Sunday Night Football

The only thing the Bears have going for them is home field advantage - and that's only worth a safety according to the latest line.

Eight-and-eight is a distinct possibility this year.

Where the Axe Will Fall

Strap in:

• Mayor Rahm Emanuel has talked about laying off more than 500 city employees and eliminating 776 vacant jobs, but he has not identified them or explained what city services will suffer.

  Now, an analysis by the Chicago Sun-Times and one of the impacted unions shows where the ax will fall — in a way that could slow response time to 911 calls or stretch call takers to the limit, decimate Chicago Public libraries and force dramatic cuts in health and human services.

  At the Office of Emergency Management and Communications, where 911 call takers have more than doubled their annual salaries in overtime over the years, the budget calls for 108 layoffs and the elimination of 80 vacancies. Seventy-three of the layoffs are recently fired Loop traffic-control-aides.

  The ranks of police dispatchers would be reduced by 45 or 10.3 percent. The number of fire communications operators would drop by 17 or 16.6 percent.

  “Management … is saying the wait time for a 911 call will go from one-to-three seconds to ten-to-fifteen seconds, possibly more. This is very disturbing,” said an OEMC employee, who asked to remain anonymous.

So not only has the Department gone from proactive to reactive in record time, we're going to go to an even slower reactive posture. And the dispatcher burnout, well, that's just an unfortunate side effect.

Scott's Law Anyone?

How soon everyone forgets how to drive:

• Two separate vehicles struck a Chicago Police officer and firefighter who were directing traffic at the scene of gas leak Saturday afternoon in the Far Southwest Side Mount Greenwood neighborhood.

  Both men are in good condition and the crashes were not hit-and-runs, according to Fire Media Affairs spokesman [...]

  A small gas leak occurred about 1:30 p.m. in the 10400 block of South Pulaski Road, causing Level I Hazardous materials response. On the scene of it, the firefighter and officer were trying to direct traffic when separate vehicles struck them....

Both are expected to recover, but no word on tickets for the drivers doing the damage. A couple of thousand dollar fines and would be nice publicity to remind idiots how to pay attention.

We Question the Timing

Any conspiracy theorists out there?

• A South Side street has been closed today after a water main that was nearly a century old broke and flooded the street, officials said.

  The break of a 24-inch water main occurred about 8:30 a.m. this morning at 47^th Street and South Loomis Boulevard in the Back of the Yards neighborhood, according to Tom Laporte, a spokesman for the city Department of Water Management, closing 47^th Street between Racine and Ashland avenues.

  Loomis, which runs south out of the T-shaped intersection, remains open, he said, except for a small area just south of the intersection. But 47^th, which buckled because of the break, is "impassable."

  [...]He said no customers in the area are without water service.

Rahm announces a $2.8 billion long-overdue upgrade/repair of Chicago's water system to be paid for by doubling city and suburban water rates, then coincidentally, a 24" main breaks, but no customers are affected. This is just too convenient, says the suspicious mind.

Charges Filed

Good news:

• A Far South Side man has been charged with attempted murder in the shooting of a Chicago police officer Thursday night, police said.
  
  William T. Wright, 20, who lives in the area of 130th Street and Ellis Avenue, is charged in the shooting and being held on a Michigan warrant in connection with a parole violation, police said.
  
  Wright’s prior conviction in Michigan was for obstructing police, according to Chicago Police News Affairs.

Nice job ladies and gentlemen.

Pension Bill Getting Attention

Hopefully, to be derailed during the veto session:

• City employee union leaders reacted furiously Thursday to a new bill in the Illinois General Assembly that would give Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle control over public employee pension funds.

  House Republican Leader Tom Cross of Oswego is leading the effort to dissolve the city and county worker pension boards and alter the balance of power by allowing Emanuel and Preckwinkle to appoint a majority of new board members.

  While Emanuel aides said the recently elected mayor was weighing his position on the bill, Preckwinkle’s spokeswoman told the Chicago News Cooperative that the first-term board president favored it.

