The Chicago City Council's reach exceeds its grasp

Alders should seek help from Springfield to advance Mayor Brandon Johnson's initiatives

1-11-2024 (issue No. 123)

This week:

• Last week’s winning tweet

• Surrender, alders! — The City Council got a scolding from an arbitrator for its attempt to make sure that serious police disciplinary hearings remain public

• Business groups are trying to bring down the “Bring Chicago Home” referendum — Their effort to keep the question off the March ballot is intriguing

• News and Views — On the effort to get cops out of public schools, on Donald Trump’s failure to sign a loyalty oath, on Pope Francis’ determination to ban surrogate motherhood and more

• Land of Linkin’ — Where I tell readers where to go

• Squaring up the news — Where Charlie Meyerson tells readers where to go

• Mary Schmich reveals her word of the year for 2024

• “The Mincing Rascals” podcast preview — This week with an actual expert!

• Quotables —

• Re:Tweets — The winning visual tweet and this week’s contest finalists

• Good Sports — Washington fans have a legitimate beef about that 4th quarter holding call in the championship game

• Tune of the Week — The bouncy, inane pop hit “Prisencolinensinainciusol”

Eric Zorn is a former opinion columnist for the Chicago Tribune. Find a longer bio and contact information here. This issue exceeds in size the maximum length for a standard email. To read the entire issue in your browser, click on the headline link above. Paid subscribers receive each Picayune Plus in their email inbox each Tuesday, are part of our civil and productive commenting community and enjoy the sublime satisfaction of supporting this enterprise.

Last week’s winning tweet

Magic Johnson wasted the world's best porn name on a basketball career. — @MsMurfie

Here are this week’s nominees and the winner of the Tuesday visual-tweets poll. Here is the direct link to the new poll.

Surrender, alders! Try to change state law, not the police contract

Last week, independent labor arbitrator Edwin Benn delivered a sharp rebuke to members of the Chicago City Council who voted to alter the new police contract in a way that would keep disciplinary hearings public.

Some background from the Chicago Reader:

(The new police contract) would allow most officers facing serious disciplinary charges—terminations and suspensions longer than a year—to have their cases heard by an arbitrator, rather than the Chicago Police Board (CPB). The CPB currently holds public, trial-like hearings for officers facing serious discipline, and the board members consider those cases during monthly public meetings.

Arbitration proceedings, by contrast, are conducted in secret, and the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 7 (FOP), which represents rank-and-file CPD officers, will have a hand in selecting the arbitrators that hear these disciplinary cases.

Police accountability experts warn that the shift—while it may seem purely bureaucratic—could prove disastrous for the city’s efforts to hold officers accountable for misconduct, and undermine recent moves to strengthen police oversight and make it more democratic and transparent. …

During negotiations, the FOP argued that a 1984 law, the Illinois Public Labor Relations Act (IPLRA), requires the city to allow officers to have cases involving terminations and suspensions of over a year heard by arbitrators rather than the CPB. 

A majority of the City Council, rightly concerned about a lack of transparency in confidential police arbitration hearings, voted 33-16 on Dec. 12 to reject that provision in the new contract.

Political reporter Fran Spielman of the Sun-Times reported last week:

(Benn) harshly criticized Mayor Brandon Johnson and the 33 alderpersons who rejected the earlier ruling at the mayor’s behest. Benn also issued what he called a “last-ditch plea” for them to reconsider. Otherwise, he wrote, they risk litigation that “may well go on for years” with “no possibility” of the city prevailing.

Benn compared their arguments — arbitration is “just not right,” the process occurs “behind closed doors” and there’s “distrust” and “indeed a disdain” of the police — to Donald Trump’s “Big Lie” that the 2020 presidential election was “rigged.”

The rule of law “is not a request or a cafeteria selection process for the City to choose which State of Illinois laws should apply and which should not. Compliance with the Rule of Law is an obligation,” the arbitrator wrote. …

Benn noted the Workers’ Rights Amendment to the state constitution states: “No law shall be passed that interferes with, negates or diminishes the rights of employees to organize and bargain collectively over their wages, hours and other terms and conditions of employment.”

That, he said, is a “constitutional protection of the statutory right to final and binding arbitration. … Please don’t throw away potentially large sums of taxpayers’ money that could be used better elsewhere than on a legal fight you cannot win which you are undertaking to make a point you have already resoundingly made,” he wrote.

