Results tagged “clout”

With a massive budget deficit looming, property taxes on the rise, and the mayor talking about more furloughs and service cuts, the Chicago Public Schools have still found over $150,000 to hire a city hall insider to handle "forging partnerships with the business community to support school programs," the Sun-Times is reporting. Better yet, the hire is Barbara Lumpkin, who has served as Daley's city comptroller, budget director and city treasurer, and who was involved in several city hall scandals during her previous tenure.

He just won't go away. And even though he's already started filming on the show, former governor Rod Blagojevich still doesn't know if he'll be allowed on the reality TV show Celebrity Apprentice. Because when you think "celebrity," you think "Blagojevich." Prosecutors allege that the show will interfere with the federal case against him by tainting the potential pool of jurors. According to reports, concerns are over when the show actually airs: it begins airing in March, just a few months before Blago's trial kicks off in June.

It's been just a hair over nine months since Rod Blagojevich was impeached and a little less than that since he was removed from office. And yet we're still learning about what went on behind the scenes of the Blago administration. Today's Sun-Times features an in-depth look into the clout shenanigans that went on with Blago in charge. The two most prolific supporters in terms of hiring were Blago's right hand man, the late Christopher Kelly, and his father-in-law, Ald. Dick Mell (33rd). Mell was the sponsor for 293 positions with 110 of those getting filled. More than 5,700 total candidates supported by almost 400 political sponsors are listed in the Blago database. Stop by the Sun-Times story to check out full details as well as excerpts from Ald. Mell's and Kelly's lists.

During his City Council confirmation hearing, Terry Peterson, headed towards being chairman of the CTA board, said fare hikes could still be coming as the agency struggles to close a $300 million budget gap. Peterson said, "When Springfield helped out in '08, no one could have predicted where we are today. No one could have predicted the type of economic downturn. We've got to sit down with the state. We've got to go to the federal government. We're looking internally to see what management can do. [And] labor is one of our partners. They're part of this. We've got to sit down and talk with everybody." Peterson has formally served as head of the CHA, a campaign manager for Mayor Daley, and also as aldermen of the 17th ward. The City Council Transportation Committee unanimously approved the appointment, made last week by Mayor Daley.

The Tribune has discovered that Michael Scott has more of an interest in the Olympics than civic pride. Scott, a Chicago 2016 committee member, president of the Chicago Public Schools and a "friend of Richie", also served as a consultant to a condominium developer near the proposed Olympic Village site, a deal that could result in the project being worth far more than it currently is. For his part, Scott says that there's no conflict, given the depth of his role in the project. "I had no financial interest. I didn't do any real work," Scott told the Tribune. This, of course, is all in addition to the story from earlier this summer that Scott owns land located near the proposed Olympic cycling venue, something that Scott and others have said was not a conflict of interest.

Just as the president of a major university was forced to resign for clout admissions, Mayor Daley defended a rule for some elite Chicago Public Schools that allow principals to handpick five percent of the students admitted, practices that have resulted in at least two aldermen getting their children admitted after calls to the principal. Reacting to accusations of unfairness, Mayor Daley said:

After the kerfuffle at the University of Illinois, it's the Chicago Public School System's turn to earn some scrutiny regarding clouted students and admission practices. Today, the Tribune is reporting that U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin wrote a letter on behalf of a student who was rejected by Jones College Prep. The student was a relative of a Durbin staff member and, lo and behold, the student eventually was admitted via a process "that allows principals to handpick 5 percent of the incoming class." Though, as the Tribune points out, Durbin has done nothing wrong, those handpicked selections require letters of recommendations and are at the principal's discretion, and while the student's test scores were below Jones College Prep's requirements, they weren't that far below. So is there really an issue of clout here or is the Trib just trying to see what sticks?

• A 15-year-old girl continues to fight for her life after being shot in the head last night while trying to shield another family member; police say she was not the intended target of the gunfire.
• WBEZ's blog has a very comprehensive breakdown of who's in for 2010 races.
• Blah blah blah Mayor Daley blah blah blah defends alderman blah blah blah clout.

