Division Street

“[The governor] cut more than $240,000 for the Downstate Illinois Innocence Project at the University of Illinois, Springfield, and $800,000 to address the state’s DNA testing backlog. Another $1 million to offset the cost of videotaping police interrogations was cut,” Kristen McQueary reported on Sunday.

I thought of this while reading these stories today:

* “Olympic Bid Raises $12 Mil, $37 Mil To Go.”
* “Mich. Ave Riverwalk To Cost City $8.1 Mil.“

I realize the funding sources for all of these things are different, but doesn’t it say something nonetheless about our priorities?

If the Sun-Times report today is right, police chief Jody Weis is revisiting two time-worn issues, one of which is much-talked about and the right thing to do but is in fact never done, and the other which is a disaster waiting to happen but far more likely to happen - perhaps even at the mayor’s behest.

The first issue is realigning beats to - hello! - put more police where more crime occurs. The rub here has always been that aldermen in low-crime wards don’t want to see officers taken away from them. There are two solutions: One is to tell them too bad. Their residents’ lives are not worth more than anyone else’s, and any accompanying rise in crime is likely to mean a few more bikes get stolen. The other is to maintain policing levels in those wards and just add more cops to the needy wards. In other words, hire more cops. Yes, that will cost money. Just take it out of the corruption fund.

The second issue is reconstituting SOS, the Special Operations Section disbanded in the wake of scandal. Daley loves these specialized units, but students of policing know they almost always become scandal-plagued rogue units. This is Chicago, chief; you think you can keep a handle on things?

Let’s see just how independent and adept you are.

“Chicago Police Supt. Jody Weis will be put on the City Council hot seat next week to explain a surge in homicides and violence that bubbled over at last week’s Taste of Chicago fireworks show,” the Sun-Times reports.

Surges in City Hall corruption will continue to be ignored by the council, however.

*

“Police Committee Chairman Isaac Carothers (29th) summoned Weis to appear before his committee one day after the Chicago Sun-Times reported that police made major mistakes trying to head off violence at the Taste,” the paper says.

“Carothers, whose brother is a tactical lieutenant in the 2nd District, promoted as Weis was taking over, said Weis ‘needs a little bit of pressure. He hasn’t had much pressure. He’s had a honeymoon since he’s been here.’”

1. Wait. The chairman of the city council’s police committee has a brother who is a police officer? Hello?

2. Yes, Weis hasn’t had much pressure on him. Hello?

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Today’s story about William Daley Jr.’s role in helping Morgan Stanley land business from Cook County sent me back to the Sun-Times’s look at “The next generation of Chicago’s first family” last month, which it called “The Daley Family: Version 3.0.” Let’s take a look.

*

Billy Daley Jr.’s Cook County deal is hardly the first Chicago door he’s opened for Morgan Stanley. That’s what they hired him to do. But his exact role in some lucrative arrangements remain shadowy.

For example, the Sun-Times reported in its series last month that “Within a year [of hiring], his employer signed a new deal with his uncle, Mayor Daley. Morgan Stanley got a 99-year lease to operate the city’s four underground parking garages. City Hall got an upfront payment of $563 million - the highest offer made.

“Morgan Stanley hopes to strike two more deals with Mayor Daley. It’s among several bidders seeking long-term leases to run Midway Airport and oversee 36,161 parking meters.”

Morgan Stanley told the paper in a statement that Bill Daley Jr. “was not involved” in any of the City Hall deals, but also refused to answer the paper’s written questions. And “In a brief phone conversation, Daley said he was too busy to talk and would call back. He didn’t.”

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The mayor is defending his forlorn Plan for Transformation, WBEZ reports.

“I said we’re going to rebuild their souls. Not give them an apartment, not give them a home, but you rebuild their souls.”

Oh, so it’s a faith-based initiative.

The Tribune summarizes its examination on Sunday of the CHA’s vaunted Plan for Transformation thusly: “Thousands of families displaced. Hundreds of millions of dollars spent. Years behind schedule. What went wrong with Chicago’s grand experiment.”

To which I can only say: Duh.

The Tribune used nearly 4,300 words to detail what many of us have been arguing for years - that the critics were right from the beginning, that the Plan for Transformation is a failure, and that it was always about slum clearance, PR, and developers, not about housing policy or the city’s neediest residents.

