Illinois Supreme Court sides with the aged, not with fans of “food trucks”

I have a cousin, some 20 or so years younger than I, who considers himself something of a “foodie.” Quick to check out exotic cuisines and always on the lookout for an interesting place to eat.

Dining under the "L" tracks. Photos by Gregory Tejeda

Yet I know he’s also a big fan of the “scene” that has developed in Chicago to have “food trucks,” rolling restaurants of sorts that are capable of bringing unusual food items to the neighborhood.

THOSE TRUCKS RECEIVED a legal blow from the Illinois Supreme Court, which on Thursday ruled previous rulings by the Cook County and Illinois Appellate courts that have sided with Chicago city government’s restrictions on food trucks.

Such as the one preventing a food truck from parking itself within 200 feet of a more conventional restaurant. Or the rules requiring the food trucks to contain GPS devices to make it easier for city officials to track their movements.

The food truck operators filed their original lawsuit back in 2012, contending that such restrictions harmed their ability to do business. And as for the GPS, they say it’s a violation of their right to privacy to have someone being able to track their movements throughout the city.

Yet the Illinois Restaurant Association contends they’re willing to work with the food truck operators to reach some sort of compromise to allow them to operate in partnership with more conventional restaurants.

ALTHOUGH I DO suspect that for the restaurants, the “compromise” resembles something along the lines of “withering away and dying.” They don’t really want more competition when it comes to the concept of preparing and serving food.

Particularly from a food truck, which is an operation that has far lower overhead costs than maintaining a conventional restaurant in a physical building and having to maintain the kind of staff required to operate a restaurant.

I don’t doubt the restaurants think these food operators are thinking the food trucks are playing unfair. Probably the more we hear the phrase “roach coach” used to refer to them, the worse business is becoming.

 

Can this Pilsen neighborhood restaurant compete?

 I do have to admit to a bias, and it’s probably one because of age. I personally have little interest in searching out the food truck that serves the best Korean-inspired tacos, or even the best conventional (ie, ketchup-less) hot dog.

FOR ME, PART of the appeal of “eating out” is to check out the physical ambiance of a restaurant, while also having someone serve me.

Which are aspects that a food truck tries to eliminate from the process.

Although I don’t doubt my cousin probably thinks I’m being overly ridiculous, as do, I’m sure, the other many fans of food trucks, who probably think it’s cool when a particularly unique one decides to pull up and operate right by where they work.

A quickie lunch that, I’ll admit, is probably much more interesting than the servings of a Subway sandwich franchise (I don’t mean that as an insult, my first job ever was working a late shift at a Subway – and my own standard order on those occasions when I eat there is a “Spicy Italian” sandwich).

WHICH MAKES ME think this is a matter of age. There is a younger crowd, I don’t doubt, that will take this issue much more seriously than I.

For all I know, the day may come when the state Supreme Court will find some sort of case that gives them the opportunity to reverse themselves on Thursday’s ruling.

BAULER: Ain't ready for food trucks either?

That is, assuming the concept survives the amount of regulation they would now face – as the Institute of Justice has its own studies showing the number of food truck operators is now 40 percent smaller than it was some six years ago.

It could be that food trucks in Chicago are a similar concept to how legendary Alderman Paddy Bauler once described political "reform” – we just “ain’t ready for it” yet.

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Food truck operators benefit from partisan desire to dump on Rahm

At first glance, it doesn’t make much sense that the conservative millionaire brothers who operate Koch Industries and fund many ideologue causes would care about the fate of food trucks – those mobile restaurants of sorts that have been the target of city regulatory efforts.

Those lines are what bothers restaurant owners, who see them as lost customers

Then again, it makes total sense. Not because the Koch brothers care about the notion of encouraging mini-businesses of sorts or about supporting the desire to eat anything from them.
 

Kochs want to aggravate Dem Emanuel

BUT THE FACT is that Chicago city government has been involved in an intense effort to impose so many regulations against food truck operators. The Chicago Sun-Times reported on Monday about the significant fines imposed on operators to the point where some are being driven out of the mobile food-serving business.

Which I’m sure, to the Koch perspective, probably puts the concept of regulations on these food servers as some sort of cause they should fight against. Or more likely, something they should support because any effort to overturn the regulations would come across as a defeat for a “liberal-leaning” city like Chicago.

