Division Street

“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.

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I’ll be on Eight Forty Eight’s Month in Review panel this morning at 9 a.m. on WBEZ-FM (91.5) discussing the motherlode of a newsy April gone by. Here are my picks in the various categories we are likely to discuss.

MOST SIGNIFICANT STORY: Ali Ata! The roadmap to the governor just became a lot clearer. Second: The absolute insistence - with the backing of the Daley Administration - of the Chicago Children’s Museum in moving forward with its plans to relocate in Grant Park despite tremendous public opposition.

LOSER OF THE MONTH: Rod Blagojevich.

WINNER OF THE MONTH: Jim Hendry. Even though the mega-millions he gave to Alfonso Soriano looks increasingly idiotic, Kosuke Fukudome has been even better than advertised, Reed Johnson is a steal, and Lou Piniella is the man.

WINNER & LOSER: The Chicago Children’s Museum. A loser because everybody hates them now, but a winner because the mayor always gets what he wants.

UNDER-REPORTED: The CHA opening its voucher list up again and them being swamped with applications. If examined closely, this is further evidence that the Plan for Transformation is more about transforming valuable real estate than providing adequate housing for the poor.

OVER-REPORTED: Chicago public schools violence. Not to be insensitive, but this has been framed as somehow the fault of Chicago public schools. If I understand it, these killings are not occurring on public school property; it’s not CPS’s fault. It’s mostly gang-related, and I’m not sure if the violence - intolerable as it is - represents a spike over previous years. This is a story about poverty, socioeconomics and policing, not schools. That part of the story should be reported with even more urgency, but the school frame is overblown.

WATCH NEXT MONTH: The Chicago Children’s Museum battle will be back at full volume, but also watch the Latin School lawsuit; these are both about private use of public park land, though different in scope and circumstance. Also, Obama is obvious, but what about his political mentor Emil Jones? Will his one-man gridlock finally cave as the governor’s influence vanishes beyond the horizon?

COWARDLY ACT: The lawyers who kept their client privilege may have thought they were being courageous but they were being cowardly when they consigned Alton Logan to prison for a crime he did not commit. While we can all appreciate their dilemma, they could have found a creative way out of it, even if it meant losing their law licenses. A man’s life ought to come first.

If you mess with the bull, you get the horns.

Especially if the bull is U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald.

Carol Marin will lead a panel on today’s bombshell - and we’re still absorbing yesterday’s bombshell! - from the Tony Rezko trial on Chicago Tonight tonight.

Right now, he’s the governor’s worst nightmare.

Some quick background:

“Recently, Ali Ata, the former president of the Chicago Chapter of the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, and a close associate of Othman, also came under scrutiny, this time by Chicago’s other newspaper, the Chicago Sun-Times,” Ray Hanania wrote in 2005.

“Ata was a major contributor to the candidacy of Blagojevich, who served as a congressman before becoming governor. Ata reportedly donated more than $60,000 to Blagojevich. Ata has been active in supporting Arab American causes and was instrumental in helping to make ADC active in Chicago.

“But Ata’s ties to the state date back to Edgar and Ryan. He and three partners received more than $3.2 million when they convinced the state to lease a building they owned at 3500 W. Grand Avenue on Chicago’s poverty-stricken West Side in the early 1990s.”

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A plea deal announced today by federal authorities involving the former director of the Illinois Finance Authority places Gov. Rod Blagojevich - otherwise known as Public Official A - right in the crosshairs.

Predicted response by the governor’s office: “It never happened. We don’t operate that way.”

But a lot of people are saying otherwise. And the odds of a Blagojevich indictment in 2008 just got better.

The more interesting question: Will Rezko ultimately flip? Because his goose looks cooked.

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Rich Miller has the plea agreement.