Fioretti, Garcia want ‘more cops’ to create votes come Election Day

We’re back from the winter holidays, and mayoral hopeful Robert Fioretti hoped to kick off the ‘new year’ portion of his campaign by making a plea for more police officers.

It’s a simple issue that can be used to appeal to voters – having more cops translates to more public safety. It’s really not that simple an issue, but political campaigns aren’t the entities that ever want to get into the specifics of any such issue.

SO MORE COPS, it is! Fioretti said Monday he’d want to bolster the number of police officers by 500, while also finding replacements for another 500 existing officers who either plan to retire or quit for their own reasons.

A mayor more interested in cost-cutting might use those positions as an excuse to save money by not hiring replacements. But not Fioretti!

Although Fioretti made claims Monday that Mayor Rahm Emanuel could have found other ways to save money – such as dropping official support for that DePaul University basketball arena to be built near McCormick Place or for expansion of a walkway along the Chicago River in the downtown area.

Which means Fioretti can take pot shots at Emanuel while also claiming to be for our public safety. Let’s just hope the public isn’t too demanding of details, because that is where campaign rhetoric always falls apart.

DOES ANYBODY BELIEVE we’d be coming up on “Gov. Bruce Rauner” beginning next week if he had been forced to discuss in detail all of his campaign proposals?

If it seems like I’m not too enthused about Fioretti’s talk, you’d sort of be right. I’d want to know more about where these officers would be stationed in the city. Because if it’s just more officers for the police district near Wrigley Field while ignoring the serious needs for officers in other parts of Chicago, we might as well not bother.

Even though I’m sure Lake View neighborhood residents would be thrilled if the police could crack down on all those drunken Cubs fans who think front lawns or alleys are perfect places to urinate publicly!

Besides, it’s not like Fioretti is the only candidate who wants to get Election Day votes by promising more police officers – Jesus “Chuy” Garcia came out last year with a pledge to hire 1,000 more police officers.

HIS RHETORIC WAS equally vague – saying he’d find financial “inefficiencies” in municipal government operations, and also would reduce the amount of overtime paid to police officers.

As though what we need in Chicago are officers who punch the time clock and go home after an eight-hour shift – regardless of what is actually happening.

All this talk of hiring more police officers sounds nice, but it doesn’t come across as a solid pledge we ought to take literally.

Although Fioretti was not the only one trying to start out 2015 with a campaign boost – Willie Wilson received a $1 million contribution to his mayoral campaign.

FROM HIMSELF!!!!!!

Wilson is the African-American man who turned ownership in McDonald’s franchises across the South Side into a fortune that he now uses to donate to charitable organizations.

Apparently, Wilson now regards himself as a charity case – although his campaign has the Emanuel operatives concerned that he could invest so much of his own money into a campaign operation that he could become credible.

Just as Rauner did in last year’s gubernatorial election cycle!

I DON’T KNOW if he’ll get that far. But his rhetoric about how Emanuel as mayor has been harmful to African-American residents of Chicago will resonate with some voters.

To the point where another mayoral hopeful, Robert Shaw, has gone so far as to publicly endorse Wilson.

Can Wilson become another Emanuel challenger (along with Fioretti and Garcia) who can take just enough votes to ensure Emanuel can’t win a majority come Feb. 24? Will he be the reason city voters will have to join their suburban brethren in voting for municipal office on April 7?

We’ll have to wait to see if the millions already raised by Emanuel’s campaign can be sufficient to squash the political desires of all three of these men – and give us “four more years” of Rahm!

  -30-

Do political firings solve problems? Or merely sweep them under the carpet?

I wonder at times if political people view the hiring/firing process as being the equivalent of the confessional booth.


You know, go in there, tell the priest how much of a sinner you were, and you're forgiven -- no matter how bad your "sin" is.


IT SEEMS THAT political people think that whenever someone on their staff (or someone connected to them) screws up, all it takes is a dismissal; and then we're supposed to forget that the grievance ever occurred.


Instant forgiveness, it would seem.


Except for the political opponents of that person, who usually will go out of their way to keep that "sin" alive for as long as they wish -- whenever it serves their purposes.


This all popped into my head last week when 10th Ward Alderman John Pope let one of his aides go -- specifically, Thomas "T.J." Sadzak, who had worked for him since 2008 in terms of dealing with constituent complaints of 10th Ward residents.


BUT IT SEEMS that Sadzak had previously worked for the city's Streets and Sanitation department and had engaged in behavior so bad that he quit that job before he could be terminated -- and had actually been placed on a list of people whom are not eligible for city jobs. The city wound up having to pay nearly $99,000 to settle the resulting lawsuit filed by a fellow city worker.