Food trucks these days can extend from high-end edibles...

In short, the Koch brothers would like to be able to tell a prominent-Democratic city like Chicago how it should operate. The same motivation held by the foundation controlled by Gov. Bruce Rauner, who also has contributed money to the cause of fighting for food trucks in Chicago.

Which, to me, falls in the category of someone who should be told to mind their own business. But that’s just me ranting. And this is also an example of partisan politics bringing together interests that normally wouldn’t give a second-glance at each other.

... to something resembling a basic sandwich

CAN ANYONE SERIOUSLY envision a Koch eating anything from a food truck? I can’t! How vehemently would they fight if similar food trucks tried operating in their hometown of Wichita, Kan.?

To be specific, the Koch brothers are providing financial support to the Institute for Justice. Based in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C. (the Republican-leaning part of the D.C. metro area), the group is behind the lawsuit that seeks to challenge Chicago’s regulatory efforts against food trucks.

Some restaurants are in the food truck business

Particularly the rule that says the trucks cannot operate within 200 feet of an established restaurant. And also rules limiting the amount of time that a truck can stay parked at any one location.

Let’s be honest. These rules were passed by local politicos who were motivated by the political influence of the restaurant industry, which hates the idea of these food trucks because they’re mobile and cutting into their business.

JUST ENVISION HOW a restaurant owner feels when he sees people lined up at a food truck waiting to get something to eat, rather than coming into his restaurant and spending time at one of his tables.

It’s a loss of money. I know some people are more than willing to support the food truck operators just based on the premise that the city’s rules are an example of hard-core politicking by the restaurant lobby.

Although is it really any better for public policy to be influenced by the desires of a special interest (which is certainly the way I view the Koch brothers who use their millions to fund any ideological cause they agree with) whose only motivation is to wreck havoc with the city’s regulatory efforts.

Food trucks have come a long way since the last century

Personally, I don’t see any problem with the idea of regulatory efforts against food truck operators. There certainly are enough rules that restaurants themselves have to comply with. And when it comes to the idea of food service, you can’t be too cautious.

BUT IT DOES create an odd setting to see Kochs aligned with food trucks, since much of the reason those types of businesses are thriving is that they’re making efforts to appeal to a certain young, urban type who view the idea of ordering a taco with Korean-influenced stuffings (or whatever unique edible offering they have in stock) as further evidence of their sophistication.

Certainly not the kind of people who’d be inclined to back the Kochs on any of their preferred causes. But then again, if we were just talking about a truck with a grill with a fry cook slapping together a quickie egg or two, I doubt there’d be any appeal.

My own thoughts about these food trucks is that I don’t seek them out, largely because the ones that are supposedly “hip” and trendy charge way too much (consider $7 for a taco, like I saw at one truck on Sunday) for their food.

Which is why I expect this political fight is one that eventually will end on its own as the fad fades away. Those young people will get older, quit eating such stuff, and the new generation of young people will wonder how the old geezer-types ever thought it was fun to consume such stuff.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: A website devoted to the concept of letting people know where, at any given moment, they can find a food truck offering up something to eat.

How strict can we get with petcoke regulations when I suspect most people don’t have a clue what it is

When it comes to petcoke, I have a funny bias in favor of the local residents.

I’m not one of them any longer. But I am the grandson of a pair of Mexican immigrants who found their particular version of the “American Dream” through work in the steel mills that used to dominate the 10^th Ward.

HECK, I STILL have relatives who live in places like Hegewisch, the East Side and South Deering (and who know exactly what Slag Valley is).

So when I hear about petcoke, it’s not some abstract concept. Nor is it something that inspires silly gags about colas or cocker spaniels.

I have seen the piles of the petroleum byproduct and fully appreciate how decades of industrial pollutants have given the air in the city’s far southeast corner a particular stink.

And I totally appreciate how people who still live in the area, including an uncle and a couple of cousins of mine these days, would love to see the piles of pollutants removed.

THE FACT THAT it easily gets blown about and can wind up adding a layer of grime to one’s home (or totally coat their newly-washed laundry with filth) makes life all the more unpleasant.