Benn is right.

But so are the alders who see the urgency of conducting major police disciplinary cases in public.

State labor law is wrong in not putting police officers in a separate category when it comes to major disciplinary hearings. Mayor Brandon Johnson and his allies have made their point and now need to turn their attention to getting the General Assembly to change the law rather than wage a futile, feckless, wasteful court battle.

Whoops! Drafting error may keep the ‘Bring Chicago Home’ referendum off the ballot

The City Council may also need to seek help from Springfield to enact a higher real estate transfer tax on transactions over $1 million. The proceeds from the new tax, if enacted, would be earmarked to alleviate homelessness.

Such a tax hike requires either an OK from the General Assembly or approval from local voters in a binding referendum, and the alders have chosen to go the referendum route in the interest of speed. But there seems to be a wrinkle.

Tribune:

A coalition of business groups has filed suit to stop the “Bring Chicago Home” referendum question from appearing on March primary ballots. … Their 12-page suit alleges the referendum question — passed by the City Council in November … — should not go to voters because it violates the state’s municipal code and constitution. …

The referendum asks voters to change the way property sales are taxed. Currently, the city charges the same, flat 0.75% rate on all property sales. Bring Chicago Home calls for slightly reducing the tax charged on the first $1 million in value — to 0.6% — while increasing the rate on properties valued between $1 million and $1.5 million to 2%, and boosting the rate even more on properties valued above $1.5 million, to 3%. …

The lawsuit takes issue with the three-part nature of the referendum question and the portion that decreases the tax rate for lower-value homes. And it argues there is a lack of clarity about what specific programs the estimated $100 million in additional annual revenue would pay for.

Sun-Times:

Farzin Parang, executive director of the Building Owners and Managers Association (which opposes the referendum), called (the referendum question) a classic example of “log-rolling.”

“You bundle a popular idea with unpopular ideas so you can get the unpopular idea passed,” Parang told the Sun-Times. …

The Illinois Supreme Court has ruled that it’s illegal to bundle popular legislation with potentially unpopular measures as a way of ensuring passage.

“(Backers) included a tax decrease to incentivize people into quadrupling taxes,” Parang added. …

If Johnson and his City Council allies wanted to cut the transaction tax on property sales under $1 million, they could have “done that on their own months ago,” Parang said. …

Ald. Carlos Ramirez-Rosa (35th), the mayor’s former City Council floor leader and Zoning chair, denounced the lawsuit as a “Hail Mary from very rich and powerful people who do not want to pay their fair share in taxes.” …

Doug Schenkelberg, executive director of the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, branded the lawsuit a “political maneuver, orchestrated to protect the interests of greedy landlords and multi-national real estate corporations at the expense of Black, Brown, working class and homeless Chicagoans.”

There is, in fact, no reason the City Council needs to ask permission from voters to lower the transaction tax on property sales under $1 million, but doing so in the context of asking for a tax hike on more expensive properties is clearly designed to make the overall proposal more attractive to voters.

From the lawsuit:

(The referendum question) plainly calls for three separate questions:

(1) Shall the transfer tax rate be lowered from $3.75 to $3.00 for purchase value of less than $1 million?

(2) Shall the transfer tax rate be raised from $3.75 to $10.00 for purchase value between $1million and $1.5 million?

(3) Shall the transfer tax rate be raised from $3.75 to $15.00 for purchase value above $1.5 million?

(This) violates voters’ rights to vote on each of the three questions separately. For example, and most obviously, many voters likely support the first question (lowering taxes), but oppose the second and third questions (raising taxes). However, they cannot express their support for the first proposition without also expressing support for the second and third propositions that they oppose.

I asked the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless for its response to the statutory and constitutional claims made in the lawsuit.

Jose I. Sanchez Molina, a senior adviser to Bring Chicago Home, responded to my query: “We worked closely with legal experts to ensure that the proposal is on solid legal ground,” he wrote. “We are not worried and are not dwelling on the technicalities of the challenge as it is not in the best interest of our campaign or the communities we serve.”

But election law is steeped in confounding technicalities and requirements that judges tend to dwell on. This “Hail Mary” could be a slam dunk for opponents, no matter what their motivations might be.

