Before Mayor-elect Rahm Emanuel and the City Council are sworn in next month, four re-elected council incumbents will offer a crash orientation course for the bumper crop of new aldermen.
With support from a politically powerful union that did not endorse Emanuel for mayor, council veterans Pat Dowell (3rd Ward), Ricardo Munoz (22nd), Scott Waguespack (32nd) and Joe Moore (49th) will lead the day-long, closed-door training session for neophytes on April 25.
The goal is to solidify and expand the loosely organized “progressive caucus,” Moore and labor leaders told the Chicago News Cooperative on Thursday. The caucus formed in recent years and comprised about 15 council members.
Moore said he expects many of the new aldermen will come to hear about such City Council 101 subjects as setting up a ward office, assessing zoning change proposals and interacting with the mayor’s administration.
“We are starting out with a spirit of having aldermen who want to take a deliberative approach to the issues and who want to act like the deliberative council that we are supposed to be,” Moore said.
The school for new aldermen would be private, he said, “so we can have a candid discussion.”
The dean of the council, Ald. Edward Burke (14th), has led sessions for new aldermen at the commencement of past council terms.
Emanuel’s closest ally in the council, Ald. Patrick O’Connor (40th), said he does not think the orientation would hamper the next mayor’s ability to win council backing for his agenda.
“I’m not sure that Rahm would be threatened by it,” O’Connor said. “All of the people involved say they want to work with him. Really, it depends on what they teach at the workshop.”
He said he doubted that any seminar could be more influential than the promises that new aldermen made during the campaign. “I’m not sure you get a change in people’s ideology in one day,” O’Connor said.
He said he thinks the progressive caucus’ long-term intention in holding the orientation class is to “be a resource down the road” for new aldermen.
Sources close to Emanuel said he has no plans to organize an orientation course of his own. Emanuel has said he wants to work together with the aldermen and does not seek their unquestioning “rubber stamp.”
Moore, who was one of the more vocal dissidents in a council dominated by allies of retiring Mayor Richard M. Daley, said he expected the mayor-elect will be more open to debate in the council than Daley.
“I think there is a new paradigm at work here,” Moore said.
Eighteen members of the new council who will take the oath of office on May 16 were not aldermen when the last term began four years ago. The Service Employees International Union stayed neutral in the race to succeed Daley but spent heavily to aid council campaigns, as it first did in 2007, when it helped unseat several staunch Daley allies.
The gains of 2007 gave organized labor only a toehold in a council where the vast majority always sided with the mayor. Now, union leaders believe roughly half of the council will be sympathetic to labor’s concerns.
It remains to be seen whether labor’s views will clash with Emanuel’s agenda – and who would enjoy the allegiance of most council members if conflicts do arise. In the campaigns for Tuesday’s runoff election, Emanuel gave his backing to many of the same candidates who accepted contributions from unions.
Balancing the perennially out-of-whack city budget could prove to be the flash point. In the recent mayoral campaign, Emanuel said he did not want to raise taxes and instead would attempt to make city government more efficient.
SEIU State Council President Thomas Balanoff said Thursday he believed tax hikes could not be ruled out. “It’s not a spending crisis,” Balanoff said of the city’s fiscal woes. “It’s a revenue crisis … I think everything has to be on the table.”
At the state level, SEIU was a major supporter of Gov. Patrick Quinn’s election campaign last year and lobbied for the income-tax hike that the state recently approved.
As for the incoming mayor’s plans, Balanoff said, “I certainly hope he is not going to take an approach to try and create efficiency and what he is really doing is just devaluing the labor of basic services that are provided to the residents of the city.”
Asked if he expected conflict with Emanuel, Balanoff replied, “The devil is always in the details … I certainly hope that we and the broader labor movement don’t get to a place where things polarize right away. I don’t necessarily see that happening. On the other hand, there are some big issues that are going to come up that are going to be difficult.”
Nothing I like reading better in Chicago news is a story about closed door meetings of aldermen. “Candid discussion”, indeed!
Scott Waguespack is the alderman of the 32nd ward. Nick Sposato was recently elected alderman of the 36th ward, usurping John Rice-who was Banks’ driver.
I am happy for my newly elected Alderman to get all the help he can. Its not easy being an Alderman and if some vets are willing to share their experience that’s great, I am happy they’re willing to do it.