So I can comprehend the disgust felt by local residents when they say they want an outright ban on petcoke being stored within the city – only to be told by attorneys for city government (who probably avoid traveling to the 10^th Ward at all costs) that they’re being unreasonable.

Seriously, they’ve been told that the industry that remains along the Calumet River has a right to be able to store the substance in some way.

Salt -- one of the least disgusting things piled up out in the open in the 10th Ward. Photograph by Gregory Tejeda

 

But what is the way that can be acceptable to local residents?

IN RECENT MONTHS, there has been speculation about some sort of petcoke storage ordinance. I’ve been at hearings where talk has been of requiring the substance to be stored indoors in specially-built structures that would be located quite a ways away from residential areas.

Although when one considers that industry in the 10^th Ward can literally be found right across the street from homes that families still live in, it is an odd environment.

There is much that gets tolerated by city officials about the 10^th Ward that would never be accepted elsewhere. A lot of otherwise unacceptable conditions get “grandfathered” in because it would (allegedly) be too expensive to get things up to code.

Just like how there are still troughs for men to pee in when they watch a ball game at Wrigley Field. At least with that disgusting concept, there is something resembling history and tradition.

YOU JUST DON’T get the same sentiment when having to breathe in petcoke.

Which is why I couldn’t help but feel a tinge of disgust when I learned about what happened Tuesday. Activists from the 10^th Ward were at City Hall, hoping for support for petcoke regulations that they felt were too weak, but were better than nothing.

Instead, the council’s Zoning Committee got to review an even-weaker proposal – one that permits petcoke storage on-site if companies can document that it was consumed on-site as part of a manufacturing process.

It also would allow for stockpiles of petcoke to be burned.

YOU JUST KNOW that will add to the stink in the air around the East Side. How weak will this regulation become by the time aldermen get around to approving something?

Now I realize that industry is not all-bad. It does provide employment (albeit, not as much as it did several decades ago). And part of the appeal of living in the 10^th Ward once upon a time was that the working class could get those decently-paying jobs within walking distance of their homes.

My father grew up in a house in South Chicago that was just a couple of blocks from the one-time U.S. Steel Southworks plant – the one that developers now want to turn into an upscale housing development right on Lake Michigan.

Which is a cute idea – although I wonder how many people would want to live there once they realize its proximity to communities that have those petcoke piles lying about.

Sitting in Chicago's 'corner'

BECAUSE CITY OFFICIALS right now seem more concerned about the business interests than they are of certain residents in the land of alphabet-oriented streets (Avenue O, anyone?). Perhaps they’ll get serious about cleaning up the mess if those upscale residents ever do settle in the city’s southeast corner?

Or if they ever get political clout that can get things done. Because I also couldn’t help but notice the same Zoning Committee gave its support Tuesday to construction of a new heliport on the Chicago River in the Bridgeport neighborhood.

It must be nice to be the neighborhood of Chicago mayors, rather than one of piles of petcoke!

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How many presidential possibilities would dare to take a stance on a casino issue?

Something to keep in mind the next time you read a list of possibile presidential candidates for the Republican Party come 2012 that includes the name of Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels – he is the political person who took on an issue that most elected officials wouldn’t have dared to touch, and he took the stance that could be spun into him supporting cheaters.

Daniels is going to get national news coverage because of a commencement speech he gave during the weekend, and for the fact that he didn’t back away from his comments on Monday.

DANIELS HAS BECOME the governor who supports a gambler who has been banned from a southern Indiana casino after being caught counting cards while playing blackjack. I can’t envision any of Illinois’ chief executives (not even Rod Blagojevich in one of his goofiest moods) being willing to touch this issue.

That gambler was caught back in 2006 at the Grand Victoria Resort and Casino in Rising Sun, Ind., on the Ohio River across from Kentucky and not far from Cincinnati. His act was that he is capable of keeping track of the cards being played in blackjack, making it possible for him to have a strong sense of which cards are likely to come up – which could help him keep his cards under 21.

That gives him a better chance of actually beating the house, which usually has the odds of winning stacked in its favor against the gambler.

Card counting will get you banned from the casinos of Las Vegas, where the courts in Nevada have ruled them to be private property whose owners can restrict certain people from coming. But in New Jersey, a card-counter was able to get the courts to overturn an attempt by the casinos in Atlantic City to ban him.

