What if Chicago aldermen actually challenged a mayor?
Who runs Chicago and who controls the City Council? The mayor, or da Mare, as some have been known. “It is his council, and in all the years it has never once defied him as a body,” Mike Royko wrote in “Boss,” his biography of Mayor Richard J. Daley. “His council is known as ‘the Rubber Stamp.’ He looks down at them, bestowing a nod or a benign smile on a few favorites, and they smile back gratefully.”
It was hardly different during the reign of da Mare’s son, Mayor Richard M. Daley. He bulldozed Meigs Field in the middle of the night and leased Chicago’s parking meters to private investors so quickly that aldermen didn’t understand what they’d approved. “Don’t ask questions, just vote,” is how we described the political pressure on aldermen. The deal was a financial disaster for taxpayers.
There’s more than a history lesson to absorb here: City elections are coming. With Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s departure, Chicago will get a new chief executive and — holy cow! — an opportunity for aldermen to toss away the rubber stamp. Imagine a City Council that operates as a true check and balance on mayoral power. Imagine aldermen who have the guts and votes to push back on bad ideas. Imagine Chicago lawmakers who demand safer neighborhoods and wiser spending. Imagine a bloc of aldermen with the citywide clout to challenge the mayor’s authority.
Instead, majorities on Emanuel’s City Council let him raise taxes and settle labor contracts. A vocal minority does regularly challenge the mayor but these aldermen can’t obstruct him. A telling detail: Has Emanuel ever lost a council vote? Nope. He did fail in his dream of bringing a George Lucas museum to the lakefront, but the obstacle there was a federal judge who wouldn’t be hustled, not the council.
Mayors have an advantage because they control the purse strings. Aldermen have been trained to give full attention to ward business and cede citywide power to the fifth floor of City Hall. In Chicago, it’s one big mayor and 50 little mayors. Most of the little mayors don’t bark or bite. Chicago has an inspector general’s office to root out corruption, waste and mismanagement, but IG reports have never become the subject of committee hearings. No testimony, no questions.
Yet Emanuel isn’t all-powerful. He runs the city, the schools, the parks and the Chicago Police Department, but he was forced into negotiations that will give a federal judge oversight of CPD reforms. And we note that Emanuel will leave after two terms — not six, like Richard M. Daley — and may have little influence over who succeeds him.
What should change? That is, what do Chicagoans deserve instead of the highly scripted status quo?
Here’s where the coming election for mayor and City Council gets interesting: The power imbalance is political and cultural, but it’s not set in stone. Surprising as it sounds, Chicago by charter operates as a strong council-weak mayor system. The council can override the mayor’s vetoes. Modern mayors assign committee chair positions but it doesn’t have to be that way. If the next City Council perks up and demands its legal share of power, Chicago’s next mayor will have to respond. Governance could improve. A few more bad ideas from “the man (or woman) on five” would get ditched. “The strength of the council is actually there — it exists,” Ald. Scott Waguespack, 32nd, an Emanuel critic, tells us. “But aldermen don’t exercise it.”
The opposite of a supplicant City Council shouldn’t be a gridlocked one. We don’t want to a return to the Council Wars era of Mayor Harold Washington. Instead, Chicagoans deserve full democratic rule: a council and mayor who can work together as often as they butt heads, with more thoughtful floor debates and more outcomes that aren’t determined by a mayor and his council allies. To fulfill that vision, the council needs some new blood — talented, innovative legislators who can think big and lead. Bold lawmakers who’ll guide their colleagues and a new mayor to new approaches to street violence, affordable housing and taxpayers’ enormous public debts. The mayor shouldn’t be the lone City Hall voice proposing creative solutions and supplying the clout to make them happen.
The next election can reshape Chicago. Voters ought to elect independent-minded aldermen who keep their nerve, and a mayor who doesn’t seek to rule like da Mare.