That’s not to say the Trib’s 4,300 words are wasted; in fact, it’s a fine story. It’s just that the paper is a little late proclaiming one of the biggest feathers in the mayor’s cap a grand experiment gone wrong. Let’s take a closer look.

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Making fun of Todd Stroger - even when laced with outrage - can become so entertaining and commonplace that we can lose sight of the stakes. Now we have a fresh look at Cook County finances that isn’t funny at all in the form of a credit report from Fitch Ratings.

“Even as controversy rages over Cook County’s big new sales tax hike, a major financial ratings service is warning that the county’s fiscal picture is darkening and suggests that a sales-tax increase now may not have been a good idea,” Crain’s reported on the Fitch analysis last week.

“In a statement issued late Tuesday, Fitch Ratings moved its outlook for about $3 billion in Cook County debt from ’stable’ to ‘negative, a step short of an actual rating downgrade that would increase the county’s costs of borrowing.”

That’s a cost that taxpayers bear.

“The New York firm cited weakening county finances, structural deficits in the county’s massive health system and ‘an increasingly high-tax environment for retail sales in a down economy.’

“Fitch is not taking a position on the public policy question of whether the county should or should not have raised its sales tax from 0.75% to 1.75%, says Melanie A. J. Shaker, a Fitch director who was the lead analyst on the report. But she says the agency is questioning the viability of the levy given that, in the midst of an economic downturn, combined with the city sales tax, Chicago now has the highest rate in the country, at 10.25%.”

Here are some highlights from the Fitch analysis itself.

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The Tribune editorial page today reminds readers of the “Stroger-Daley Tax” that goes into effect on Tuesday.

(Why not the Daley-Stroger Tax? Without Daley, the tax doesn’t happen; without Stroger, it does.)

The paper includes a graphic comparing our new 10.25 percent sales tax burden to other area communities.

What the Trib didn’t do was break down the sales tax and show what our money will be funding. Fortunately, the Division Street accounting department had some free time this morning and crunched the numbers. Here’s what they found:

* Richard M. Daley Defense Fund: 3 percent

* Diversion of funds to Richard M. Daley campaign fund: 1 percent

* John Daley insurance fees: 1 percent

* Michael Daley legal fees: 1 percent

* Bill Daley sympathy fund for being the smart one: 2 percent

* Todd Stroger Friends & Family Plan: .5 percent

* Walkaround money: .5 percent

* Raise to David Axelrod: .5 percent

* Cook County Democratic Party Swiss bank account: .5 percent

* Funds to tear down the Swallow Cliff toboggan slide: .25 percent

“Mayor Daley says the Paris-style bike rental program he’s been pushing for nearly a year has not started rolling because of questions about who would be left holding the bag if somebody gets hurt,” the Sun-Times reported on Tuesday.

“It’s all about lawyers. That’s the only hang-up,” Daley told the paper. “Who takes the legal liability - is it the biker, is it the company or the city? The city has deep pockets. That’s what you worry about. That’s what the hang-up is.”

That might sound like a pretty lame hang-up, but Paris is re-examining is program after a series of cyclist deaths.

“The third death this year of a cyclist using Paris’s self-service bike service Vélib’ has raised safety concerns over the popular scheme, with motorists complaining of reckless behaviour by locals and tourists,” the London Telegraph reports.

“Without real cycle lanes, they should stop Vélib’,” the father of one of the dead cyclists told Le Parisien. Bus and lorry drivers complain that bikers have dropped their guard since the scheme was introduced almost a year ago.

“They don’t know how to ride. Parisians are in a hurry and go through red lights. The others, the tourists ride with their head in the air without knowing where they are going,” said one driver.

Maybe flooding downtown Chicago and the lakefront with tourists on bikes isn’t such a great idea after all.

According to Fran Spielman and Rich Miller, Bill Daley is once again considering a run for governor.

I wonder what a Bill Daley Administration would look like.

* Jim Thompson heads transition team.
* Treasurer’s Office outsourced to J.P. Morgan.
* Duffs get Illinois State Fair contract.
* Legislators get pay raises in exchange for no longer showing up to work.
* Statewide Hired Trucks!
* Capitol dome becomes rooftop garden.
* State flower becomes the dollar bill.