But that list didn't apply to aldermanic staff hires, so Pope gave Sadzak a job -- one that he'd probably still have except for the Chicago Sun-Times reports of recent weeks that drew public attention to the whole situation.


That caused the alderman to let his staffer -- for whom to the best of my knowledge hadn't done anything as an aldermanic aide that would warrant his dismissal -- go.


As though all the criticism will now wither away. Actually, it probably will. Most people are short-memoried enough that they're not going to remember becoming public now by the time of the Feb. 24 municipal elections. I probably should point out here that in my reporter-type person duties, I have dealt with Sadzak and never had any problems with him.


ARE WE SUPPOSED to think that Pope's aldermanic challenger, Rich Martinez, is being petty every time he brings the issue up during coming months?


Which I suspect he will. As it turns out, Martinez came up with his first campaign attack on Friday calling for Pope to fire Sadzak, then resign himself -- all for showing "questionable" judgment in hiring the aide to begin with. That fact doesn't change, regardless of whether anyone lost a job now.


Martinez may still whine and cry in coming months that Pope didn't go far enough. Eventually, the voters will decide whether they think this issue -- along with many others -- is legitimate enough to warrant removal from the post he has held since 1999.


This issue won't die, no matter how much some people want it to, because some will  be determined to be petty enough to keep it alive.


WHAT THE CRITICS wanted was for the attack issue; not any real concern over whether the aide remained on the alderman's staff.


Not that such circumstances are unique. I still remember the 2008 election cycle when Barack Obama came under intense criticism because of his family pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and the rhetoric that to me sounds like what comes out of many a black-oriented church, but which "shocked and appalled" many white people who just weren't used to such over-the-top talk on Sunday.


Obama quickly cut ties to Wright -- the pastor who had presided over his wedding and established family ties. Not that the ideologues among us are willing to forget anything.


They want to complain, the way Pope's critics will still complain. The way many other political post terminations wind up being nothing more than sweeping a potential problem under the run -- rather than try to resolve the situations that led to the problem arising in the first place.


  -30-

Does anybody really believe that anyone can now get hired at City Hall?

I was amused to read an Associated Press account about the fact that a federal judge lifted a series of restrictions meant to ensure that government jobs weren’t given out purely as rewards for political work.

Who you know may not be enough to land a job at Chicago's City Hall anymore -- that was the story's lede. Do you really believe this to be true?

EXCUSE ME FOR being skeptical, but there’s always going to be a degree to which people hire those with whom they are most comfortable, and to whom each election cycle will mean the coming of new blood – largely because the old blood will have lost their political sponsors in the electoral posts.

Besides, we do have to admit that much of the old, incredibly blatant, ways of government hiring have gone by the wayside. A new generation that just isn’t inclined to be so obedient just to get a job has come in.

Personally, I view the lifting of Shakman Decree restrictions as being merely an acknowledgement of that fact. The blatant problems are over. But the more subtle ones are not, and likely never will be.

What we have to be less concerned with is less about who “sent” someone for a particular post, and more about whether government work (“the people’s business,” as some cynical pols refer to it), actually gets done.

BECAUSE MUCH OF the work done in these clerical jobs is stuff that could be done by many people – including the ones who got the jobs because they happened to know somebody.

There are times I wonder if the people who complain the loudest are the ones who are jealous that the only people they know capable of “getting them” a job are ones who work in a gas station, and not some sort of pseudo-cushy political posts.

If they had the right contacts, they’d suddenly be all for the old system.

And yes, I have to tell you that many of these jobs can be mind-numbing in their own right. If not for the perspective that you’re doing work for the public, nobody would want many of these clerical posts.

BECAUSE ANYBODY WITH any real intelligence who works within government either has some sort of serious dedication to the public good (more intense than you’d see in a police officer or social worker), or else they wind up leaving to make much more money in the private sector.

Now I suppose I should say that I once got a government job because of who I knew. It was back when I was in college and I needed a job for the summer. It turned out I knew someone who knew then-Rich Township Democratic Committeeman Lee Conlon.

It also turned out that Conlon and I had both attended the same university. So the next thing I knew, I was showing up at the office of then-Cook County Assessor Harold “Bus” Yourell, whose chief of staff had but one question for me.

 

Literally, it was “Who sent you?” That was my only qualification for a summer’s worth of work in the basement recording land transactions in giant ledger books (the county hadn’t yet fully computerized such information, so the books still had to be kept up to date).