I GUESS THAT means the Indiana gambler is hoping that the Hoosier State is more like the Garden State than the Silver State.

His case against the Grand Victoria was rejected by a circuit court, but the ban from the Grand Victoria was overturned by an appellate court. That means the Indiana Supreme Court now has the case, and is expected to rule on it some time later this year.

Most political people would have figured there is nothing to gain by saying anything about this. Take the side of the gambler and you are offending a financial interest that many of these small towns that host casinos absolutely depend upon to bolster their local economies.

But who really wants to get that wrapped up in appearing to favor the casino interests – who exist to take money from people in such a flashy and garish manner that they think they’re being entertained by losing.

ALSO, CONSIDERING THAT Daniels was supposed to be providing an inspirational moment to the graduating students of Franklin College, which isn’t anywhere near Rising Sun, I can’t say I comprehend his motivation for bringing up the issue. I don’t buy his “logic” about how this gambler was taking the initiative to “shift the odds” of life in his own direction.

Yet he did, and he came down on the side of the gambler, saying he sees the controversial practice of card counting as evidence that this particular gambler is “inordinately smart.”

The Courier-Journal newspaper of Louisville, Ky., also reported that Daniels described the gambler’s card counting skill as one where, “through hard work learned to improve his chances.”

So Daniels apparently thinks it is good politics to tick off an industry that government has become too dependent on financially for survival. It makes me wonder how sympathetic they’re going to be toward his next re-election bid.

OR, IF DANIELS truly does decide to make a run for president someday, is he going to be the candidate whom the casinos of the country line up against? That’s some significant money that could wind up backing a Daniels opponent – all because he felt the need recently to speak out on this casino issue.

Or is he going to be the guy who stood up for the “rights” of a guy whose intent upon entering the casino in Rising Sun that particular night was to take them for every cent he could get – using a means that wasn’t exactly available to everybody?

Either way, Daniels had the potential to take a stand that was going to be described in less-than-complimentary terms. Which is why he likely would have been better off keeping quiet on this issue.

He’d have had a better chance of reaching concensus among sports fans about whether or not steroid use by ballplayers constitutes “cheating” and whether or not Sammy Sosa deserves the ridicule he now receives in many circles.

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How open is Chicago city government?

As much as I am a reporter-type at heart who views elected officials at all levels of government with a certain suspicion (how honest are they being when they speak to me?), I can’t say I have much of a hangup over the fact that Chicago city officials appear to be trying to undermine the whole concept of Freedom of Information Act requests.

City officials this week showed off the changes they have made to the official website of Chicago municipal government – and one of the new features will be lists of every single entity that files an FOIA request, along with an explanation of what type of information they wanted.

THERE ARE THOSE who think this is a shot at the working news media, as some reporters are enamored of the concept of filing FOIA requests so as to dig up city documents that might provide tidbits of information that are newsworthy.

By that logic, city officials are essentially trying to undermine reporter-types by exposing what issues we’re interested in – before we actually get any information.

These people seem to think that city editors and broadcast producers will start turning to the city website to see the latest additions to the list, so as to figure out what the “competition” is working on. No More Scoops!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That is a little bit too hysterical to take seriously (probably an overly-caffeinated assignment editor), and not just because I was never the type of reporter who got all worked up over filing FOIA requests (preferring to work potential “sources” for information that could be newsworthy – while also trying to keep in mind that those sources may try selectively feeding me information to make themselves look good).

THE CHICAGO SUN-Times went so far this week as to publish an editorial saying that reporters may even start making overly broad FOIA requests for information so as to make it more difficult for any third party to figure out what they are working on before it is published.

The only problem with that logic is that an overly-broad FOIA request invariably gets rejected on the grounds that officials need to pare down their request for data so as to make it relevant.

I don’t think city officials are trying to blow a reporter-type’s news scoop. I think if anything, they’re trying to distract attention from the fact that they’re going out of their way to avoid having to give any information through the Freedom of Information Act.

The law meant to make it possible for regular people to get certain information about the way their governments operate was always a bit vague, so much so that many governments (particularly in smaller towns) didn’t have set procedures for how to deal with an FOIA request for documents.