Rahm is weighing his position? There's a fucking joke if we ever heard it. And here's another:

• But Cross said neither the mayor nor his aides in Springfield had asked him to introduce the new proposal.

  “I think the suggestion by some is that the mayor’s office called me and is trying to get more power,” Cross said. “That’s not what happened. This came out of our shop. I want to be clear about that. He didn’t call me and say, ‘Do this.’”

No, Rahm's too smart for that. He'd have his people do that. Or allies like Madigan. Rahm isn't like Blago getting caught on a wire. But in reality, there's no reason we can think of for an Oswego politician to be introducing Chicago Pension bills. Readers?

Act Like an Ass...

Let's see - man with a gun call, police show up, a lieutenant asks some questions of a subject - yeah, let's jump into the middle of a conversation that doesn't concern us. While holding a baby. Who knows? We might get paid:

• A Chicago Police lieutenant is under investigation after a man claimed the lieutenant had droped his 4-month-old infant after he handcuffed the man in a restaurant, according to police and news reports.

  The man who was handcuffed, Chaz Byars, told Fox Chicago News, WFLD-Channel 32, that the lieutenant came into an Auburn-Gresham restaurant last Tuesday to investigate reports of shots fired. He began interrogating another man when Byars came to the man’s defense. That’s when “he grabbed my child’s car seat and my child fell out and hit his head,” Byars told Fox Chicago News. Byars said he was handcuffed and arrested. Byars said doctors told him the boy checked out fine but said “it’s a wait-and-see situation because his bones are still forming in his head.” The Illinois Police Review Authority confirmed to the Chicago Sun-Times late Friday that it was investigating the allegations.

Oh yeah, let's confront the lieutenant with a child and the child isn't even strapped into the car seat. Interfere with the police, act surprised when the officer locks you up, act indignant when your own stupidity gets an innocent person injured. Like the lieutenant was just out looking around for a baby to drop on its head.

Rahm Spreads the Pain

Not only is Rahm increasing water and sewer "fees" on Chicagoans, he's jacking up suburban rates , too:

• It’s not just Chicagoans who would get socked with larger water bills, under Mayor Emanuel’s proposed city budget.

  Residents of the more than 100 suburbs that purchase their water from Chicago would also see their bills double over the next four years.

  Emanuel emphasized that point Friday as he tried to placate city residents and stressed the need to revamp Chicago’s water-delivery system.

$2.8 billion dollars worth of revamping evidently, but the city is broke and by the way, here's a shitload of double-digit raises for bureaucrats and secretaries.

And don't forget this:

• The city of Chicago is owed $47 million in unpaid water bills. It’s a big number for a cash-strapped city. A Better Government Association study found those who owe much of that money might not be who you expect.

  [...] Harvey owes Chicago $6.2 million, Robbins owes $6.1 million, Dolton owes $1.7 million and Maywood owes $1.6 million.

Yup, Rahm has a handle on everything. Even in Washington DC:

• Congress isn't getting a glimpse of what's on President Barack Obama's Blackberry - or any more internal White House communications related to the bankrupt solar company Solyndra, which received a $535 million loan guarantee from the federal government.

No inconvenient questions about half-a-billion in taxpayer cash pissed away. Now he finish the job Shortshanks started.

9%, 10%, 11% Raises!

What? Oh, not for the front line police or firefighters. You peons be happy with your 2% and 1% raises:

• Even with 517 layoffs, $417 million in budget cuts and $220 million in higher taxes, fines and fees, Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s first city budget rewards a handful of top mayoral aides.

  Fire Commissioner Robert Hoff is in line for a nine percent pay raise — from $185,652 a year to $202,728.

  There’s also a nine percent pay hike — to $178,740 — for the newly-appointed deputy commissioner in charge of the scandal-scarred Fire Prevention Bureau.

• While the Chicago Police Department is closing three district stations and eliminating 1,252 police vacancies, Supt. Garry McCarthy’s chief of staff will get a nearly ten percent bump — to $185,004.

  The Police Department’s new director of news affairs will be paid $112,008 a year, nearly 9.5 percent more.

