Mayoral candidate Gery Chico receives the endorsement from Lodge 7 of the Fraternal Order of Police. FOP President Mark Donahue made the official announcement Wednesday January 19, 2011.
Jose More/Chicago News Cooperative
The issue of pension reform was of “the utmost concern” to police union officials as they decided to support Gery Chico for mayor, the union president told the Chicago News Cooperative after announcing the endorsement on Wednesday.
Both Chico and rival Rahm Emanuel had large numbers of supporters in a recent, advisory vote of city police officers, said Mark Donahue, president of Lodge 7 of the Fraternal Order of Police. But Donahue said FOP board members unanimously decided to side with Chico in great part because Emanuel favors reducing pension benefits for current employees as well as new hires.
Although Emanuel has not yet fully disclosed his fiscal platform, the CNC reported Jan. 9 that Emanuel staked out a clear position on pension cuts for current city employees at a closed-door meeting last month with Chicago Federation of Labor leaders. And Donahue said Emanuel did not back down from that stand when questioned at an endorsement interview with FOP leaders on Thursday.
FOP leaders declined to release the results of the poll of its 11,000 members. At the news conference, Donahue would say only that Emanuel and Chico were “just about neck and neck” in the race for the affections of the rank-and-file police. Bill Dougherty, the FOP’s first vice president, told the CNC that Chico had a narrow advantage over Emanuel in the non-binding member vote.
Union officials suggested that the margin of Chico’s victory would have been greater had Emanuel’s position on pensions been known at the time of the vote. Most ballots were turned in last month — “before all the talk about impacting pensions for current employees,” Donahue said.
A spokesman for Emanuel declined comment on the FOP endorsement.
Chico and the other major mayoral candidates, Carol Moseley Braun and Miguel del Valle, all have said they favor a two-tier pension system that only reduces benefits for new hires.
Asked Wednesday how he would deal with underfunded pensions, Chico replied that there are “15 or 20 other possibilities of solution.”
“You don’t pre-judge anything before you hit the negotiating table,” he said. “We’re under dire economic circumstances, and we’re going to have to talk about a lot of things.”
It is unclear what impact the FOP endorsement will have on the campaign for the Feb. 22 mayoral election. Union officials said they are still deciding how much money they will donate to the cause of their endorsed candidate. The union plans to organize officers to campaign for Chico.
“We would like to put people knocking on doors for him,” Dougherty said.
Retiring Mayor Richard M. Daley, who once called himself the FOP’s “kicking boy,” is deeply unpopular among police officers, particularly after a lengthy contract dispute that ended with an arbitrator’s decision in April. Officers recieved much more modest wage increases than they had requested.
Despite working for Daley in many high-ranking positions, including chief of staff and school board president, Chico made clear reference to the mayor’s unpopularity with police and promised he would not to let his relationship with officers become similarly toxic.
“There will be dialogue,” Chico said. “We will not have a situation develop again where the mayor is out of communication with some of the most important employees that this city has.”
He also promised to “bring back community policing.” The frequency of community policing meetings has been cut this year and the program’s role in the department’s future is unknown.
“The drop-off in manpower over the years has caused community policing to be ravaged,” Chico said. “People are very upset about that.”
Chico said the FOP’s endorsement would prove more significant in the campaign than former President Bill Clinton‘s visit to Chicago on Tuesday for Emanuel, his former campaign and White House aide.
“Bill Clinton doesn’t vote here,” Chico said, drawing cheers from the union members standing next to him at a podium. “Bill Clinton does not patrol the streets of Chicago.”
“15 or 20 other possibilities of solution.â€
And they all involve raising taxes, or cutting pensions. Don’t let the huckster lawyer fool you.
“15 or 20 other possibilities of solution.â€
What are they? How come no one is talking details?
After working “29 and a day” without being shot, maimed or crippled and collecting some part of one’s mental falculties and family relationships’…………. to be denied ones’ full pension is an act of degradation beyond belief.
Police and firefighters are delusional-Chico will not give you your “full pension”. The US Federal Court overseeing IL’s bankruptcy will. You will all take a hit, with most of the responsibility falling on those still working. Too bad. Life sucks. Should have thought about your pensions before decades of voting for lying democrats who piss dollars away by the trillion. They live in an imaginary world, and by the looks of it, so do public workers.