Progress Illinois

Ald. Leslie Hairston (5th Ward) is one of five aldermen who, in late 2008, voted against Mayor Daley's plan to lease the city's parking meter system to a private company for 75 years.  This week, she took her show on the road, flying to Pittsburgh (on her own dime) to warn her Steel City peers against making a snap decision on a similar privatization deal.  Hairston warned the council members that they won't escape public outrage once private operators jack up parking rates, telling them: "You are the ones whose feet are held to the fire."

Apparently, Morgan Stanley -- the lead investor in the Chicago meter deal -- is trying to convince Pittsburgh officials that an independent, outside evaluation of leasing parking garages, and possibly meters, would scare off investors. Unlike Chicago's sheepish council, they're not buying it though. For that, Hairston praised them: "You all should be complimented for having the guts — and I do mean the guts — to take this on and to challenge it and to question it." (H/T The Expired Meter)

Turns out Chicago Ald. Freddrenna Lyle (6th Ward) will carry the torch on creating a living-wage law that would require stores with 50 or more employees to pay those workers $11.03 an hour if they benefit from tax increment financing (TIF) or other public subsidies. When Ald. Ed Burke (14th Ward) first floated the legislation (in response to opposition over Wal-Mart's proposed expansion), we noted how it represented a new twist on TIF reform. To her credit, Lyle is expanding the population who would benefit from the higher wages even further. In an ordinance introduced today, she proposes that those providing contracted services -- like cleaning or landscaping -- benefit from the living wage law as well.  The bill is headed to the Burke's Finance Committee next. (See update below.)

"We've come too far to go back now," said Rev. Booker Vance of the Good Jobs Chicago Coalition  at a City Hall press conference today. "We won't be denied." Watch:

UPDATE (4:18 pm): According to folks with the Good Jobs Chicago Coalition, Ald. Lyle did not introduce the living wage bill today. There seems to have been some miscommuncation between the alderman and the organizers. We will provide further detail when it becomes available.

During Chicago's public budget hearings last August, advocates lambasted Mayor Daley for failing the city's mentally ill. They noted that his adminstration had purchased a high-tech billing system that didn't submit bills to the state for months, subsequently costing the city $1.2 million in funding. Daley also neglected to fix the problem promptly, resulting in deeper reimbursement cuts. And to add insult to injury, the city had gradually slashed funding for mental health services in previous years.  As these citizens seized a rare opportunity to confront him about the problems, "Daley sat silent, mouth closed with eyes straight ahead. He would not answer," as Steve Rhodes recounted last summer. 

We couldn't help but be reminded of that episode when reading Evan Osnos' New Yorker profile of Daley (subscription required).  It turns out that, back in the mid-Seventies, he made his first splash as an Illinois state legislator by fighting for the rights of -- you guessed it -- mental health patients:

When Daley returned to Springfield, he startled colleagues by sponsoring a high-profile bill to protect mental-health patients. "He had certainly never sponsored a major piece of social reform," [John] Schmidt recalled. Daley convened months of hearings and impressed even his opponents with his mastery of arcane legal and medical detail. "It was the first time I think he had ever been involved with something that had no partisan, no political, no clout element to it," [Dawn Clark] Netsch said. "And I think he realized he enjoyed it."

If Chicago City Council members need a precedent to vote for Ald. Ed Burke's (14th Ward) living wage ordinance, they should look to the Steel City.  (For those unfamiliar with his proposal, Burke's measure would force companies that both accept public subsidies and employ more than 50 people to pay their workers at least $11.03 per hour.) Last week, the Pittsburgh City Council passed a law that requires developers receiving government subsidies or tax breaks to pay "prevailing wages" to all new service sector workers employed at their facilities. It received a unanimous vote and praise from elected officials across Pennsylvania. "Working families in Pennsylvania and around the country need their elected leaders to be innovative and bold about creating and maintaining good jobs in their communities," remarked Allegheny County Executive and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Dan Onorato. The same could certainly be said about Illinois.