Crain's Article

Someone gets the idea that all aspects of the city budget should be looked at - especially where money is obviously being wasted:

• Having once famously suggested that no good crisis should go to waste, Mayor Rahm Emanuel is preparing for a huge property tax hike that, in retrospect, probably should have been enacted years ago. But the mayor will be forgoing a grand opportunity to accomplish more if he uses the city's pension woes only as cover to raise revenues and not to re-examine normally politically sacrosanct expenditures.
  
  I'm referring to the holy of holies, the untouchable third rail of city government that only the most foolhardy of officials (usually lame ducks) dare touch: the police and fire departments.
  
  Between them, the two eat up more than $1.6 billion a year, nearly half of the city's corporate (operating) fund.
  
  Even so, aldermen and community groups constantly call for more spending. Common sense suggests they need a close look.
  Yet, with each department having a potent labor union and even its own network TV show, “Chicago Fire” and “Chicago P.D.,” the tough questions aren't being asked.
  
  So here's one: Are the two departments as top-heavy with well-paid managers as they appear?

There are even some devastating numbers included:

• In most city departments, the list of those making more than $150,000 a year—a good salary almost anywhere—is limited to the top boss and a few of others. The city Department of Finance has one official over that figure, the comptroller, according to the 2015 budget. The corporation counsel's office and all its be-suited lawyers have one; the Department of Public Health and the doctors, two; and the Planning Department just one: the commissioner, who gets $156,504.
  
  The police department is big—with 14,367 budgeted positions—and has 77 people with a base salary of at least $150,000 a year. Most of those earn many thousands above that. The fire department has 60, even though there are just a third as many firefighters (5,184 budgeted positions) as police. Add 25 percent for pensions and other fringe benefits, and those 137 commanders, deputy chiefs, district chiefs, etc., collectively are compensated nearly $30 million a year. Every year.

That's a textbook case of a top-heavy supervisory structure. The redundancy of command is ridiculous, with individual commanders having individual captains report to them in every district, and numerous units with an individual commander reporting to an individual deputy chief reporting to a single chief. Each of these offices has its own complete staff, hiding dozens of officers inside and tripling the paperwork that a single command position should be able to handle.

And let's not even get started on Rahm's personal bodyguard detail - 2 sergeants making commanders pay for the sole reason that they are politically reliable along with 24 or so officers making D-3 pay (sergeant) for the same reason...and not just making it every day. They make one-and-one-half times that every time they work overtime or take part in a Special Employment opportunity. Because they know somebody, are married to somebody or slept with somebody.

Time to trot out the Booz-Allen report again (the only known public copy in existence is at the Harold Washington Library). Or that "efficiency study" that was conducted three or four years ago. Times are rough all over - start looking at everything.