THAT OFTEN MEANT many local officials refused to give out such information on the grounds that they did not think they were legally obligated to do so. It was the ultimate passing of the buck. Everybody would claim that information distribution was some other official’s problem.

That was the real significance of the amendments made to the Freedom of Information Act in Illinois. Approved by the General Assembly and Gov. Pat Quinn last year with significant input from the Illinois attorney general’s office, one of the provisions was that every government entity had to specify a certain official who was responsible for processing FOIA requests.

Which means that passing the buck was no longer possible. Also, the amount of time during which a response to such requests had to be made was shortened. Is it any wonder that many local government officials spent this spring lobbying the Illinois Legislature to change the law back to something resembling its previous incarnation? I see the Chicago city action as little more than legalistic harassment until they can go back to stonewalling such requests.

But I don’t get too bothered because I realize that all that is being posted on the website is a list of who is filing the FOIA request. The actual information they provide to someone does not get posted. Although in many cases, I would guess that the reasons they use to justify holding off on providing information will never be publicly published.

CITY OFFICIALS ARE trying to make it look as though they are responding to requests, when the reality is likely to be the usual stonewalling (trying to find any legalistic reasons to avoid giving out certain information until it is so old as to be virtually irrelevant).

Besides, when I went to the city website on Friday to check out these lists myself, I found that most of them (each city agency has its own space for indicating FOIA requests related to each agency) were blank. Does this mean that the actual task of regularly updating the city website to include current FOIA requests is beyond the interest of city officials?

If that is the case, then reporter-types probably don’t have much to worry about. Mayor Richard M. Daley may even be accurate when he says the posting of FOIA requests adds to the “transparency” of city government.

This shows just how lazy some of our municipal employees can truly be when it comes to keeping up with the duties of their jobs, kind of like the “old days” when Walter Jacobson’s “Perspectives” would give us stories about Streets and Sanitation workers sleeping on the job, rather than picking up trash.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: I am less offended by the idea of city officials making public who is requesting information via the Freedom of Information Act than I am the idea that the City Council wants to hire an inspector general to investigate itself, but only under such restrictions that it is unlikely that investigator would dig up anything worth knowing.

16 days until Election Day, and Pat Quinn tries to remind us why to vote for him

The cynical side of me is coming out just as I learn that Gov. Pat Quinn signed into law a measure that creates a whole new regulatory structure for people who have complaints about cemeteries and concerns about the way in which their loved one’s earthly remains are being cared for.

The fact that this bill got signed into law on Sunday means it was treated as the one real bit of news occurring, which means it got significant play by news organizations.

IT ALSO MEANS that news organizations got to relive the whole mess that broke out at Burr Oak Cemetery and other graveyards throughout the Chicago area that have historically catered to African-American clientele.

Which means that Quinn now has something he can spin into a positive action he took on behalf of all those black people, many of whom are also registered voters (I’m not going to make any electoral jokes about the deceased also voting).

Do I think that if this issue were about trying to come up with any serious reform that it would have been handled differently? Of course.

Instead, just a little over two weeks away from Election Day Feb. 2 we get the creation of a “regulatory” structure which means that people will now have a state government process they can follow if they wish to file a complaint.

IT MOST LIKELY means yet another place where complaints can get tangled up in “red tape” rather than actually being resolved.

After all, the state already regulates cemeteries through the Illinois comptroller’s office (I can remember when Dan Hynes first ran for that office in 1998, he used to get so confused about questions involving such cemetery regulation).

Now I realize that the comptroller’s “regulation” was limited to specific circumstances (usually complaints against graveyard owners who let their properties become all raggedy and decrepit).

But then again, the situation at Burr Oak was a particularly bizarre set of circumstances. When one has massive numbers of families convinced that their loved ones don’t lie underneath the spot they have been visiting for years (if not decades), it is hard to have a specific state law in place that can address the situation.

I’D HATE TO think there is anyone seriously gullible enough to think that Pat Quinn has single-handedly resolved this problem. Or that there was much of anything that the state could do other than to take a serious look at the conditions at Burr Oak.

If anything, that was what the Cook County sheriff’s police wound up having to do for much of 2009. If there’s any political person who ought to be able to take some personal credit for having done something to improve the conditions in suburban Alsip, it is Sheriff Tom Dart.