I CAN’T SAY any of my colleagues were particularly qualified for the job. Then again, I don’t think anyone out there would have done any better than we did that summer.

Even if I was, theoretically, just a political hack who was eminently replaceable.

Do we really want a government operated by somebody, even if they have no real qualifications or skills, that anybody sent?

  -30-

What will we do without Shakman?

From Richard J. Daley ...

I became aware of City Hall as a little kid (Who could possibly ignore the persona of Richard J. Daley? Whom I saw live once when they dedicated the then-brand new Sears Tower), but started paying attention to the details (Jane Byrne moving into the Cabrini Green public housing complex) back when I was in high school.

I had a summer stint on a government payroll (the other side of the building, in county government) while in college during the Harold Washington era, and wrote my first stories about city government back when the name “Eugene Sawyer” (not the son) was relevant.

... through the Jane Byrne era, ...

OF COURSE, IT means I saw the whole era of Richard M. Daley in detail, and see the concept of Rahm Emanuel in its true context – a piece of an overall story, rather than an epic in and of itself.

Through all this, there has been one constant – city government officials have had to deal with (and I’m sure they thought it was an ordeal) the Shakman Decree.

As in the federal court order that has lasted through the decades that provides for outside oversight to ensure that the old ways of City Hall hiring people for political reasons withered away.

It was a 1969 lawsuit that resulted three years later in the court order that came to be known by the name of the attorney – Michael Shakman – who led the effort to try to make government hiring more honest and open.

... running through H.W., to ...

FROM MY PERSPECTIVE (and those of many other political observers), Shakman (the ruling) has been around for so long that it just seems like a part of the atmosphere around “the Hall.”

It seems hard to believe that soon, Shakman will be a bit of history. And maybe the day will come when people will wonder how we could have ever needed such oversight of the way government picked people for jobs?

... Eugene Sawyer; through the ...

It is such a regular part of the way things go that I’m still trying to comprehend how government will operate without it. Or, that the oversight for city government will now be merely the Inspector General’s office – just like many other government entities.

But it is reality.

... 'second coming' of Daley, ...

LAST WEEK, A federal judge started the clock on a 30-day period of review in which, if it works out the way things are expected, the Shakman decree will be allowed to lapse for city government.

Because the city was found to be “in substantial compliance” with the concept that people should be hired to work for city government because they are qualified for the job – and not because they knew somebody.

We should be pleased that our city government has reached such a level. It means that, despite all the rants we hear from certain elements of our society about how rotten and corrupt the officials are, it basically works. Besides, those people are mostly upset because government isn’t upholding their ideological hang-ups.

... to the modern-era of Rahm, ...

What I found interesting about last week’s actions was that officials acknowledged that “substantial compliance” isn’t the same as “perfect compliance.”

IT IS THE notion that there invariably will be something that violates the sensibilities of the goo-goos. That you can’t completely get away from political people hiring those they feel they can trust – particularly since we don’t seem to get offended when other companies hire people for similar reasons.

... Michael Shakman was THE constant

Check out the Chicago Sun-Times on Sunday, which reported how one-time Cook County Board President Todd Stroger was hired by 21^st Ward Alderman Howard Brookins on a string of monthly contracts.

He may not be on the city payroll proper, but he’s getting city funds to basically serve as an advisor to Brookins. Who probably figures that the day will come when someone will allow him to hang around “the Hall” with a similar contract? But this is the exception; or so we’re told.

It took 45 years for the need for “Shakman” to wither away. The real test of how honest our city government has become will be how long we can go before a federal judge decides it needs to be resurrected.

  -30-

Is it premature to look beyond Tuesday?

I understand the logic of being prepared for any possible outcome. Yet with the upcoming general elections being as unpredictable as they are, I can’t help but think anyone who is focusing attention on anything beyond Tuesday is setting themselves up for embarrassment.



DURBIN: Leader?

That was the gut feeling I felt upon reading a pair of stories that got some play this past weekend – one related to the governor’s election and the other to the U.S. Senate.

FOR IT SEEMS that Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., is taking some steps to prepare for the possibility that a majority of Nevada voters will be twisted enough to think that Sharron Angle is fit to serve in Washington.

If Harry Reid really loses his bid for re-election to his seat in the Senate, there’s no way he could remain leader of the Democratic Party caucus. Which means that Durbin could be in line to become the Democrats’ leader.

It also means that if Democrats don’t lose control of the Senate after Tuesday’s elections, it would create the possibility of “Senate Majority Leader Richard Durbin, D-Ill.” It also would be only the second time that an Illinoisan (Scott Lucas of Chandlersville, 1949-51) worked his way up to the Senate’s top post.

