off: city water department call operators, city custodians, seasonal street sweepers.

Exempt from the list are police and fire fighters, even though these professions take up 2/3 of the city’s payroll costs. Like Walker, Emanuel seems to think that police and fire fighters are a more noble kind of public employee than, say, custodians.

Among American cities, only New York City has a more extensive network of surveillance cameras in public spaces than Chicago, and the number of cameras here is poised to increase under new mayor Rahm Emanuel. The Chicago Sun-Times Fran Spielman reports that Emanuel will use a $650,000 grant from the Department of Homeland Security to install surveillance cameras near the Board of Trade, Federal Reserve, and AT&T switching center. The cameras keep getting installed with DHS cash even with mixed evidence about whether they deter terrorism or crime.  Chicago’s more than 10,000 public and private surveillance cameras have alternately been a point of pride and consternation. (more…)

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is demanding that Illinois clean up the Chicago River, reports the Chicago Tribune’s Michael Hawthorne. The request comes amid the transition from Richard Daley to Rahm Emanuel as Chicago mayor and it indicates that Daley’s reputation as a “green mayor” was only partly based on fact. Emanuel, meanwhile, seems to have made environmental policy a low priority.

Pollution problems with the Chicago River are nothing new. (more…)

The Chicago Tribune’s Joel Hood and Diane Rado have a damning report today on Jean-Claude Brizard — Rahm Emanuel’s choice to lead the Chicago Public School system.  Brizard’s tenure at the helm of Rochester public schools indicates that the once prosaic job of public schools chief is increasingly like being a professional sports coach (or bad state governor): Someone comes in promising great success and a winning culture and slinks away after a few years with no tangible improvements. This trend is not good for achieving the complicated education “reform” measures that Education Sec. Arne Duncan is trying to enact on a national level.

According to the Tribune, Brizard achieved something of the trifecta in bad public school system management: low-achieving students, failing schools, and upset teachers. (more…)

Yesterday I blogged that Education Sec. Arne Duncan is helping Chicago Mayor-elect Rahm Emanuel find a new head of Chicago Public Schools. Today the Chicago News Cooperative’s Hunter Clauss lays out the specific budgetary problems facing CPS: an $820 million deficit and a proposal backed by outgoing CPS head Terry Mazany to raise the city’s property taxes in order to avert teacher layoffs and increased class sizes. Also at issue is whether CPS can provide its teachers the four percent salary increase that is part of their collective bargaining agreement.

Emanuel campaigned against the property tax increase, saying he prefers, “Reinviting city government so city government works for the taxpayers.” Sure. Emanuel and the next CPS head will have to move beyond platitudes and do at least one of two really unpopular things: raising taxes or laying off teachers.