He’s the one whose investigators had to struggle with the county’s financial problems that could have prevented a thorough investigation from taking place. He’s also the one who had to have officers camp out at Burr Oak for months in order to prevent the situation there from becoming worse.

If it reads like I’m saying Quinn is trying to hog too much attention on this issue, you’d be partially correct.

I’D ALSO HAVE to wonder about the individual legislators who served on the task force that “investigated” the issue – even though all they really did was took what the sheriff’s police uncovered and claimed it for their own.

Quinn, in a prepared statement, said that his new law enables, “bereaved families will have a place to turn if they are not satisfied with the services provided by cemeteries, funeral directors and embalmers.”

That sounds nice. It may even help a family or two at some point in the future, although I’m not convinced that the situation is all that radically different for the public with this new law than it was with the old ones.

Personally, all I got out of the announcement that this bill gor signed into law is evidence that Quinn – who in his decades of public service as an elected official and a gadfly has conducted many a Sunday scheduled “news” event to try to get himself some public attention – is still the master.

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EDITOR'S NOTE: Pat Quinn just took away from primary opponent Dan Hynes the legal responsibility (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-quinn-cemetery-18-jan18,0,3524036.story) to keep an eye out on cemeteries and their management.

Who should regulate cemeteries?

It is the knee-jerk reaction for a government official. When there is a problem, hold a hearing.

Allow a group of political people to sit in a row with microphones in front of their faces, so they can hear “testimony” from individuals who have suffered. It creates the image that something is being done.

AT THE VERY least, it makes people feel like someone is listening. But is this really the way that anything gets done?

The latest “controversy” to be dealt with in such a manner involves the situation at Burr Oak Cemetery, a historically African-American cemetery in southwest suburban Alsip, where it is suspected that bodies were being dug up so that the land used by the graves could be resold to newly deceased people.

While there is the chance that some of these people were buried at the cemetery under agreements that allowed their bodies to be moved to a mass grave after a few decades had passed, the fact is that nobody seems to know for sure.

Officials investigating the situation say the records at Burr Oak are so bad they really can’t tell who was buried under what terms. And when officials start finding body parts such as bone fragments out in the open, it would appear that the agreement to move to a mass grave was not being kept according to the letter of the law.

IT WOULD SEEM the situation at Burr Oak is a mess. And it would seem that stories emanating from Burr Oak are causing people at other cemeteries to start looking more closely at conditions.

Just this weekend, police began investigating the situation at Mount Glenwood Memory Gardens cemetery (also in the south suburbs), where a roughly 10-inch-long bone was found lying on the ground near a burial vault.

All of these stories are providing the motivation for Congress to get involved. Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Ill., (whose district includes Burr Oak) headed up a panel on Monday at the Dirksen Federal Building that spent its time trying to look concerned while giving people whose relatives are buried at Burr Oak a chance to tell their tales in public.

Now I’m glad to hear that political people want to be concerned. I’m just not sure what was accomplished with Monday’s hearings, because this strikes me as one of those issues where the federal government is probably the least qualified to do anything to address the problem.

CURRENTLY, THE STATE provides the Illinois comptroller’s office with limited authority to regulate cemeteries. The entity that cuts checks to pay the state’s bills has a few regulators who can impose fines and issue orders if they find cemeteries that are ill kept or otherwise poorly maintained.

When it comes to such instances, we’re usually talking about old graveyards that no longer accept human remains and where the owner either does not properly maintain the grounds, or perhaps so much time has passed that there is legitimate confusion as to who is responsible for keeping the cemetery from turning into a weed field.

The point is that cemetery maintenance is a local issue. It is one that involves people who are actually in the community making sure that the space used for burials does not somehow provide a health threat to the surviving public, and that the deceased’s remains are being accorded the respect they are entitled to.

After all, these were once human beings whose families put them there out of the belief they would have some sort of “eternal rest,” so to speak.

I JUST DON’T see the federal officials answering to people on Capitol Hill as being the best qualified to address the issue.

If anything, this might be an issue where the county governments are the ones best able to provide oversight. After all, they have a sense of being able to look at the “big picture,” while also being close enough to the situation in the communities to sense the local mood.