The Chicago Public School system now finds itself under scrutiny from the federal government for alleged shady admissions practices at some of its more elite schools. The CPS has already launched its own internal investigation, but a source told the Tribune that the feds have served the CPS with a grand jury subpoena looking for admission process information. According to the Tribune:

We've all heard about the Clout List in the admissions office at University of Illinois. But it's never been clear where the students came from. The Trib's database project, the first that we've seen from Olde Chicago Journalism lately, lets you check out your metro-area high school's clout statistics - while encouraging tutt-tutting and tsk-tsking from, well, everyone else.

City Hall is ending its month to month lease at a warehouse on South Pulaski that Mayor Daley's nephew, Robert Vanecko owned. Vanecko, you may remember, headed a real estate investment firm with Daley fundraiser Allison Davis. Davis and Vanecko got nearly $70 million in investment funding from five city pension funds. Both the city inspector general and federal prosecutors are investigating the deal, and Vanecko has since left the investment firm. Nevertheless, the city has determined that it no longer wants to be in the lease deal. But it's not because of the controversy. Certainly not.

The woes of Mayor Daley continue. With the parking meter deal and the Olympic bid coming under extreme scrutiny, and his nephew's wheelings and dealings, the last thing he needs is another accusation of shady hiring practices, especially in the wake of this year's Hired Trucks trial. But that's what he's getting. Yesterday afternoon, Human Resources Commissioner Homero Tristan, the man Daley brought in to help the city avoid such scandals, resigned in the wake of accusations of lying by city Inspector General David Hoffman; Hoffman had called for Tristan's firing two weeks ago. In spite of the resignation, Tristan maintains his innocence, claiming it's now impossible for him to defend himself while also trying to serve the city. Tristan said (via the Sun-Times):

We were excited to learn that EveryBlock co-founder Daniel X. O'Neil was working with Harper Reed of Threadless fame to develop a new online gadget - but it's not the hyper-local t-shirt you might immediately presume (pretty please?). Instead, the pair produced a new city government transparency toy: CityPayments. And it's likely to be all the rage among us reporters as it gathers momentum. But what does it do? And why do we care?

Mayor Daley's beautification program has done wonders for downtown and tourism, but for Candy Basselen, who runs Springfield Supply, a steel fabrication company, Daley's love for wrought-iron fencing and fancy landscaping has cost her her business. That's because the city wouldn't grant her a new business license after she moved her business to a warehouse at 3348 S. Pulaski, the same warehouse owned by Daley's nephew, Robert Vanecko. And until the warehouse had sufficient amounts of wrought-iron fencing and pleasant landscaping, the city told her, the building wouldn't be up to code. And therefore she couldn't get a business license.

The ongoing city scandal over real estate and leases involving the mayor's nephew has drawn the ire of 31st Ward Alderman Ray Suarez. Reacting to the questionable month-to-month lease the Department of General Services established back in November of 2007, Suarez told the Sun-Times that he should have signed off on it. Suarez is chair of the City Council’s Committee on Housing and Real Estate.

As if the ongoing rift in the Daley family over mayoral nephew Robert Vanecko's connections weren't bad enough, the Bright One brings us more evidence of corruption in the mayor's family. According to records obtained by the Sun-Times, the city has been leasing property from clouted landlords, often at rental rates higher than market. Adding to the problems for the mayor is a warehouse at 3348 S. Pulaski that Vanecko and his business partners acquired, and which the city has paid more than $480,000 in rent over the past 15 months. The city uses that space to park dump trucks.

The Tribune isn't taking the battle for applicant data in the case of the University of Illinois's clout list lightly. Last week, they ran a list of state legislators complete with statistics on how many students each has helped. Now, they've filed suit against the University for the release of applicant data, including, "the immediate release of grade point averages and standardized test scores of the hundreds of college applicants placed on an internal list of well-connected students." School spokesman Tom Hardy said, "The university believes it has a strong legal case and we are prepared to make it."

