Lame-duck City Council makes power grab amid cries of foul

Paul Vallas and Brandon Johnson have both said they want an empowered, independent and energized City Council to be their partner in solving Chicago’s enormous challenges.

But what happened Thursday may not be what they had in mind.

Amid charges of vote “buying” and “corruption,” the lame-duck Council voted 34-10 and 33-11 to ratify a plan hatched by three of Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s closest allies. The plan will increase the number of City Council committees from 19 to 28 and change the rules to limit direct introduction of ordinances and reduce the number of members per committee.

Creating 28 committees all but guaranteed the plan would pass, assuming every committee chair would back it. But the plan does not identify where the $2.5 million-plus needed annually to bankroll the new committees will come from.

Conspicuously absent from the list of chairs is 9th Ward Ald. Anthony Beale, a 24-year Council veteran and its second-most senior member.

Beale was a voice in the wilderness over the last four years, pleading with his colleagues to end what he called Lightfoot’s “dictatorship.” He claims to have been left out because he made only one request: to chair the Finance Committee, a post 32nd Ward Ald. Scott Waguespack retains in the new lineup.

Also absent from the new leadership team were two other veteran alderpersons who, like Beale, have endorsed Vallas: Brian Hopkins (2nd) and Ray Lopez (15th).

Beale, Hopkins and Lopez let their colleagues have it.

“I am embarrassed to be a Chicagoan today,” Beale said. “I’ve never seen a process to buy votes such as this. ... You all should be embarrassed to call yourselves elected officials to try to ram this through.

“This is not independence,” Beale continued. “This is a corrupt process run by the same corrupt people who ran the remap process. You should be ashamed of yourselves. … I don’t know how y’all sleep at night.”

Beale said he didn’t care about being a chairman, but questioned the decision to “buy votes” by giving a committee to a recent arrival who “doesn’t even know where the bathroom is.”

Only one recent appointee, 24th Ward Ald. Monique Scott, was made a committee chair. She was confirmed last year to fill the seat vacated by her brother, Michael Scott.

Hopkins asked why the Council is acting five days before the election, denying input to incoming Council members and the new mayor.

“This is unprecedented and unfair. ... Bathhouse John and Hinky-Dink Kenna didn’t come up with this,” Hopkins said referring to two of Chicago’s most notoriously corrupt alderpersons.

Lopez accused his colleagues of “trying to subvert the next mayor, put that person behind the eight ball and set them up for failure” because neither mayoral hopeful has weighed in on the leadership team.

“You want an independent City Council? Then start with the next one that is duly elected,” Lopez said.

Ald. David Moore (17th) said he could have had a committee to chair, but refused to go along with a closed-door process that “trampled over democracy.”

“You can’t buy me. I ain’t got no price. I ain’t no prostitute,” Moore said. “We’re in a financial bind as it is. Come on, y’all. Open it up. The people who put this stuff together cannot because it was about self-interest.”

Ald. Carlos Ramirez-Rosa (35th) countered that the process by which he became Housing Committee chair was “fair and collaborative.”

Ald. Marty Quinn (13th), chief political operative for indicted former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, will chair the newly created Committee on Executive Appointments.

Quinn was “proud to be part of this historic day,” he said. “It’s been a long time in the making, but we came together and seized it. We came up with a fair and equitable plan for the most diverse leadership in Chicago history. A lot of people didn’t think we could pull this off. I’m happy we proved them wrong.”

Waguespack, who led the reorganization along with Rules Chair Michelle Harris (8th) and Contracting, Oversight and Equity Chair Jason Ervin (28th), argued the new committees would allow the Council to get “new input from Latinas” and enable members to focus on areas “that haven’t gotten the attention they deserve.”

New York’s city council, Waguespack noted, has 51 members and 38 committees.

“We’re asserting independence that’s been asked for by many for years. We’re increasing independence and minimizing mayoral influence,” Waguespack said.

The Better Government Association and the League of Women Voters have long urged the City Council to shed its rubber-stamp reputation and take back the power they have ceded to the mayor to dictate committees lineup and chairs.

But neither watchdog group liked how Waguespack and the others went about it — particularly the proposal to ram the changes through in the current Council and increase the number of committees.

Prior to the final vote, the BGA and league reiterated that Chicago taxpayers already spend more than $5 million a year on City Council staffing, nearly all of it on committees, some of which have “rarely met during the past four years.”

Staffing hiring and responsibilities are left to the discretion of committee chairs, creating “resource disparities” between members that fuel an “ongoing perception of leadership as a ‘perk’ rather than an administrative responsibility,” the BGA and league stated.

“Adding more committees without reforming Council’s staffing structure is a recipe for corruption and waste,” the groups have said.

Both groups also questioned the proposal to reduce the “maximum size” of most committees from 20 alderpersons to 11.

A “minimum quorum,” allows legislation to be passed out of committee with only a handful of votes.

Lightfoot’s contentious relationship with alderpersons — at her inaugural, she denounced the Council as corrupt — likely led to the declaration of independence.

After presiding over Thursday’s meeting — and calling for decorum when 42nd Ward Ald. Brendan Reilly and 38th Ward Ald. Nick Sposato had a shouting match on the floor — Lightfoot issued a statement calling the vote “unusual, given the timing.”

“If members ... and committee chairs use this as an opportunity to put the interest of Chicagoans front and center ... this could be viewed as a historic step in increasing the ways this body can advocate on residents’ behalf,” Lightfoot was quoted as saying.

“However,” she continued, if the reorganization efforts “do not have consistent wins on behalf of our residents, it will be viewed in a far less favorable light. Time will only tell which verdict will be rendered.”