* How the insiders are treated in Chicago…
Six years ago, Allison S. Davis, an ally of Mayor Daley, got two city blocks of free land to build homes in the Woodlawn neighborhood. And the biggest, most expensive house went to Davis’ son.
* How everyone else is treated…
Chicago could generate $2.7 million a year — and maybe nearly twice that much — by cracking down on what has become a “widespread black market” in counterfeit city stickers, Inspector General David Hoffman has concluded.
After a yearlong investigation that identified 388 counterfeit stickers — 94 percent of them found at city auto pounds and at least one on a car that belonged to a city employee — Hoffman is recommending stiff new penalties for those who sell and manufacture bogus stickers and against motorists who purchase and display them.
I’m not condoning counterfeiting in any way, but the city conducts a year-long investigation of city stickers and finds less than 400 of them and that’s a huge problem? Priorities, people.
* The treatment of the upper echelon…
The city of Chicago is under-reporting hundreds of millions of dollars in property taxes it pulls in every year. That’s according to a new study by the Civic Federation, a fiscal watchdog group. It says there needs to be more transparency.
* Everyone else…
Barring last-minute changes, the Chicago City Council is poised to hike taxes, fees and fines by more than $275 million when it votes Tuesday on Mayor Richard Daley’s proposed 2008 budget.
The chief concern for aldermen and homeowners is Daley’s plan to raise property taxes by $86 million, by far the largest hike since he took office in 1989.
* The few…
As a young lawyer, Allison S. Davis was a City Hall outsider.
He criticized Mayor Richard J. Daley over the 1968 riots. He worked to integrate Chicago neighborhoods. And he fought to elect judges based on legal ability, not political connections.
Today, Davis is a consummate City Hall insider.
He’s a loyal ally of Mayor Richard M. Daley, who appointed Davis to Chicago’s prestigious Plan Commission. Davis has gotten deal after deal from the mayor, helping to make Davis one of the city’s top developers. And Davis has forged strong ties to the Daley family, doing deals with one of the mayor’s nephews and giving legal business to Daley & George, mayoral brother Michael Daley’s law firm.
* The many…
This year, according to the Law Department, as of Sept. 30, Chicago had paid out more than $27 million in police misconduct judgments and settlements on claims ranging from sexual harassment to excessive force and illegal search.
* Meanwhile, grand plans from Mayor Daley…
Wind turbines on Sears Tower and a “green” roof on the Merchandise Mart are two high-profile concepts on the drawing board as part of a wide-ranging, environmentally friendly development plan under consideration by the city.
* But basic stuff like a decent city recycling program is still out of reach…
But the fact is, we’ll never be able to claim we’re green giants until we have an effective, citywide recycling program. And we still have a long way to go.
Recycling, after all, is the most basic of environmental programs. It’s probably the first thing someone does when they start to think green, because of the variety of benefits, from saving natural resources to saving energy to saving landfill space. “What’s good about recycling is that it’s something everyone can do and actually make an impact,” said Julie Dick, a board member at the Chicago Recycling Coalition. But people who move to Chicago from the suburbs or other big cities, nearly all of which have better recycling programs than Chicago’s, are often surprised at how hard it is here.
Thoughts?