I know some people of a certain partisan ideology are gagging at the mere thought of the Springfield resident (and East St. Louis native) being in charge of the U.S. Senate. Although I must admit their mental misery is enough for me to want Durbin to someday get the post, similar to how the thought of “Mayor Rahm Emanuel” would make me happy because of the people who would be ticked off by the concept.

I JUST THINK it is premature to think about the thought of Durbin getting a promotion, and not just because of the factors the Chicago Tribune reported on this weekend because of the fact that Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., also has dreams of becoming the Senate’s leader.



REID: Getting out of Dick's Way?

It’s just that I can’t help but think that if the political climate really is such that Reid does lose to Angle, it is because of circumstances beyond anyone’s control that likely will result in significant-enough losses for Democratic Party officials.

In short, if Reid loses, it probably will be a part of an overall loss that would shift control of the U.S. Senate to the Republican Party. Which means that I believe it is more likely we could get “Senate Minority Leader Richard Durbin, D-Ill.,” than majority leader.

That is, if Reid doesn’t just narrowly eke out a victory in Tuesday’s elections against the Republican ideologues across the nation who are so desperate for a partisan victory that they are willing to prop up a clearly-unqualified goof of a candidate like Angle.

THE JOKE ABOUT partisanship is to say that someone is “So Republican” that they would “vote for Hitler if the GOP nominated him.” I’d say we’re going to be able to look at the percentage of Nevada voters who actually cast ballots for Angle and figure out how many people are that wedded to the Republican Party – regardless of the lack of qualifications put forth by their candidate.

Yet at least with the idea of pondering about Dick Durbin’s chances of becoming the Senate’s leader has some bearing in reality. He could get the post if a set of circumstances works out. The rhetoric we got this weekend from Republican gubernatorial nominee William Brady was pure partisan drivel.

Brady used an appearance in Springfield on Saturday to say that when he is elected governor, there are at least 300 people on the state payroll with political loyalties to now-impeached Gov. Rod Blagojevich who will be dismissed.

It’s a cheap attempt to drag the “Blagojevich” monicker into the campaign, rather than rely on campaigning against his actual opponent – Gov. Pat Quinn.

PERSONALLY, I WOULD expect the bulk of those 300 to be partisan enough that they will quit before Brady could get around to firing them. So while I fully concede there are certain positions within state government to which Brady would have every right to replace at will, I don’t like the way Brady is trying to make it sound  like his actions – should he win in Tuesday’s elections – are somehow a particularly harsh action meant to benefit government.



BRADY: You're all fired!

As Brady put it, “they will all be let go. They will have the right to come back and reapply for a job, but we’re going to ask for their resignations.” That statement could come from the mouth of anyone who gets elected to a political post.

That is what happens whenever there is a transition. Even Quinn dumped some people from their political posts when he took over for Blagojevich in mid-administration. Brady’s behavior wouldn’t be any different.

For that matter, I wouldn’t be surprised to see some people currently on the state government payroll lose their jobs even if Quinn is successful in winning a gubernatorial term of his own.

BEFORE, IT COULD be argued that since he was coming into office in mid-term, he had an obligation to maintain as much stability as possible. Now that he could be getting his own term, he could finally start doing things more to his own liking.

So the idea that Brady would represent a significant overhaul of the state payroll out of a sense of good government is nothing but garbage. It will all be about partisan politics and having people in top posts who will be inclined to want their big boss to succeed.

There also is one other factor to consider. I seem to recall that Blagojevich back in 2002 engaged in the same type of rhetoric that Brady is giving us now, and he tried to fire several people because their political loyalties were to Republicans and former Gov. George Ryan. Many of them filed lawsuits and wound up winning back either their employment or significant financial compensation to make up for the fact that Milorod tried to dump them out of a self-righteous attempt to make himself look tough.

Perhaps not repeating that mistake could be a lesson that Brady ought to learn from Blagojevich.

  -30-

Does college enhance cop credentials?

It should never be a shock to us when an elected official says something that  essentially is knuckleheaded in nature.

But a part of me is still trying to comprehend the logic (or lack thereof) that went into Ninth Ward Alderman Anthony Beale’s recent comments with regards to the way in which the city hires police officers.

CITY OFFICIALS EARLIER this week let it be known that they will administer another entrance exam (the first in four years) so as to create more potential police officers who can be hired and assigned to police districts that could use more staff to try to fight crime.

That led Beale to spout off about how he thinks the pool that will be created will be a flawed one.