(For those who want to dig deeper, I have posted the referendum language and the language of the lawsuit here.)

News & Views

News: “Chicago Board of Ed wants cops out of public schools this fall, principals told.”

View: Let the real stakeholders — parents, students and principals — decide what’s best for their schools. Mayor Brandon Johnson boasts that he’s a collaborative leader, but this kind of top-down edict from the Board of Education he controls has a “my way or the highway” vibe. Depending on the school and the officers, having police in the hallways can be a net positive. It can enhance safety and even build good relations between law enforcement and young people. To decree otherwise — to extrapolate from bad experiences at certain schools —seems to buy into anti-cop sentiment that once seemed to animate Johnson’s activism.

On the campaign trail, Johnson said that “armed officers have no place in schools in communities already struggling with over-incarceration, criminalization, profiling and mistrust.” When the school communities agree with his assessment, fine. But let them decide as they currently do.

News: “Trump did not sign Illinois’ loyalty oath that says he won’t advocate for overthrowing the government”

View: What is this, the 1950s? I don’t trust Trump not to trample the traditions of our democratic republic, and he’s such a congenital liar I wouldn’t trust any McCarthy-era pledge he might sign. Illinois should quietly ditch the wholly symbolic loyalty oath.

News: South Side Ald. Anthony Beale, 9th, had to withdraw from his bid to be reelected as ward committeeman because he lacked the requisite number of petition signatures to get on the March primary ballot.

View: Incumbents should not have to pass petitions for reelection efforts. Beale has held that post since 2000 and should be on the ballot, as should incumbent committeeman Ald. Daniel LaSpata, 1st, who also didn’t meet the signature requirement.

These requirements are hurdles intended to keep frivolous candidates from clogging the ballot, but incumbents are presumptively serious. Relieving them of the requirement would actually open up the ballot for more candidates because of the rule that restricts registered voters from signing multiple petitions for candidates for the same office.

News: Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx, 51, declares her mission accomplished as she prepares to yield to the next generation of political leaders.

View: If only certain octogenarians would be so willing to pass the baton! I was hard on Foxx for the way she handled the Jussie Smollett case, but I think her commitment to revisiting dubious convictions has been admirable. It’s too early to judge the success of her overall “mission,” however she might define it, in the context of our stubborn crime problem.

Foxx said in her speech this week that “no one drove me out of this job.” But I don’t believe that any more than I believe she feels she has cemented the changes in the criminal justice system that she first ran on. The pressures and frustrations of overseeing a high-profile, high-stakes office are undoubtedly tremendous. It doesn’t surprise me that she no longer wants the job.

News: “Pope Francis called Monday for a universal ban on what he called the ‘despicable’ practice of surrogate motherhood.”

View: If Catholics eschew surrogate pregnancies, fine. I object vehemently, however, to the idea of enacting this religious preference into laws that would limit the reproductive choices of those of other faiths or no faith at all. Some 20,000 babies born in the U.S. this century via surrogacy, their parents and their families would likely agree with me.

Land of Linkin’

• Tribune contributing columnist Laura Washington asks, “Is Mayor Brandon Johnson measuring up?” and notes that she’s “nervous about a mayor whose relative inexperience is being severely tested.” Her essay gets a thumbs-up from lefty firebrand Mike Klonsky who writes that “City Hall is looking more and more like a political big dumpster fire.”

• I’m name-checked in Kayleigh Padar’s Block Club Chicago article, “How Did Dibs Become A Thing? Thank Chicago’s Worst Blizzard.”

• Michigan Republican congressman voiced his support for a law in Uganda that can result in the death penalty for homosexual conduct. In case you were inclined to underestimate the determination of our most zealous culture warriors, check out reports from U.S. Rep. Tim Walberg’s go-get-’em speech to Uganda’s National Prayer Breakfast.

• A week from Thursday, The Book Stall in Winnetka will host an in-store discussion with Georgia Garvey, author of “Everything Is Going To Be OK (Until It's Not).” Garvey is a locally based syndicated columnist and former Tribune editor and writer. Details here.

• A Picayune Sentinel reader came up with 25 reasons not to vote for Joe Biden in response to Mark Jacob’s list of 200 Reasons Not to Vote for Donald Trump. I offered responses to the Biden basher.