Yet within Cook County, we have our officials complaining about the cost of the investigations thus far (as of last week, the sheriff’s police said they had already spent $326,000 because of Burr Oak, expected to spend much more, and were already trying to figure out how to get some other government entity to reimburse them for the expense).

That entity is the state, which already has limited oversight authority through the comptroller’s office.

YET WE HAVE a state government complaining about how tight its finances are, and has already managed to show it can’t come up with a balanced budget for the complete fiscal year. Why else will they have to return in January to approve a budget for the rest of Fiscal ’10 – which runs through June 30?

This could very well become one of those areas where the state ought to provide some funding, but will use its financial problems to get out of it – thereby sticking the county with the bill.

In fact, that might be the only logical reason to get the federal government involved in this issue. It is an area where the state and county are likely to battle over who gets stuck with the bill for investigating who did what – and was it criminal in nature, or just venal? But that seems like a poor reason to get the feds involved in a local matter.

In short, this could wind up becoming a classic political situation – everybody wants to appear as though they are concerned about a problem, but they all want someone else to have to deal with it.

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All talk. No action. That's our Legislature when it comes to Burr Oak Cemetery

Some people believe that any time politicians are in session, the potential for bad policy exists. That may well be true.

But if one has to come up with a positive aspect to having our state’s Legislature remaining in session a month-and-a-half after they were supposed to be finished putting together a state budget, it could very well be that they were present at the Statehouse when the whole fiasco regarding the Burr Oak Cemetery in suburban Alsip came to light.

OF COURSE, A more truthful perspective would be that our General Assembly did nothing but engage in cheap rhetoric on the issue, unless one gets seriously excited about Gov. Pat Quinn's creation of a task force to study the issue further.

Now I know that Illinois law puts some duties concerning the licensing of cemetery owners in the hands of the state Comptroller’s office (I still remember back in 1998 some reporter-types asking then Comptroller candidate Dan Hynes questions about cemeteries, just so they could get vapid answers that would show his government inexperience).

So I have no doubt that Hynes would have joined the mass of people who in recent days seem determined to show that they are cracking down on the vandals who would dare desecrate graves in order to make some more money.

At least that’s the case, if you fully believe the prosecutors who have since arrested four people for the situation at the cemetery that once was one of the few places where black people could be buried – and remains a popular choice for African-American families today.

ON A SIDE note, the statistic that will stick in my mind is the number “27,” as in the number of relatives that state Sen. Donne Trotter, D-Chicago, has buried at Burr Oak – which makes this situation a personal cause for him and many other black people.

But the individual legislators would not have truly had their say if they had been back home in their districts on their summer recess from government activity. We would not have gotten the chance to see them pontificate, so to speak, on the issue of cemetery regulation.

We would not have been able to hear them make demands for tougher criminal penalties for people who desecrate a grave – even though such an offense already has the potential for a Class X felony charge.

For those of you normal people who haven’t bothered to memorize all the legalese of the criminal justice system – that is a crime punishable by a prison term that must be somewhere between six and 30 years in length.

IT IS SEVERE. The only more severe punishments given out in Illinois are for those people who are convicted of the actual crime of murder – which has the potential for natural life without the option of parole (unless a zealous prosecutor has managed to get a jury and judge to impose a death sentence).

What amazed me about this past week is that at a time when the Legislature was in Springfield supposedly for the sole purpose of putting together a state budget proposal for the fiscal year that began 17 days ago, many lawmakers seemed just as concerned about Burr Oak.

Hence, we literally had legislators on Tuesday talking about the cemetery reform proposal they were ready to vote on – about 24 hours before they had a budget proposal agreed upon.

I’m not saying that Burr Oak detracted from the budget negotiations (because our political people are capable of dealing with more than one issue at a time), but I have to wonder what the legislators would have done if they had had to wait until November when they convene for the fall veto session to address the issue as a group.

WOULD IT HAVE withered away just because by that time the “crisis” would have become a dim memory to many Chicagoans?

Or would we have had people demanding of Gov. Pat Quinn that he call a “special session” so that legislators could get their moment on the television news programs acting as though they were trying to resolve the problem.

So what is the big reform that the Legislature talked about giving us, but which Quinn said he didn’t want them rushing into “in a haphazard manner – resulting in the General Assembly doing nothing more than giving us cheap political talk?