  Transportation Commissioner Gabe Klein gets a nearly eight percent pay raise — to $169,500. A former transportation chief in Washington D.C., Klein is a champion of bike lanes and bike sharing, two of Emanuel’s pet projects.

  General Services Commissioner David Reynolds gets a nearly 12 percent bump from his predecessor — from $140,364 to $157,092.

  [...] Although the budget for the mayor’s office is down slightly — to just under $6 million — a staff restructuring has resulted in pay cuts for some and eye-popping pay raises for others.

  Matt Hynes, director of the Mayor’s Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, is in line for a nearly seven percent raise — from $158,364 to $168,996.

  An administrative secretary in the mayor’s office gets a 22 percent pay raise — to $90,000. Four assistants to the mayor would be in line for increases ranging from 14 percent to 41 percent — one earning as much as $162,492.

  There are also pay hikes for two deputy chiefs of staff. The budget director and chief financial officer also get a boost, both receiving $169,992-a-year.

But hey, that's not urine on your head. It's raining! Honest!

• Communications Director Chris Mather — whose $162,492 a year salary is eight percent less than her predecessor’s — insisted that most of the increases built into the mayor’s first budget are not really pay raises.

  “People aren’t getting raises from now to 2012. This is what they got hired at. And there are a number of younger, entry-level people who came in at a lower amount, so we bumped some of them up to 2012,” Mather said in an e-mail response to the Chicago Sun-Times.

If the check amount went up, it's a raise. We certainly expect the FOP negotiating committee is taking copious notes on these raises, seeing as how after Rahm raises health and pension contributions next contract while claiming the City is still broke, we're looking at pay cuts in terms of take home pay.

BREAKING: Officer Shot in 005 (bumped)

Altgeld Gardens, GSW to the thigh.

UPDATE: Some commentators are saying subject is in custody. Officer should be OK.

UPDATE: Tribune story here - get a load of this sentence at the end:

• Some residents said the police response for the wounded officer seemed large compared to other shootings in the community.

Yeah, no shit.

UPDATE: The Tribune is already changing the story as posted - we copied the italicized comment directly as it appeared at 10:33 PM by reporter Liam Ford. By 11:39 PM, the story had been "updated" with a quote from Pat "the Orange One" Camden....and amazingly, the blatant liberal slant previously posted by Liam Ford (and Peter Nickeas, Erin Meyer and Jeremy Gorner) was changed to the following:

• Some residents said the police response was large.

Right before your very eyes - media bias and then media cover-up. Dishonest, lying, biased motherfuckers, every single one of them.

UPDATE: bumped from last night to top post today

Jobs? What Jobs?

Remember a few weeks ago, Rahm was boasting about the 1,100 jobs he had secured for Chicago over at the Torrence Avenue Ford Plant?

We'll call this one "counting his chickens before they're hatched:"

• Workers at Ford Motor Co.'s Torrence Avenue plant have overwhelmingly rejected a proposed labor contract that would add 1,100 jobs to the facility.

  Of 2,317 votes cast by union members, 1,778 voted against ratifying the pact, while 539 voted for it, according to a posting by the UAW Local 551 Communications on its Facebook page. Polls closed at midnight after two days of voting.

  Scott Houldieson, secretary-treasurer of UAW Local 551, said he had heard from workers that they did not like the lack of a cost-of-living allowance in the contract and the continuation of a two-tier pay scale.

• As the votes roll across the nation, union leaders have instructed members to prepare for strike if the agreement isn't ratified.

So not only are Rahm's promised jobs about to dry up, the UAW might be striking, meaning the 2,000-plus jobs already in place might be temporarily on hold until a settlement is reached.

City Worker Shoots Robber

A story to warm your hearts:

• With its high wrought-iron fence, multiple security cameras, jailhouse-style mirrors and a fierce rottweiler in the backyard, Perry Pearce’s home is easily the best fortified building in the 5700 block of South Ada.

  But the armed robbers who targeted the Englewood home Thursday morning didn’t count on the biggest threat of all — Pearce himself.

