Emanuel ally O’Connor: Council will vote to let Ferguson investigate
The surprise prediction from the alderman followed a closed- door City Hall meeting on a replacement for Legislative Inspector General Faisal Khan.
Chicago aldermen once dead- set against empowering Inspector General Joe Ferguson to investigate them will vote next week to do just that over the objections of the City Council’s two most powerful aldermen, Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s floor leader predicted Friday.
The surprise prediction from Ald. Pat O’Connor ( 40th) followed a closeddoor City Hall meeting where a final decision was supposed to be made on a replacement for Legislative Inspector General Faisal Khan.
Finance Committee Chairman Edward Burke ( 14th) and Budget Committee Chairman Carrie Austin ( 34th) are dead- set against shifting the power to Ferguson. Austin’s son resigned from his job at the Department of Streets and Sanitation after one of Ferguson’s investigations. Burke clashed with Ferguson over the issue of workers compensation claims administered by the Finance Committee.
But instead of replacing Khan and lifting the shackles that tied his hands, O’Connor plans to call for a vote on a long- stalled ordinance empowering Ferguson to investigate aldermen and their employees.
Contacted on Friday, O’Connor did not talk about what happened at the closed- door meeting. He would only say that he expects the ordinance that now has support from more than 30 aldermen to be the only one considered at Monday’s meeting of the Committee on Workforce Development that he chairs and approved by the full Council on Wednesday.
“This is an issue that, once it begins to roll, it picks up steam. That’s my sense,” O’Connor said, hours after the City Council’s Hispanic Caucus signed on to the plan to abolish the legislative inspector general’s office and shift the power to Ferguson.
“There is no doubt there is a counter- argument being made and an attempt to try to figure out how to prevail on the idea of a legislative IG. I’m just telling you this will pass on Monday. It’s been a very fluid thing. I don’t know if this is the final outcome. I’m just anticipating that, as things move, some things just become kind of inevitable. I’mnot sure this is one of them, but it appears to be headed that way.”
Until Friday, it looked like a divided City Council just might be headed for a showdown vote next week over the issues of ethics and oversight.
Earlier this week, Ald. Michele Smith ( 43rd) told the Sun- Times she had gathered signatures from 26 aldermen — enough to force a vote on her stalled ordinance shifting the power to Ferguson.
With the Hispanic Caucus signing on, that number is now in the mid- 30s.