• Those of you who are encountering in your reading a certain paranoid argument about drugs and the southern border should take a look at the Cato Institute’s paper, “Fentanyl Is Smuggled for U.S. Citizens By U.S. Citizens, Not Asylum Seekers.”

• Chicago has a Violence Reduction Dashboard where you can see for yourself whether perceptions are matching reality about violent crime. It shows a dramatic spike in robberies, which is no doubt part of the inspiration for Andy Shaw’s Sun-Times op-ed, “In 40 years as a journalist, I visited every Chicago neighborhood. For the first time, I now fear for my safety.”

Squaring up the news

This is a bonus supplement to the Land of Linkin’ from veteran WXRT, Tribune and WGN-AM journalist Charlie Meyerson. Each week, he shares a selection of intriguing links from his daily email news briefing, Chicago Public Square:

■ Chicago novelist Eden Robins celebrates: “After many years holding down a corporate job to get health insurance, I’ve finally found a better way to make ends meet and do my art: I’m a crossing guard.”

■ “Trump’s bad day”: Law professor Joyce Vance reviews Tuesday’s federal appeals court hearing on Donald Trump’s contention that he should be immune from prosecution for his attempts to overturn the 2020 election results.

■ USA Today columnist Rex Huppke: “I ignored Trump … for two weeks. The volume of stupidity I missed is unreal.”

■ Ex-Sun-Times and Tribune editor Mark Jacob (“now allowed to have opinions”): Playing dumb, mainstream media reporters “know who’s telling the truth and who’s lying. But they’re afraid to tell the public directly.”

■ “My Lyft driver doesn’t like guns and he didn’t want to buy any, but that’s why he’ll always be a loser”: Author Michael Rosenbaum offers 10 “surefire insights” for becoming more American.

■ Cindy Morgan, who rose to fame as a Chicago radio DJ and later as an actor in “Caddyshack,” among others, is dead at 69.

■ Surveying the post-holiday health landscape, Your Local Epidemiologist Katelyn Jetelina sees “a whole lot of sickness out there.”

■ The Chicago Public Schools inspector general says a Chicago-area family lied to get their kids into a top city school.

You can (and should) subscribe to Chicago Public Square free here.

Mary Schmich: A word for the new year

My former colleague Mary Schmich posts occasional column-like entries on Facebook. Here, reprinted with permission, is her most recent offering:

A bunch of years ago, I began a new year’s routine of picking a guiding word for the year, inspired by a Chicago Tribune reader who wrote to recommend the idea.

Every January while I was working for the Tribune, I wrote about my guiding word, encouraging others to pick their own.

In 2020, I picked the word “slower,” not knowing that a pandemic would soon arrive to slow the whole world down.

In 2021, as the pandemic dragged on, I picked “endurance,” a reminder to soldier on because this, too, would pass.

I don’t remember all the words I’ve picked. Some I do remember:

Help. As in “Find ways to help, allow yourself to be helped.”

Pause. As in “What’s your rush?” As in “Take the time to see and feel the world.” As in “Take a moment, or two, or four, before you react in situations that matter.”

A friend of mine who’s a minister recently let me know she’s picked up the word-of-the-year custom and now encourages her congregation in Santa Fe to do it. Her word this year is “Go.”

Most of my words are variations on a theme, the theme of taking the time to see, to think, to feel. To appreciate.

I’ve waited on this year’s word because the ones that came to my mind weren’t quite right, though I liked them all.

One runner-up was the word “Today.”

“But what does that mean?” said a pal who asked the other day if I was going to pick a word. It means “Be here now.” It means—again—“What’s your rush?”

“Today” popped into my head on Jan. 4, the anniversary of my brother Bill’s death, as I thought about all the days I’ve enjoyed that he didn’t live to see.

“Today” means “Enjoy the day, honey, because who knows what’s coming?”

But yesterday, the winning word arrived: Curiosity.

There’s a line in an ancient yoga text that says “Curiosity calms the mind.” It’s one of the best pieces of self-help I’ve ever encountered.

When you’re agitated, uncertain, scared, one of the most helpful things you can do is get interested. Ask why:

Why do I feel this way? Why did that person react that way?

Take your mind off yourself by getting curious. How many shades of green are in a leaf? Notice the details. Be fascinated by the details. How many branches are on that tree?

