Division Street

. . . from his meeting with the runaway Republic of Palatine.

Promises to send suburban officials the tools necessary to improve their ability to schedule meetings.

It’s not just who you know, but who you campaign for.

* “More than 90 Chicago Police employees - including a recently promoted district commander - have received payouts from a $12 million fund created to compensate victims of City Hall’s rigged hiring system,” the Sun-Times reports.

The Chicago Police Department: To protect and serve your mayor.

* “A real estate agent Cook County Board President Todd Stroger hired for a high-level Health Department job apparently created just for him in January has been demoted and had his salary cut after the Tribune questioned his qualifications,” the Tribune reports.

“Donald Burleson, a South Side Realtor who worked at Stroger’s health club, is one of at least three people county officials hired before they had the legal authority to do so.”

It’s not who you know, it’s where you work out.

* “Cook County Public Defender Edwin Burnette on Tuesday tried to delay County Board President Todd Stroger’s attempt to fire him until his pending lawsuit over control of the office is resolved.”

It’s not who you defend, it’s who you sue.

“The corruption trial of Antoin ‘Tony’ Rezko circled back to Gov. Rod Blagojevich once again Tuesday with a new allegation about a $25,000 bribe being pried out of a once high-ranking administration official to keep contractors from slapping a lien on the governor’s Ravenswood Manor home,” the Tribune reports this morning.

Whoa!

Maybe he couldn’t come to a budget agreement with Patti so he just kept borrowing.

(more…)

* “Obama ‘Appalled’ By Ex-Pastor’s Comments” (NBC5)

* “Obama’s Promise Fades” (Toronto Globe and Mail)

* “The Rev. Wright Has A Right To Defend His Reputation” (Ruben Navarrette)

* “New Pastor To Head Obama’s 8,000-Member Chicago Church” (AP)

* The view from Indiana.

* And North Carolina.

* And my column over at The Beachwood Reporter.

Can anyone doubt now that Paul Vallas would have been a better governor than Rod Blagojevich? Of course, had Vallas not lost to Blagojevich by about 25,000 votes in the 2002 Democratic primary he still would have had to get by Jim Ryan, but following George Ryan (no relation), it was destined to be a Democratic year.

Now it increasingly looks like Vallas will give it another shot in 2010.

“I haven’t decided,” he told Carol Marin on Chicago Tonight last night (after appearing at the City Club on Friday), but it was clear to me that he wants to run, if conditions are right. And those conditions? Money and the competition.

For one thing, he doesn’t want to put himself deeply in debt again. Vallas said that he paid off his $500,000 (roughly) campaign debt out of pocket. He had opportunities, he said, to hold fundraisers to pay off his debt, but he didn’t want to be linked to special interests.

Vallas will also have to size up the field. But he will have a pretty good pitch if he does run as a turnaround artist at just the time the state will need one. After all, he left the Chicago public school system to work for Philadelphia’s troubled school system and is now leading the New Orleans Recovery School District. (And, of course, he’s made enemies in each of those places as well.)

Vallas’ expertise in both budgeting and education is a powerful combination; his less-than-polished campaigning is refreshing but at times frenetic, and he told Marin he still won’t fly, which hampers traversing the state for votes. Lisa Madigan also looms with a strong record of her own on the Democratic side, and who knows who the Republicans will come up with. (Why not Denny Hastert?)

Finally, Vallas told Marin that the first thing he would do if elected governor would be to sit down with legislative leaders and develop an agenda. Vallas noted that he’s worked with Michael Madigan and Emil Jones before.

Vallas certainly wouldn’t be the only candidate with a strong case to make, but if he gets the financial backing (he talked last night about using the Internet a la Obama to raise funds) he could be formidable.

It just happened at a press conference in North Carolina. And Obama really let his old friend have it, calling Wright’s appearance on Monday at the National Press Club a “spectacle” and saying “The person I saw yesterday was not the person that I met 20 years ago.”

