DALEY NEWS
Tuesday, the future loomed. Its brightness depended on the answer given by Mayor Daley.
Today's schedule was morning heavy, beginning with a press conference to announce the mayor's new technologies initiative. The biggest component of the plan is a $20-million "Tech Corps" that will both offer the unemployed technology training and provide temporary jobs "benefitting Chicago residents."
Guess which controversial billion-dollar lease will be helping to pay for this? All kidding aside, this can be a good program and boost to a lot of people lacking these skills and the resources to go back to school to learn them. My question is this: What are the specific technologies that will be taught? Where are workers lacking the most?
The mayor's next and last public event of the day was the graduation ceremony for Chicago's newest firefighters, held at Navy Pier.
While at the new technologies initiative, Mayor Daley answered questions regarding the pleasant CTA budget recommendations. Calling it what is (" very, very ugly"), the mayor saw no better alternative.
"When you raise fares, it drives people away. You know that. That's why they're coming up with every form of cost savings . . . to keep the CTA reasonable and fair to everyone....You have to analyze everything and try to come up with some new solutions, if it's possible."
Already going crazy -- but now given one more reason -- are Chicago-area college students, who would see a U-Pass fare increase of 25 percent in the fall of 2010.
How bad would it be? No longer could we use the excuse, "Hey, imagine how it is in New York?" Subway and bus rides in the Big Apple are $2.25, but if we can hang our hat on one thing, Chicago, it's this: the fare for an express bus ride is $5.50. Good Lord, that's a lot of beer money.
Crain's Greg Hinz offers a suggestion that both falls in line with the mayor's request for more transit dollars from Springfield and gives us one more memory of Rod Blagojevich to wash away:
Repealing the seniors-ride-free policy that former Gov. Rod Blagojevich mandated. The CTA says that's costing them $60 million a year.
DALEY CHATTER
When the mayor moves one foot forward, here comes that bad foot to take him back.
Sun-Times investigator-extraordinaire Tim Novak wrote a piece today detailing another honey pot for the mayor and his associates. This time, it is the South Side's Mercy Hospital. Faced with hard times, a special TIF was created for the hospital and estimated to give it up to $60 million in property taxes. In exchange, part of Mercy's campus was sold to developers to build a potentially lucrative housing development.
The developers were a who's who of powerful people unrecognizable to most on any express bus; they include two former aldermen, Ted Mazola (1st ward) and Terry Gabinski (32nd ward). Mazola's real estate firm was the recipient of another pricey development deal: building 850 private residencies in the new-and-improved Maxwell Street. Gabinski, meanwhile, was a protégé and loyal hand to convicted former congressman Dan Rostenkowski. He also had a previous bit of real estate notoriety when he purchased a house below market value from a developer with a lot of business in the 32nd ward.
But my favorite part of this Mercy story is the family affair it became for the Daley brothers. While the mayor created the TIF, brother Michael's law firm does legal work for the hospital, brother John's insurance firm took it on as a client, and baby brother Bill's bank, JP Morgan Chase, financed one of the apartment buildings in the very same TIF district.
Bleepin' Chicago.
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James,
I notice you are a fan of Harold Washington. Just out of curiosity, have you ever referred to him in print as 'convicted' like you did here to Dan Rostenkowski? The Sun-Times did not use the term in its story, why did you feel the need to add the insulting remark to yours?
Harold was convicted for tax evation and served his time. Dan pled guilty to mail fraud and served his time. James I hope in the future you will practice a bit more fairness in your writing.
Harold Washington, no. Mel Reynolds, yes. I don't use the term to be bias but in the context that Rostenkowski's and Reynolds' convictions effectively ended their political careers, were more high-profile and well-known crimes, and serious enough to be commuted and pardoned, respectively, by disbarred Arkansas attorney and former president Bill Clinton. Washington's $508 in unpaid taxes? Fair game. But if we were to believe two Washington biographies, his tax probe was more politics than due justice being served, compared to similar cases back then that saw lesser penalties handed out -- a similar raw deal that many have fairly argued was given to Rostenkowski.
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