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City of Chicago
Quick Hit
by Adam Doster
10:58am
Tue Jun 29, 2010

Parents "Put Off" By Huberman Press Conference

The Raise Your Hand Coalition (RYH) was happy to stand behind Chicago Public Schools CEO Ron Huberman at a press conference yesterday as he announced that he would only have to raise the maximum high school class size from 32 to 33 students (rather than 35, as had been threatened).

But Catalyst's Sarah Karp reports that the group of CPS parents were "put off" when Huberman used the occasion to pressure the Chicago Teachers Union to forgo a scheduled pay increase. "We wanted to highlight this as good news," RYH organizer Jonathan Goldman told us this morning, referring to the class size announcement. "But it's just one piece of the puzzle."

While they're not wading into the issue of teacher raises, RYH argues that another piece of the budget puzzle should involve amending the tax increment financing (TIF) statue to exempt CPS tax revenue from being diverted into Mayor Daley's shadow budget. The parents have a meeting scheduled with Huberman in mid-July to discuss that proposal as well as other potential budget fixes. "We're going to go in and lay out our thoughts and concerns and see what they have to say," Goldman says. Still, any significant changes will hinge on Daley himself. And one month after they hand-delivered a letter requesting a meeting on the subject, the coalition is yet to get a response from his office. "We don't expect Huberman to come out publicly on TIF and buck the mayor," Goldman says. "[Daley's] the political leader of the city -- he has to step forward on these issues."

PI Original
by Adam Doster
3:36pm
Mon Jun 28, 2010
2 comments

After Chicago's Gun Ban

Crime

Now that Chicago's gun ban has been reversed, city officials need to get creative about how they lower the demand for violent weapons.

Quick Hit
by Adam Doster
12:44pm
Mon Jun 28, 2010

Watching Walmart Wages

Who will ensure Walmart holds up its end of last week's tenuous agreement that apparently cleared the way for a second Chicago store? Ald. Howard Brookins Jr. (21st Ward), an ardent supporter of Walmart's proposed Chicago expansion, says that the City Council will be on the case. "They need to live up to what they agreed to," he said during an appearance on WLS' NewsViews broadcast yesterday. " And if they don't, then all of us [aldermen] -- and I think all 50 of us -- will step in and try to do something to resolve those issues." Watch it (full video available here):

The full council is expected to vote on the Pullman development project this Wednesday and, when they do, the public deserves to hear aldermen's specific plans for holding the retailer accountable. After all, the deal is not legally-binding, Walmart isn't acknowledging that they made any wage concessions, and the mega-retailer has historically been very secretive about its wage data in the past.

Quick Hit
by Adam Doster
11:24am
Fri Jun 25, 2010

Daley's Failure

Yesterday, Mayor Daley told reporters that he was interested in another privatization scheme -- outsourcing city hiring. Daley said he hoped the proposal would cut costs and restore the public's "confidence in our procedures." Of course, if the public no longer has confidence in the city's hiring process, it's because of the repeated patronage scandals stemming from Daley's own administration.  But the mayor framed the problem another way: "We don't have the expertise," he said. 

Ald. Joe Moore (49th Ward) thinks that's a terrible excuse. "What it represents is basically an admission on the part of the mayor that he has utterly failed to manage the hiring process," Moore told the Tribune. "How hard is it to tell people to not let politics enter the equation? It is not rocket science."

We made a similar point back in early 2009 following Daley's claim that it made sense to privatize the parking meter system because city workers "can't compete with the private sector."  Our response:

In short: [Daley would] rather hand off these services and assets for the next 75 years -- at a cost to the city -- than actually do the hard work of improving them.

Quick Hit
by Josh Kalven
10:23am
Fri Jun 25, 2010

Deal Or No Deal?

Yesterday's announcement of an agreement between Walmart and Chicago's major unions would have been a lot more reassuring if a representative from the mega-retailer had stood with the labor leaders and joined them in calling it a "historic" moment.  Instead we get headlines like this from Bloomberg: "Wal-Mart, Chicago Unions Can't Agree If They Have An Agreement."  From the article:

This is the “first time that the largest retailer in the world had seen fit to offer 50 cents more than minimum wage as starting pay,” said Alderman Ed Burke, waving a printout of an e-mail from Maggie Sans, vice president of public affairs for the Bentonville, Arkansas-based retailer, during a meeting of the city council’s zoning committee. [...]

Yet Steven Restivo, a Wal-Mart spokesman, later said there was no such agreement and that the e-mail from Sans simply clarified the company’s existing policies on raises.

It just goes to show that the Chicago labor community is going to have to keep the pressure on them as the new developments move forward.

PI Original
by Josh Kalven
1:27pm
Thu Jun 24, 2010

The Next Step: Holding Walmart Accountable

Walmart

Today, Chicago labor leaders gave their blessing to a proposed Walmart store on the South Side after the mega-retailer agreed to pay second-year workers about $1 over Illinois' minimum wage.  But considering that the multi-billion company is notoriously secretive with its wage data, the challenge is to make sure they actually follow through.