Now let me state up front that I admire, and agree with, Beale’s goal of a potential cop pool that isn’t a bunch of young white Irish guys who will grow up into veteran white Irish cops. The alderman from the far South Side ward (the Roseland and Pullman neighborhoods) wants to ensure that there will be a significant number of people of various racial and ethnic backgrounds among the new hires.

Which only makes sense because Chicago is a city comprised of people of various racial and ethnic backgrounds. Our police should look like ourselves, not what the city’s composition looked like some 75 years ago.

MY PROBLEM IS with the idea Beale came up with to achieve it. One of the ways in which police departments have tried to upgrade their image and the skills of their officers is by seeking out people who have at least some college education in their backgrounds.

Currently, the city requires that someone have at least the equivalent of two years of undergraduate work. That could either be an associate’s degree from a community college, or two years worth of work towards that bachelor’s degree.

It doesn’t mean that anyone is requiring a college degree to become a police officer – although some of the more technical positions within law enforcement that an officer with ambition might aspire to probably do require significant technical knowledge and far more education than two years of undergraduate studies.

It’s not like anyone is even requiring that people wishing to work for the Chicago Police Department go to elite universities to obtain this education. It can literally be studies done at the City Colleges of Chicago, which probably would result in more people from the neighborhoods getting involved in local law enforcement.

BEALE SAYS HE wants to eliminate the college requirement because it discourages racial minorities from thinking about law enforcement. To me, it comes off as him claiming that black people somehow shouldn’t be expected to think in terms of higher education, if they want to advance in certain facets of our society.

I will be the first to admit that not everyone is cut out to attend a college. Then again, not everyone is cut out to be a police officer.

I don’t like the idea of lowering the bar of what we expect from potential police officers just because one alderman gets it into his head that somehow, college educations and racial minorities aren’t synonymous, or that college and cops don’t mix.

I think they do, and not just because much of the skills of law enforcement are so much more advanced than they were all those decades ago.

WHETHER WE CAN accept this fact or not, our society has become more technologically skilled in ways that require just about everybody to get some sort of advanced education. I’m not saying everybody needs a Master of Arts degree, or a Ph.D.

But just as we are now requiring more education of just about everyone in our society who does not want to be left behind, it only makes sense that our police officers should be treated no different.

At the very least, it exposes those potential new police officers to experiences with people in our society that they might not otherwise encounter. Which actually is what I consider to be a college education’s chief benefit.

People get exposed to others with differing experiences whom they might not otherwise encounter. Perhaps the military once served that role, but I wonder at times if the all-volunteer army we now have consists of limited types of people?

ONE OF THE last things we want is for our police officers to return to something resembling the old stereotype of the flatfoot cop walking his beat and having his knowledge amount to little more than knowing when it is appropriate to pull out his nightstick and use it on someone who is threatening to cause trouble.

I agree with Beale that I’d like to see more racial and ethnic groups represented in the Chicago Police Department. Yet perhaps the real solution is to make it more feasible for people in those groups who have interest in working in law enforcement to think in terms of obtaining a higher education.

Any time we get people to think in terms of setting the bar higher for themselves to achieve a goal in life, we are better off as a society.

  -30-

Supreme Court issues ruling against Chicago in legal case (no, not THAT one)

The Supreme Court of the United States ruled against Chicago city government in a case that will have national impact with the way local governments conduct themselves.

No, the high court did not rule on the case challenging the ban on firearms ownership within the city limits. Monday’s unanimous ruling relates to the fire department, which was sued by several African-American firefighters who took the written examination to qualify for promotions – only to have the city suddenly try to impose a higher score on the exam to actually qualify.

THAT RESULTED IN most of the firefighters who got promotions during the 1990s being white people.

Those black firefighters had filed their lawsuit in U.S. District Court for Northern Illinois, and along the way it was tossed out by the U.S. Court of Appeals in Chicago on the grounds that the firefighters waited too long before beginning their legal fight. The law says such a lawsuit must be filed within 300 days of the act alleged to be improper.

Attorneys for the city argue that the first legal action was filed 430 days after the test results were announced. In short, the merits of the case were ignored because of a technicality – which is common in court fights.

But in issuing a unanimous ruling on Monday, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for the high court that the lawsuit could be heard on its merits. They said that each promotion that relied on the test results extended the time period.

WHICH BASICALLY MEANS that Scalia found a technicality that allows the lawsuit to be resurrected from its death due to legal technicalities.

The end result is not that anybody is going to get promoted now. It merely means that the lawsuit can be brought up again in the courts at the Dirksen Building. Which means it will be years before anyone actually gets anything resembling financial compensation because they were denied a promotion.