The controversy over clout is getting even deeper these days. Today, the Tribune published the results of its investigation into a "clout list" at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. It seems that students with certain power connections - like Tony Rezko - have circumvented admission requirements and received special consideration in being accepted to the school. The Trib sifted through 1,800 pages of documents in their investigation, which revealed, among other things:

Chicago Aldermen Manuel Flores (1st), Rey Colon (35th), and Brendan Reilly (42nd) proposed The City Asset Lease Agreement Disclosure Ordinance Wednesday that will require documents related to the lease and sale of city assets (i.e., parking meters, downtown parking lots, the Skyway and Midway Airport) to be published and tracked publicly. The ordinance applies to agreements worth more than $10 million.

Mayor Daley has many nicknames among Chicagoans, but we're going to start referring to him as The Harbinger of Doom. Daley announced that he has been informed by several CEOs to expect massive layoffs in the city's private sector as the nation's current economic recession deepens. "Huge layoffs are coming in November and December. And next year, there’s going to be [even more] huge layoffs. All the corporation CEOs have come in to tell me. That’s just the beginning. It’s not their end result." Oh, and that $420 million budget hole the city is facing? Turns out that's not the only bad news we're facing.

The Chicago Sun-Times reported last week that Chicago will close the book on 2008 with an unreserved corporate fund balance of just $1.5 million, a dangerously low level that, Wall Street Rating agencies warned, threatens the all-important bond rating used to determine borrowing costs.

Continue reading "Daleyist: Layoffs, Clout, and Iraq"

Monday afternoon the Illinois Senate did what, just a week ago, seemed to be the impossible: they approved the state ethics bill. The legislation, which passed 55-0, prohibits those who have $50,000 or more worth of business with the state from making contributions to individuals running for statewide office. Just as the House did earlier this month, the Senate overrode the governor's attempts to insert additional conditions to the bill, which were largely aimed at lawmakers. Critics claimed that Blago used his amendatory veto authority to kill the bill. the passage comes just a short time after Senator (and presidential candidate) Barack Obama persuaded his former colleague, State Senate President Emil Jones, to address the issue promptly; the bill becomes law in January.

If you've ever found yourself at a cocktail party (or in a voting booth) with your head spinning over the names and connections of the veritable cornucopia of candidates that come up for (re)election periodically, independent political consultant (and former Chicagoist politics writer) Mike Fourcher and local public interest attorney Jay Paul Deratany have just the solution: CloutWiki.

The fight between longtime Bridgeport staple Jimbo's lounge and landlords Ray and Donna DeGrazia took an unexpected twist when recent court filings indicated that the DeGrazias had reached an oral agreement to replace Jimbo's with a John Barleycorn. Barleycorn owner Sam Sanchez eventually backed out of the deal due to the continuing court battles and twists involving Jimbo's protracted eviction, which even owners Jimbo and Joyce Levato admitted is ultimately an academic conclusion.

The Chicago Children's Museum is moving ahead with plans to build its new facilities in Grant Park, despite serious objections from what appears to be everyone who's not the Children's Museum or Mayor Daley.

U.S. District Judge Wayne Andersen, who has been overseeing the City of Chicago's compliance with hiring, awarded $3.6 million in fees to the lawyers who have been working on the matter for over a decade. Calling their work exemplary, Anderson pointed out that “without the expertise and efforts of plaintiff’s counsel, the plaintiffs likely would not have achieved any recovery,” according to the Tribune.

While Obama was busy winning Mississippi last night, Crain's Chicago Business was busy wondering what an Obama presidency might mean for Chicago.

Second City Cop

Unlike so many political figures in Chicago, Tony Rezko didn't come from a background steeped in ward politics and clout. In fact, after he finished his degrees at IIT, did what most new immigrants to Chicago do: he got a job.

The sweetheart deal negotiated by the investors of Park Grill and the Park District has been covered before. But a good story is worth repeating, so we'll remind you, the taxpayer, what you're paying for at Park Grill: