Burke, Lopez use parliamentary maneuver to delay vote on stimulus funds
Mayor Lori Lightfoot abruptly adjourned Wednesday’s City Council meeting — and summoned aldermen back late Friday — after Aldermen Edward Burke (14th) and Ray Lopez (15th) used a parliamentary maneuver to delay a vote on the use of federal stimulus funds.
The Council was poised to authorize the carryover of $68 million from the federal CARES Act, allocate $80 million for emergency rental assistance and another $179 million for the Department of Public Health to administer the coronavirus vaccine.
That’s when Burke joined Lopez, one of the mayor’s most outspoken Council critics, in exercising the right of any two aldermen to delay consideration of an agenda item for one meeting.
Lightfoot responded to the delay as she has before when things don’t go her way at a Council meeting: by summoning aldermen back into session at 3 p.m. on Friday to approve the stalled ordinance.
“What we need is progress — not parliamentary tactics. Not with thousands of our residents still in desperate need for critical support that the city can provide through dollars that come to us from the federal government,” the mayor told reporters after cutting the meeting short.
“Make no mistake — come Friday, I’m very confident that we will get this done.”
Lightfoot said aldermen were “fully briefed” on the spending before Wednesday, but “my understanding is that Alderman Burke didn’t take advantage of the opportunity to even attend a single one of those briefings.”
The matter was also discussed during a Budget Committee meeting last week in which Burke did participate. “We provided him with very specific information which, my understanding is, he’s still having some difficulty comprehending,” the mayor said.
Lopez said he and Burke have legitimate questions about the mayor spending $281.5 million in CARES Act money on police payroll costs, and they won’t be silenced.
“She is doing her usual pettiness. If she thinks that’s gonna be punitive that I have to come back to work on a Friday, she’s sorely mistaken. I’ll come back every day of the week if that’s what it takes to get the truth out of her,” Lopez said.
Last week, Lightfoot called the raging debate about that spending “just dumb.”
That didn’t stop Burke from questioning how CPD could possibly have racked up $281 million in expenses between March and May of last year for performing well-being checks, screening air travelers for COVID-19 and providing security at coronavirus testing sites.
“The numbers don’t make sense . . . . It just begs for more clarification,” Lopez said Wednesday.