The notion applies in the big ways and small ones. Why do people vote the way they do? Hate the way they do? Love the way they do?

Note: Curiosity in this sense doesn’t mean picking up your phone at the dinner table to Google every stray question that comes up in conversation. But don’t get me started on that.

The word for the year, like all self-help tips, depends on remembering it. I often forget mine by May. But stating it is a way of seeding it in memory.

So that’s my word. Curiosity. What’s yours? — Mary Schmich

Minced Words

Constitutional law expert and author David Schultz, a professor at Hamline University and the University of Minnesota Law School, joined host John Williams, Cate Plys and me on this week’s episode of the award-winning “Mincing Rascals” podcast to talk about the effort to keep Donald Trump off the presidential ballot on constitutional grounds.

Subscribe to us wherever you get your podcasts. Or bookmark this page. If you’re not a podcast listener, you can hear an edited version of the show at 8 p.m. most Saturday evenings on WGN-AM 720.

Quotables

One of the best-polling proposals from Build Back Better was to have Medicare include dental coverage, which would make sense because it’s actually possible to deliver real insurance value in that context. What’s more, the government could take advantage of Medicare’s massive scale to push the per unit cost of treatments down. But of course dentists don’t like that idea, so the American Dental Association lobbied against providing seniors with dental coverage. — Matthew Yglesias

Scammers have long used the ploy of claiming a loved one is in trouble to convince targets to send a payment or share personal information. In a new and unnerving twist on this scam, criminals are using AI technology to mimic the voice of a target’s family member, so it sounds like the person is calling seeking help. The technology allows scammers to use snippets of audio, which are often readily available through videos posted to social media accounts, to clone voices for scam calls. — A consumer alert from the office of Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul

Legally, a six-week ban prohibits abortions when a fetus is at six weeks of gestation. But one recent study found that one-third of American women don’t find out they are pregnant until they are six weeks pregnant. One in five found out at seven weeks or later. In a 2018 study, researchers found that the average gestational age of a fetus at the time of pregnancy detection was 5.5 weeks and that the detection age hadn’t altered much over time. Essentially, many pregnancies are discovered at or about six weeks, meaning that for a large portion of pregnant people a six-week ban amounts to a total abortion ban. — Lyz Lenz

Re: Tweets

In Tuesday’s paid-subscriber editions, I present my favorite tweets that rely on visual humor. Subscribers vote for their favorite, and I post the winner here every Thursday:

The new nominees for Tweet of the Week:

• The Innuendo Society has reported a huge rise in its members. — @craiguito

• *First day of pilot school* Teacher: Did you read the class description wrong? Me: No, why do you ask? The parrot on my shoulder: No, why do you ask? — @ACartoonCat

• If the doctor is running over 30 minutes late, they should have to tell you what was going on with their last patient that took so long. I don’t mind waiting, but give me the gossip. — @laurenybonner

• When they go low, I go high. Because that's a better angle for selfies. — @Marlebean.

• Currently in the "Should I give myself bangs?" portion of the post-holiday spiral. — @Mom_Overboard 

• Quick, while the British people are sleeping: Raise your hand if you make tea by microwaving hot water. — @elle91

• I'm creating an "OnlyDans," where Dans get together to complain about being called "Dan the man,” “Daniel-san" and "Danny Boy" our whole lives. — @DanRegan_Comedy

• Like with jury duty, people should be randomly selected to work retail or food service shifts, just so everyone understands how horribly these folks are treated. Imagine lawyers calling in to their firms like, “Ugh the case will have to wait. I just got called for Applebee’s duty” — @jordan_stratton

• Sorry I said, “It’s probably burning him” as your baby cried during his christening. — @IHPower

• The doctor says, “Don’t worry, Michael. Everything is going to be OK.” Patient says, “I’m not Michael.” Doctor says, “I know. I am.” — From WGN host John Williams’ best jokes of 2023

Vote here and check the current results in the poll.

Usage note: To me, “tweet” has become a generic term for a short post on social media.

For instructions and guidelines regarding the poll, click here.

Good Sports

It’s certainly possible that a ticky-tack holding call against the Washington Huskies with a little more than 11 minutes to go in the fourth quarter of Monday’s national college football championship made the difference in a game that the Michigan Wolverines ultimately won by three touchdowns.

