Night meetings? Mandatory attendance-taking before committee meetings? Not if Chicago aldermen can help it

Until the City Council finally started live-streaming committee meetings — where the real business gets done — attendance was paltry.

Even now that live-streaming has shamed some no-show aldermen into attending, it’s still not unusual for committees to vote on important legislation with only a handful of aldermen present.

The legal requirement that a majority of committee members show up to conduct official business is routinely ignored. A quorum is assumed unless a committee member asks that attendance be taken. And that only happens when an alderman wants to block a vote.

But on Monday, a standing-room-only-crowd of roughly two dozen Chicago aldermen showed up at a Rules Committee meeting to snuff out an attempt to end those “good ol’ days.”

Ald. Patrick Daley Thompson (11^th), whose uncle and grandfather benefited from the old system, was pushing a resolution requiring committees to take a vote at the start of every meeting.

If no majority is present, the committee would be required to adjourn on the spot.

“It’s [important from] a good government standpoint to have participation [and] make sure that we have a quorum to open up the meeting,” he said.

“It will also will force committee chairs … to be considerate of our schedules. We have more committees now. With … overlapping schedules, we need to be cognizant of that.”

Even more controversial was DaleyThompson’s proposal to require half of all committee meetings to be held after 6 p.m. to bolster public participation.

“If you go to other communities throughout the Chicagoland area, almost every other government has their meetings in the evenings,” Daley Thompson said.

“All of us know, when we have a matter up, how hard it is to get people to come down here at 10 o’clock, especially a lot of those neighborhoods where you’ve got both parents working. It’s real difficult to take time off of work — and when you come here for meetings, sometimes you sit” for hours.

Downtown Ald. Brendan Reilly (42^nd) commended Daley Thompson for “wanting to make City Council more accessible,” adding: “His heart is in the right place.”

But mandating half of all committee meetings be held at night was not the way, Reilly said.

“So much of my work schedule actually happens after 6 o’clock at night. Town hall meetings. Zoning and development meetings. I’ve got one of those tonight at 6 o’clock,” Reilly said.

Ald. Jason Ervin (28^th) said there’s a good reason many suburbs hold council meetings at night. Suburban council members “work second jobs” during the day and “really are not hands-on.”

Ervin further argued that hearings on “hot-button issues” already are held at night.

“I don’t think we need to have a 6 o’clock meeting to talk about a stop sign in somebody’s ward. … To stop the work in the community to come down here and to have rather routine meetings is not the best use of our time,” said Ervin, chairman of the Council’s Black Caucus.

Budget Committee Chairman Pat Dowell (3^rd) said she believes Daley Thompson was “looking for a solution to a non-problem.”

She pointed to the nighttime meeting held at the request of Southwest Side Ald. Marty Quinn (13^th) to talk about smelly windows installed by the city to reduce jet noise in the homes surrounding Midway Airport.

“We have that ability to have night meetings on something of citywide impact if we want to,” she said.

Ald. Nick Sposato (38^th) argued that Council business “needs to be conducted during normal business hours.”

“There’s a reason our offices are open from 8:30-ish, 9 to 5 or 5:30. It’s because we conduct business during normal business hours. Anybody thinks it’s a bad idea, then maybe you should have your office open from 12 to 8,” Sposato said.

“If you have the need for me to have … one of my meetings in the evening for ya, I’m open to talk about it. But, as far as [mandatory] evening meetings, that’s just not something I can support.”

Under questioning from Ald. Leslie Hairston (5^th), Daley Thompson insisted the cost of a mandate would be negligible, since nighttime meetings would be held at City Hall and most of the employees involved are “salaried.”

But, when it became clear that there was almost no support for the measure, Daley Thompson voluntarily withdrew it.

“At the very least, I sparked participation,” he said to laughter.