It also means many more years of legal bills being incurred as the city has to resume its defense of the fire department’s decade-old conduct.

Now a part of me is discouraged that my home city is going to get hit with legal bills estimated to run into many millions of dollars. I’m sure that some politically-partisan people will find it hilarious that a Democratic-leaning city such as Chicago gets whacked with such high legal bills.

BUT I DO derive some pleasure out of the fact that this court ruling by the Supreme Court helps to ensure that a ruling eventually is made on the merits of the issue – which is just how relevant those written examinations ought to be when it comes to these public safety agency promotions.

Monday’s court ruling wasn’t a surprise, since reports from a few months ago when arguments were heard by the high court indicated that the justices publicly expressed their concerns about the city’s conduct.

What is involved in this case is the examination given to prospective fire department officers. Typically, anyone who scored 64 or better was considered to have “passed” the examination. But after the exam was given, city officials then imposed a higher standard of 89 – saying they were not likely to promote anyone who scored less than that, even though they techically passed the exam with a lower score.

The result of that change was that only 11 percent of firefighters who got promoted as a result of that examination were African-American (in a city where black people account for just over one-third of the total population).

TO MY SENSIBILITIES, this appears to be changing the rules in the middle of the process. So Scalia’s ruling that the lawsuit needs to be resurrected and heard in court would seem to be an obvious one.

But this case will tick off those people who were celebrating last year when the same Supreme Court ruled against New Haven, Conn., for the way in which they used test results to determine firefighter promotions.

In that city’s case, the fire department tried to ignore test results that would have resulted in a disproportionate share of white firefighters qualifying for promotion. The Supreme Court said that act was improper, and the kind of people who want to ignore racial and ethnic factors in hiring wanted to believe that they had achieved a major victory.

No more of this messing around with test results, which should be absolute – they say. If the end result is fewer black public safety officials, perhaps it is just evidence they weren’t qualified for the job.

THAT KIND OF narrow-minded logic is warped in that it ignores the harm that can be caused when a public safety agency doesn’t bear some resemblance to the people whom it is protecting.

Now, we have a case where black firefighters in Chicago are likely to have to receive some financial compensation (even though I’m sure the legal fees being wracked up will wind up consuming most of whatever financial judgment or settlement is ultimately approved to resolve this case).

-30-

Surprise, surprise! Stroger vetoes attempt by critics to restrain his final months

I’m sure there are political observers who are now condemning Cook County Board President Todd Stroger for the fact that he used his veto power to kill a proposal intended to be a good government gesture by the full county board.

But when one considers that the so-called good government gesture was really nothing more than a cynical move in and of itself against Stroger, I can’t say I am all that offended by the fact that the lame duck president refused to play along.

TO BE SPECIFIC, the county board of Commissioners last week approved a series of measures that restrict the county president’s authority, particularly when it comes to spending of county money. There are those who fear that Stroger will use his final months in office to reward his allies financially – at county expense.

Stroger made it clear the day the county board acted that he was not going to go along with this political attack willingly. On Monday, he carried through on that promise by issuing the veto on the ordinance that would impose a hiring freeze on county government – unless Stroger could justify any new hires on the grounds that they constituted a legitimate county emergency.

Now I read those same news reports that everybody else did in recent weeks – the ones that implied Stroger bought new furniture for his government office and was giving significant pay hikes to people who had family ties to himself.

I’m not saying I necessarily approve of the idea that Stroger seems to want to use every remaining bit of time he has in Cook County government to his advantage. A part of me thinks the county board members who voted 16-1 to restrict Stroger’s power were well-intentioned, if misguided.

WHICH MAY MAKE county board member William Beavers (the “1” in the “16-1” vote) the most logical county commissioner when he called the moves “ridiculous.”

My bottom-line thought process on this issue says that political people need to get over the level of disgust they feel for Stroger and accept the fact that Todd still has six-and-a-half months remaining on his four-year term.

He still has the authority to do things, and the idea that he should be restrained for the rest of his term because of his electoral loss in the Feb. 2 primary comes off as petty politicking on the part of the people who voted against Stroger.

To be honest, the pettiness expressed against Stroger offends me much more than anything Stroger does. The fact is that he won back in 2006, and that victory gave him authority through December of this year.

IT IS THE reason why I also found it ridiculous for the Arlington Heights-based Daily Herald newspaper to editorialize last week that Stroger needs to resign his post. If anything, we’re stuck with him. We will be rid of him soon enough.

Come December, we will get a transition, most likely to Alderman Toni Preckwinkle. Be honest, Cook County will remain a Democratic Party bastion in the Nov. 2 general elections, it is the suburban collar counties that will decide whether or not Illinois swings Republican for a couple of years before things settle back to the status quo for future elections.