Washington was trailing by just a touchdown and facing 2nd down and 10 from their own 33. Quarterback Michael Penix Jr. threw deep to receiver Rome Odunze for a 32-yard gain to the Michigan 35. We Michigan fans instantly had a sick feeling that Penix, who was brilliant all season but had been off most of the evening until that moment, was about to shred our secondary with pinpoint passes and tie the game.

Then we saw the laundry on the field. An offensive holding call against Washington right tackle Roger Rosengarten not only negated the completion but also set Washington back 10 yards. The net result of this “hold” that could have been called on just about every play in the game was a 42-yard turn of events in Michigan’s favor.

Holding?

“Oy!” said the TV announcer over the replay. “Whew!” said Michigan fans. “Pure horseshit” said a Washington fan. Washington then faced 2nd down and 20, gained 11 yards on the next two plays and had to punt the ball away to Michigan. The Wolverines then mounted a five-play, 71-yard touchdown drive that put the Huskies into a hole from which they did not emerge.

Bad calls happen and they do go both ways. In the pre-replay era, the refs screwed Michigan in the 1979 Rose Bowl, awarding University of Southern California running back Charles White a touchdown on a run in which he clearly fumbled:

That touchdown ended up being the difference in the game and USC ended up atop the UPI post-season poll. It’s been 45 years, but we’re over it at last.

Michigan fan: Winning now ‘will matter a little less’

Here’s Chris Castellani of Barstool Sports speaking on “The Wolverine Podcast” after Michigan’s victory, expressing a feeling I can relate to:

I'm going to root for this team until the end of time but to a certain extent it will matter a little less. Because no matter what, I can pull up the highlights of 2023. It happened. I saw it. This was the dream. And the way it played out, game by game, it was a magic carpet ride of a season. Really a magic carpet ride of three seasons, all culminating in this dream campaign. … To be able to have that one perfect memory, that one shining example I think that will always be with me.

Double down, Chicago Bears

I have no idea if Matt Eberflus of the Bears is a good head coach with mediocre players or a mediocre head coach with good players, but generally when a coach has a 10-24 record in his first two seasons, the front office gives him the elbow.

That the Bears have decided to keep Eberflus while dismissing a handful of coordinators on his staff may well be wise and fair, but it doesn’t signal the dawn of a new era that fans are hoping for.

The Tribune’s Brad Biggs wrote of “fears the organization could remain stuck in a cycle of drafting a quarterback, firing a coach, hiring a new coach for the QB, mixing in a new GM and then starting all over again.”

Tune of the Week

“Prisencolinensinainciusol” slaps. Some say the 1972 pop hit is just a novelty number. Others say it’s among the first hip-hop songs and a precursor to disco. But either way, it’s as infectious as it is inane — more than three and half minutes of gibberish rap set over a looped track of horns and drums playing over a single chord.

Italian singer Adriano Celentano sings meaningless combinations of syllables he intended to sound like English to an Italian audience. The only actual English expression ia “All right!”

A New Yorker critic called it “ecstatic nonsense” and “a loving presentation of silliness,” which it certainly is:

Celentano, now 86, told NPR’s “All Things Considered” in 2012 that he “wanted to break down language barriers and inspire people to communicate more.”

"Ever since I started singing, I was very influenced by American music and everything Americans did," he tells Guy Raz, host of weekends on All Things Considered, through interpreter Sim Smiley.

"So at a certain point, because I like American slang — which, for a singer, is much easier to sing than Italian — I thought that I would write a song which would only have as its theme the inability to communicate," he says. "And to do this, I had to write a song where the lyrics didn't mean anything."

The Financial Times gave a pronunciation guide for the title (Preez-en-collie-en-sin-ine-chew-zol) and wrote:

By 1972, Celentano was already a rock and roll icon in Italy. He’d made his name covering popular American hits (and) … his years of experience imitating American English proved useful, since he didn’t speak the language himself. … The song was also an experiment. At a time when Don McLean’s “Vincent” was dominating the Italian (music charts) Celentano wanted to see whether audiences would listen to anything provided it sounded American.

Among the song’s more recent appearances in pop culture was its use as background music in the third episode of the third season of the popular Apple+ series “Ted Lasso.”

Consult the complete Tune of the Week archive!

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