Finance Committee gives up workers’ comp
Without Ald. Edward Burke (14th) as chairman, the City Council’s Finance Committee agreed Tuesday to transfer control over Chicago’s $100 million-a-year workers’ compensation program from the committee to the Department of Finance.
Ald. Pat O’Connor (40th) was running his first Finance Committee meeting since Burke resigned the chairmanship this month, a day after being charged with attempted extortion.
For 30 years, Burke had presided over the Finance Committee like a king on his throne. But facing the first meeting in decades without the gavel in his hand, Burke didn’t even bother to attend.
This from the devout Roman Catholic who last year skipped a private Vatican audience with Pope Francis to preserve his City Council attendance record.
The contrast between Burke’s preening, autocratic style and O’Connor’s unassuming, collaborative approach was evident from the outset of the workers’ comp debate.
Ald. John Arena (45th) demanded to know why the program was being moved to the comptroller’s office and not to the Law Department, as the Progressive Caucus proposed a month ago.
“I find it a bit insulting that I was the lead sponsor and didn’t even get a call to say, ‘This is how we’re gonna deal with this problem.’”
O’Connor responded that there was “no disrespect intended.”
He simply wanted to complete the transfer by April 1 without affecting payments to city employees injured on the job; the program has 5,000 active cases.
“If we do not make payments to the firefighters and the police for their medical expenses, we run the risk of being cited by the [state] commission and getting fined heavily, then having the ability to administer taken away,” O’Connor said.
“From the standpoint of making payments, cutting checks and making sure that they’re all being made, it would appear to most people looking at the problem that the comptroller’s office would be the appropriate place to ensure those things were being done.”
The Finance Committee has “30to-35” full- and part-time investigators enlisted to determining if an accident occurred.
Whether that’s a sufficient number to determine if employees are actually injured will be “informed by” a forensic audit scheduled to start in the coming weeks by the law firm Grant Thornton. Results “will be shared with this Council incrementally as the information becomes available,” O’Connor said.
At one point, O’Connor politely urged his chatty colleagues to “move our private conversations elsewhere” so political gadfly George Blakemore could be heard.
“Thank you. That’s a big change,” said Blakemore, a fixture at City Council meetings.