Personally, I can look at the long-range picture once Stroger leaves. Because all that this activity within the county board is going to cause is more legal activity – which ought to be the last thing anybody wants.

For the fact of that 16-1 vote is that the county board has more than enough votes to approve an override of Stroger’s “veto,” when they meet again next week.

WHICH MEANS THE restrictions on Stroger’s authority ultimately will become law. Stroger knows that. He knew it when he signed the paperwork calling for a veto.

This is about him saying he’s not going to let himself get pushed around for the next few months by the people who for the past four years have been taking his name in vain every time it gets mentioned. Which means that once the veto override is approved, the next step will be some sort of court battle. Stroger against the county board. Which means that the county’s attorneys will get a court battle, along with all the special legal counsels that will have to be hired at county taxpayer expense.

After all, whose side would the county’s attorneys take in this fight? The commissioners who are restricting goverment authority, or the president who is being smacked about? This particular fight ultimately comes down to the taxpayers being the losers – regardless of which side would prevail years from now.

I don’t see the need to put the Cook County taxpayers through that kind of an expensive legal fight, especially not with the tight economic times our government now faces, just because some political people want to reinforce the thought that Todd Stroger leaves office in Decemberr in defeat.

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It’s the stupid stunts that cause problems

To listen to the city investigators, an attorney from Denver who was brought to Chicago to eliminate the conditions that allow for improper hiring for city goverrnment jobs committed some wrongdoing in that area themselves.

Anthony Boswell served a 30-day suspension for allegedly mishandling a sexual harassment complaint filed by an intern, and now investigators are saying he also oversaw the hiring of three people whose city jobs were never posted in accordance with guidelines meant to give all qualified people a chance to apply for the job.

YET WHAT IS it that has the Chicago Sun-Times all worked up this week about Boswell?

The newspaper reported Thursday that Boswell hired a consultant to help him with his job as head of the Office of Compliance. When that consultant turned out to be a Latino, the newspaper reported that Boswell had the consultant do double-duty and provide him with lessons in the Spanish language.

“Did hiring watchdog use city cash to learn Spanish?,” reads (http://www.suntimes.com/news/cityhall/2147123,CST-NWS-boswell08.article) the Sun-Times headline.

It never fails to amaze me how the things that get political people caught up in the appearance of “corruption” are so trivial on the surface.

DO WE REALLY want to think that it is a bad thing that a Chicago city official – seeing that one-quarter of the city’s population has ethnic origins in a Latin American nation (one of every six Chicagoans these days has origins specifically in Mexico) – would think he might be more useful if he boosted his language skills en Español?

If anything, that might be a point in hisfavor. Not that I’m saying his job (he already has offered a resignation that is to take effect May 31) ought to be spared because he can habla palabras poquitos in badly-accented Spanish.

Then again, there are times I wonder whether many Chicagoans’ command of the English language ought to be considered “foreign.” I doubt Boswell’s Spanish sounded any more absurd than some of the ramblings that have come from the mouth of Hizzoner Jr. – Richard M. Daley.

Now I can already hear the people who are about to adopt the mantle of good government types and claim there is a principle at stake here. If Boswell wants to bolster his Spanish-speaking skills, he ought to do so on his own time and pay for that tutoring with his own money.

NOT THAT IT can be said for sure how much money these language lessons accounted for.

The Sun-Times reported that the man who was providing Boswell with a Spanish booster course was part of a law firm that had a $150,000 consulting contract with the Office of Compliance. I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt that much of that money was for legitimate work.

Then again, when it comes to government consulting contracts, the definition of “legitimate” work can be fluid enough to include whatever city officials say should be legitimate.

What I find interesting about this situation are the details that come out in the bottom inches of the Sun-Times report. For it seems that is where we get to the more serious details of potential wrong-doing.

PUTTING SPANISH LESSONS on top almost seems like a way of getting a cheap, tittilating headline – one that may even irk the portion of the Chicago population that has its hangups about anything related to the fact that Latinos are expected to account for about one-third of Chicago by 2020 (and one-third of the nation by 2050).

I still remember a couple of years ago when the Chicago Tribune wrote a story about international interest in the Chicago Bears football team and had a front-page headline in several languages – including Spanish. What I recall were the reader comments that criticized the newspaper for including the Spanish language at all – with one reader I remember saying its presence in this country was completely offensive.

Is this story trying to appeal to those same sensibilities – tax dollars being wasted on Spanish? Perhaps if he had taken Polish lessons, that would have been acceptable!