  Pearce, 53, a truck driver for the Chicago Department of Water Management, was hailed as a hero by his neighbors Thursday after he told how he flipped the script on two gunmen who he says jumped him as he prepared to drive to work about 6:30 a.m.

  Pearce told police and friends that he managed to snatch away the gun of one of the attackers, then used it to shoot one of them in the abdomen.

Hopefully, the offender develops a raging bowel infection and dies a painful death. We can hardly wait to see his rap sheet when it comes out.

Stealing the Pension

They'll pass it off as "reform," then steal it:

• Less than 24 hours after the Tribune and WGN-TV reported that at least eight union officials eligible for a city pension also stand to receive one or more union pensions for the same period of work, Illinois House Republican leader Tom Cross filed legislation that would limit them to just the one.
  
  "This is double dipping on steroids — and it was meant to be illegal. Unfortunately, top union officials used a questionable interpretation of the pension law that allowed them to use a loophole to grab two or sometimes three pensions," said Cross, R-Oswego. "This is a disgrace — and must be remedied immediately."
  
  Under Illinois pension law, a union leader may receive a city pension based on his union salary as long as he doesn't "receive credit in any pension plan established by the local labor organization based on his employment by the organization."
  
  But the Tribune and WGN-TV found that the executive directors of two city pension funds allowed union leaders to accrue additional union pension benefits if the funds were created by labor groups that are not located in Chicago or that include multiple unions.

All well and good to close a loophole that's draining pension funds statewide. But what's the reason for adding this language to the bill?

• Amends the Chicago Police, Chicago Firefighter, Chicago Municipal, Chicago Laborers, Chicago Park District, and Chicago Teacher Articles of the Illinois Pension Code to terminate the existing pension boards 90 days after the effective date of the amendatory Act and to provide for a new board comprised of 4 members appointed by the Mayor of the City of Chicago and 3 elected members representing active members and annuitant members of the fund. [...]
  
  Effective immediately.

Are we missing something or is this completely under the radar?

How About Some More Cuts?

Now that Rahm has revealed his hand and decided to cut three police stations, two detective areas and eliminate over 1,200 openings, can we get a public commitment on reducing the number of aldercreatures?

After all, if we can make do with 12% fewer police districts, 40% fewer detective areas and 11% fewer police officers, we can certainly do without 10 or more politicians and their assorted baggage, right?

It's only fair - share the pain and all that.

And didn't Chicago lose something like 200,000 residents last census?

Eliminating Openings

Rahm presents this in his budget with a straight face:

• Emanuel also intends to take police vacancies off the books to save money, ending the shell game where Daley and aldermen set aside money to fill Police Department vacancies but spent the money elsewhere.
  
  "Finally, we're going to end the charade of carrying hundreds of police officer vacancies without actually hiring them. Protecting public safety requires officers on the beat, not phantom cops on the books. Yet, for years the city kept listing vacancies without ever filling them. Everybody knew what was going on, but nobody let the public in on it," according to a prepared copy of Emanuel's speech.
  
  "Well, I'm not going to play that game any longer. We need to be honest with the people of Chicago. So those police vacancies -- and the tax dollars supposedly allocated to them -- are coming off the books," Emanuel intends to say. "My budget will pay for two classes of cadets at the Police Academy next year. They will be real officers on the beat -- not ghost officers on a budget line."

So we guess that everything we've been saying, along with our readers, other bloggers, the FOP and such has been absolutely 100% true and accurate - we were horrendously shorthanded for the better part of the past decade.

But now we're not evidently.

Rahm's Budget

One of the more egregious items:

• For a mayor who once promised to erase a $635.7 million shortfall without raising taxes, Rahm Emanuel sure is digging deeply into taxpayers’ pockets — to the tune of nearly $220 million in taxes, fines and fees.

  The $6.3 billion 2012 budget that Emanuel unveiled Wednesday calls for nearly doubling water and sewer fees over the next four years to rebuild an aging system the mayor wants to upgrade — not privatize.

  The increase will cost the average Chicago homeowner $120 in 2012 alone. The only way to avoid that non-metered rate hike is to install a free water meter to measure water usage, something 316,000 Chicago homeowners have refused to do.

