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Mayor Rahm Emanuel is interviewed by Fran Spielman April 26, 2019. | Rich Hein/Sun-Times

Emanuel offers Lightfoot advice on dealing with the City Council

Mayor-elect Lori Lightfoot is already fine-tuning her signature promise to end aldermanic prerogative amid pushback from senior aldermen.

Now, Mayor Rahm Emanuel is giving Lightfoot another piece of sage advice about the unwritten rule that has given the local alderman virtually iron-fisted control over zoning and permitting in the wards.

If Lightfoot hopes to persuade Chicago aldermen to relinquish another piece of their diminishing power, she must find a way to convince them there’s something in it for them.

“I used to argue early on to [former] Gov. Rauner: You are trying to create a win-lose situation. Who willingly signs up to a loss?” Emanuel told the Chicago Sun-Times.

“You have to not so much walk in somebody else’s shoes [as] you have to think about what’s the benefit [for them]. … What’s the pain to pleasure?”

Emanuel pointed to his own decision to replace Chicago’s ward-by-ward system for collecting routine and recycled garbage, trimming trees and removing graffiti with a grid system that is out of the local alderman’s control.

It was a revolutionary change the City Council had resisted for years.

Emanuel managed to sell it to aldermen as restoring a “sense of equity” to city services and eliminating the “real feeling” among South and West Side residents that “other parts of the city got plowed first, garbage picked up first, recycling first, calls on graffiti and trees” answered first.

“When I put every one of those services on a grid — we’re gonna centralize it and save money — I said, ‘Out of the money we save, here’s what I’m gonna return back to you.’ … I made a pledge to all aldermen: ‘You’re gonna get more services than you used to get,'” Emanuel said.

“They willingly, to their credit, gave up control for better. … We never had recycling citywide. We had a three-year backlog on tree-trimming. We’re caught up. You’re gonna get added crews — both to [tree-trimming and] graffiti removal within a five-day working period.”

Lightfoot has promised to issue an executive order on May 20, inauguration day, ending the longstanding tradition at the heart of the burgeoning City Hall corruption scandal that threatens to bring down former Finance Committee Chairman Edward Burke (14th) and nearly every aldermanic conviction over the years.

But if Lightfoot pushes the issue too hard, she could have a fight on her hands with the same aldermen whose support she needs to approve a budget that’s almost certain to include painful cuts and tax increases to satisfy a spike in pension payments and a big budget shortfall.

Emanuel believes he has built a relationship with the City Council that’s worth emulating.

It started in 2011, with then-Mayor-elect Emanuel following the sage advice he got as a brash young staffer for former President Bill Clinton.

“He said, before you work with people professionally, let them get to know you personally. … My first two weeks as mayor-elect, I met with all the aldermen individually. Sometimes ’til 10 o’clock at night so we could know each other before we started working with each other,” Emanuel said.

“Whether it was Walter Burnett, Michelle [Harris] or others who started crying [during Emanuel’s final City Council meeting], you know that after eight years, there was a personal bond that was not professionally held together.”

The personal touch produced impressive results that, Emanuel claims, had nothing to do with his notorious reputation for hardball politics built in Washington, D.C.

“In my eight years, we never lost a vote, which can’t be said about any other mayor,” he said.

“In my eight years, down in Springfield, we overturned five pension vetoes by a governor and created bipartisan majorities. We re-wrote the school funding formula benefiting Chicago. And we walked out of Washington with an unprecedented amount of money. That means the way we handled our politics — and also tough issues — worked to the city’s benefit.

In a wide-ranging interview, the mayor was asked how difficult he believes it will be for Lightfoot to cobble together and hold onto a coalition of 26 votes, particularly in a City Council that, with six Democratic Socialists, has taken a sharp turn to the left.

His answer: Not as hard as you might think.

“While I know the six Socialists come with a lot of ideas, the office has its own pressure that makes you a little more pragmatic. [And] don’t ever assume somebody’s position given the opportunity to hear you and you to hear them,” the mayor said.

“Today, they don’t have the burdens, responsibilities, liabilities of representing constituents. That will happen with the office. … You should approach — not just the six Socialists — but [assume] everybody is a ‘yes’ until they say they’re a ‘no.'”

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