It basically amounted to getting more government agencies involved with cemeteries, which largely answer to few people – other than owners having to get a license periodically renewed by the state comptroller (who isn’t exactly a cemetery expert).

THE ILLINOIS DEPARTMENT of Professional Regulation (which regulates everyone in Illinois from doctors to boxers) would get some say in cemetery management because, as it turns out, they already regulate the licenses of those people who perform embalming services on bodies prior to funerals.

The Cook County Recorder of Deeds office (which keeps track of who owns every single plot of land in the state’s largest county) would have a chance to require additional maps and records of gravesites in cemeteries.

But it didn’t happen. Some claim it was because of opposition from the Chicago Catholic Archdiocese, which maintains many cemeteries of its own but did not have any representation when the deal was negotiated (largely by members of the Legislature’s black caucus – who are most directly affected by the imagery of Burr Oak).

Others say it will just be a matter of time, that some plan will get approved later this year. Perhaps they are right. Patience will keep us from rushing into something that could cause long-term cemetery hassles.

BESIDES, THIS WEEK was entertaining enough. It gave us the sight and sound of Quinn setting himself up as some sort of cemetery authority, telling reporter-types in Springfield on Wednesday that his father worked in cemeteries for 38 years.

Under what other circumstances would we have heard our “beloved” governor tell us, “I know all about cemeteries. I go to a lot of funerals. I believe in showing reverence.”

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EXTRA! EXTRA! Obama a Democrat

(NOT IN) DES MOINES, Iowa – Illinois’ “favorite son” presidential hopeful Barack Obama may be concerned about the concept of lobbyists running the government agencies they used to try to influence, but he’s not about to put an outright ban on the practice.

Obama (who like many other fresh college graduates adopted Chicago as his hometown when he finished his education) used a Sunday morning “Meet the Press” appearance to try to make himself appear as though he has a solid background on foreign policy matters, particularly with regard to the Middle East in light of the recent assassination of former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.

But what caught my attention was when Obama talked of his desire to “break the link” by which lobbyists (they prefer the term “governmental affairs consultants”) for partisan causes get jobs running the federal agencies they once tried to influence, or where government officials leave the federal payroll to take on lobbyist duties for groups that want to influence the agencies the officials once ran.

It’s a legitimate concern. But Obama is not calling for an outright ban on lobbyists-turning-government officials, or vice versa. He thinks the passage of time eases the problem.

“People who may have lobbied 10 years ago, 15 years ago, they may be able to render excellent service to the American people,” Obama said. “We want people of integrity to run our government.”

By my math, that means somebody who was involved heavily in government concerns back in the 1990s can now have a position of responsibility in an Obama administration. That would also mean that anyone who has been involved with the issues in recent years can forget about being a part of Team Obama.

Back in the 1990s, Democrats were prominent players. The recent years have seen Republicans running things.

So Republicans, particularly those who are supportive of the ideals represented by President Bush, can forget about keeping their jobs in Washington, if Obama wins, because they’re likely to be replaced by a batch of Democrat supporters who have been out of power for eight years and want to get back in control.

How does that differ from what any Democrat would do if their party’s presidential candidate wins the November 2008 general election? Hillary Clinton or John Edwards could have given a similar answer.

Perhaps that’s why the polls show those three candidates running so close. An NBC-McClatchy Newspapers poll published Sunday showed the Democratic front-runners in a virtual three-way tie among Iowa voters.

Personally, I’m thankful to have just over one more month before having to cast a ballot in the Illinois primary. I’m still trying to find major differences between the Dems who dream of being president. Having to choose based solely on one candidate being a woman, one being a black man and another being a white man is just insipid.

As for those who might ask, “Why not vote for a Republican?,” all I have to say in response is, “I’m from Chicago.”

Republicans don’t exist here, except in the 41st Ward. Even then, I’ve always thought that the only reason those people vote differently there is because of their location adjacent to O’Hare International Airport.

All that overhead noise from jets flying in and out has addled their brains.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: For those of you who now would like to watch Obama’s “Meet the Press” appearance (or are bizarre enough not to have gotten your fill of it this morning), here’s a link. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/10005061#10005061