The thing is that Boswell’s story doesn’t neet this cheap angle, when there are so many others that could be highlighted. After all, Boswell claims the reason he is being singled out by all these reports is that he says he did his job and prevented Corporation Counsel Mara Georges from controlling the hiring practices in such a manner that the daughter of a Georges colleague would have got a city job that she was not qualified for.

HE OPENLY CALLS all this legal activity to get rid of him “a retaliation campaign.”

Then again, Boswell was one of those people with political influence who tried to use their authority to get their school-age children into the better schools maintained by the Chicago Public Schools (no matter what they will officially claim, not all public schools in Chicago are created equal). He doesn’t come off as “Mr. Innocent” in all of this, although neither do other city officials.

So we have a lot of back-and-forth political squabbling, along with reports of allegations that toss out the words “sexual harassment” and “intern.” That is enough serious material to dig into without having to get too excited about whether or not Boswell wanted to learn to speak Spanish better than Steve Martin used to in his old stand-up comedy routine where he would absurdly ask, “¿Donde està el casa de pipi?”

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We ought to hold courts to high ideal

I can already hear in my mind all the complaints from courthouse types who will be upset that a federal judge dared to overturn the conviction of the former Streets and Sanitation commissioner.

Al Sanchez was the former high-ranking Latino politico who got caught up in the petty graft that takes place at City Hall, which was the reason he went from being a noble public servant to just another corrupt official.

ON TUESDAY, U.S. District Judge Robert Gettleman issued a ruling that struck down Sanchez’ conviction.

His reasoning?

One of the primary witnesses to Sanchez’ behavior crossing over the line from political to criminal was someone who, to put it politely, sells illicit narcotics to earn a living.

It was the opinion of Sanchez’ attorneys that they should have been informed of that aspect of the witness’ character so they could use it against him during the trial, doing everything they could to besmirch his reputation in the eyes of the jury.

NOT THAT THAT alone would have guaranteed an acquittal for Sanchez. Anyone who has ever covered criminal proceedings realizes that the people who usually know the most about criminal behavior and activity are criminals themselves.

The idea of Jane Q. Citizen being an eyewitness and testifying as her way of serving her public duty occurs so rarely. Most of the witnesses in criminal cases are people who have something to gain by seeing the defendant receive a criminal conviction.

Prosecutors in this case admit they didn’t disclose all the information about their primary witness, although they claim it doesn’t matter. Even if he is not an ideal human being, this should not (in their opinion) be enough of an excuse to toss out the conviction that they worked so many years to obtain.

That is where I would have to disagree.

I REALIZE WE don’t live in the ideal world and that all witnesses have some sort of taint to them.

But something like this should have been made public. Let the defense do their best to try to “take down” the witness.

Because if the overall totality of the evidence is such that it persuades the jury to vote “guilty,” then it can be overcome.

How many organized crime figures are currently serving prison time because their one-time associates decided it was in their best interest (less prison time for themselves) to “give up” their former colleagues?

MY POINT IS that this factor can be overcome by prosecutors. Trying to downplay it by taking the attitude that the prosecution is somehow entitled to a bit of favoritism (seriously, I have heard prosecutors argue that judges are naïve when they use this type of logic to toss out evidence) is a sad case.

For the reality of every criminal case I have ever seen is that the prosecution has so many built-in advantages that there are times I wonder how any defendant ever gets an acquittal.

They shouldn’t have had to try to cut corners such as this.

For now we’re going to have to go through another trial, which will cost the federal taxpayers yet more dollars.

I DON’T ENVISION Sanchez being suddenly willing to plead guilty to lesser charges. He told the Chicago Tribune, “I’ve always maintained I’ve done nothing wrong.”

But then again, I don’t envision the prosecution wanting to give Sanchez any sort of deal that would let him plead guilty to a lesser charge – even though that would be the practical way to try to resolve this case at this stage in time.

For Sanchez is one of the former Hispanic Democratic Organization officials (even the group itself no longer exists) who got caught up in what prosecutors say was a scam to get around the rules that are supposed to govern hiring of employees for city government.

(Yes, there really are rules about how to get a job at City Hall, even though most people don’t have a clue what those rules really are).

NOW, WE GET to relive the whole hiring scam, and probably will get to hear a few stories about the venal way in which HDO attempted to bolster the political interests of Richard M. Daley by working on behalf of Latinos who were sympathetic to Hizzoner Jr.

By this point, it ought to be old news.

But that is what happens when prosecutors think they ought to have more advantages, rather than remembering that – in theory – defendants are innocent until proven otherwise.

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