That claim will be tested: Has Wright really changed?

Obama also defended himself from Wright’s charge that Obama had merely been acting as a politician in previous distancing from Wright: “What particularly angered me was his suggestion somehow that my previous denunciation of his remarks were somehow political posturing.”

Responding to a question from a reporter, Obama said: “I did not vet my pastor before running for the presidency.” He did, however, disinvite his pastor from speaking at the speech in Springfield where Obama launched his campaign for admitted political reasons, so it’s not like Obama didn’t know his spiritual advisor was controversial.

Obama clearly is trying to put this behind him once and for all to cauterize the political wound and move on, but he’s lost a significant force in his life in the process. I don’t know if it’s unprecedented, but . . . wow. (I wrote about Wright this morning at The Beachwood Reporter.)

Who is running the Chicago Police Department?

Why it’s Mayor Daley, of course.

Despite the rhetoric that incoming chief Jody Weis would have a free hand, it’s become increasingly - and unsurprisingly - clear that Daley is pulling the strings.

This nugget, for example, was buried in a Tribune story about police response to escalating gang violence. “Daley last week sent a City Hall employee, Michael Masters, to police headquarters to replace Weis’ chief of staff, a former FBI agent.”

I’m not in the habit of quoting the undependable Michael Sneed, but in this case she had the story right - and then some.

(more…)

Several stories in the news recently about developments in how the city does business have a somewhat hidden thread: They are products of the mayor’s 21st Century Commission.

For example:

* “Daley Farms Out Screening of Minority Firms,” in which the city will rely on others to certify women and minority ownership for set-aside contracts.

* “Women’s Advocates Fight Daley Merger Plan,” in which the city’s Office of Domestic Violence would be tucked inside the much larger - and bureaucratized - Human Services Department.

* And, near as I can tell, “Porch Inspections Taper Off,” in which some building owners will be allowed to “self-certify” their own inspections.

The mayor’s commission is also reportedly considering recommending privatizing garbage collection.

So just what is the 21st Century Commission? Let’s take a look.

(more…)

Maybe there’s a simple explanation I haven’t thought of, but do you find it strange that Chicago police officers have to pay for their guns? I mean, do baseball players have to buy their own bats? (Actually, I think they do . . . but still.)

At any rate, this nugget caught my eye in a Sun-Times story over the weekend about the mayor’s plan to arm cops with assault rifles: “Timing and logistics of the change in firepower have not yet been ironed out. First, the weapons must be purchased - and it’s not yet clear who is going to pay. Officers currently choose from a list of authorized handguns and pay out of their own pockets.”

Meanwhile, the paper also notes that officers will have to be trained to use the new assault weapons, saying that it would be a “logistical nightmare” to send large numbers of the force back to the academy. And who would get the guns and under what circumstances would they be approved for use? This proposal may have a long way to go. Or maybe it’s more of a scare tactic than a policing strategy.

* Should Barack Obama’s association with Bill Ayers reflect poorly on him? That’s something I’ve been trying to puzzle out ever since Obama was asked about it in the Pennsylvania debate. At first I dismissed the question as hogwash. Bill Ayers? Please. I’d much rather have had that question be about Tony Rezko - who also bothers me about a thousand times more than Jeremiah Wright.

But this piece by Tribune news researcher Brenda Kilianski in the Sunday Trib is challenging and persuasive - to us all.

* At the same time, I’m far more outraged at the lack of attention given to Obama’s far closer relationship with his self-described political mentor, State Senate President Emil Jones, a real hack’s hack who is a walking piece of one-man gridlock and antithetical to everything Obama says he stands for.

The Tribune editorial page has now embarked on a campaign against what it calls The Rod Blagojevich Protection Society, Emil Jones Chapter. It’s beyond me why Obama isn’t asked more about the crucial relationships with the hopeless and change-averse Machine that propelled his rise.