• On July 29, Emanuel appeared to take tax increases off the table.

  “I’m not gonna ask people who feel nickel-and-dimed to pay more for a system that has not been re-structured,” he said on that day.

  “The capital I’ll spend will be political capital to make the tough choices that we have to do for the city. The capital I won’t spend is the taxpayers’ dollars.”

  At a meeting Wednesday with the Chicago Sun-Times editorial board, the mayor flatly denied that he had broken his promise to Chicago voters.

Well that's not a "tax increase" according to Rahm - that's a "service fee" or some other such talking point nonsense....you know, like "1,000 new cops" becomes "1,000 more cops on the street" becomes "stop reminding me about the TRU, MSF, PPOs graduating."

Rahm wouldn't be Rahm if he wasn't lying through his teeth.

BIG NEWS (bumped)

They added 019 to the closing list:

• The Chicago Police Department will close three district police stations in 2012 — Wood, Belmont and Prairie — consolidate police and detective areas from five to three and merge Police and Fire Department headquarters and specialized units, Mayor Rahm Emanuel said Tuesday.

  Instead of having “overlapping functions” in the Police and Fire Departments overseeing anti-terrorism, marine activities, helicopter and bomb and arson, those units will join forces under “single leadership” for “better coordination at key moments,” the mayor said.

  The merger of special units and the combined Police and Fire headquarters at 35th and Michigan will create a “more agile bureaucratic structure” that Emanuel called unprecedented.

  Emanuel will unveil his 2012 city budget at a special City Council meeting on Wednesday, using a mix of budget cuts and targeted tax and fee increases to erase a $635.7 million shortfall.

Looks like North, South and Central for the Detective Division

More as it becomes available.

UPDATE: Post moved from 5:26 PM on Tuesday to the top spot for Wednesday.

The Question Now is When?

Have they come out with a date for these closings? How is the manpower to be redistributed? Lockers, parking, watches, etc. There's a shitload of logistical stuff to be addressed in short order.

Also, which Areas are staying and going?

What about the Courts? The Motor Maintenance garage?

All This, and a Tax Hike

Also worked into Rahm's budget proposal, the typical tax hike:

• Mayor Rahm Emanuel will raise taxes on hotel rooms and downtown parking — along with fees on city stickers for SUV’s — to chip away at Chicago’s $635.7 million shortfall, aldermen were told Tuesday.

  Emanuel has promised to erase the deficit without a general tax increase on sales or property or by cutting police officers or using one-time revenues.

  But, he has opened the door to raising a host of more specialized taxes and fees, while turning off the free water spigot for hospitals, universities and other non-profits.

It will be interesting to see the fallout in the tourism sector, especially after the G-8 riots and everyone stops coming to Chicago.

More Daley Waste

If anyone in the media had done their jobs, or there were any whistle blowers in the administration, there's no telling how many tens of millions, maybe hundred of millions may have been saved over the years. Here's another brewing scandal:

• In March 2004, then-Mayor Richard M. Daley announced a deal that promised to save taxpayer money, reduce natural gas consumption and bring “green” jobs to Chicago.

  But taxpayers might see red when they learn how the deal turned out. More than seven years later, the initiative has been quietly suspended amid problems with some of the equipment — and acknowledgements by city officials that taxpayers will probably lose money on the deal and never realize the energy savings that Daley touted, the Better Government Association has learned.

  The arrangement centered on solar-powered hot water heating systems made by North Carolina-based Solargenix Energy LLC with technology designed at the University of Chicago.

  The city agreed to spend up to $5 million on the eco-friendly systems, and install them on more than 100 public buildings, such as firehouses and police stations, yielding an estimated $7 million in energy savings over 30 years.

  In exchange for that commitment — and an additional $1.7 million no-interest loan through the Daley administration — Solargenix agreed to open a factory in Chicago, employing at least 15 workers, and build the solar equipment there.

But hey, the connected folks got their money, so screw the taxpayers. In fact, if you switched some of the players around and changed the name of the company to Solyndra, Rahm might feel right at home presiding over another "green technology" failure.