Division Street

Ben and Mick at Clout City take a closer look at the strangest and most surprising votes cast on Wednesday in the Children’s Museum debacle.

Perhaps most surprising was Bob Fioretti, who, as the Chicago Journal reports, had at some point even advised Brendan Reilly on the issue.

And a constituent at Clout Street says that Fioretti’s office told him he was a No vote a mere two days before the meeting.

Fioretti’s explanation that the most recent draft of the museum’s design won him over sounds pretty thin, especially given his ridiculous assertion that aldermen weren’t lobbied by the administration. In fact, several aldermen have anonymously confirmed to the Tribune and the Reader that a whole lot of shakin’ was going on.

Fioretti has been an independent force in his rookie season as an aldermen, but he appears to have trod that well-worn path to the Dark Side.

Other surprises: Ricardo Munoz and Toni Foulkes supporting the mayor; Leslie Hairston not. And Helen Shiller isn’t even a shadow of her former self; she’s a shadow of her shadow.

Anyway, go read Mick and Ben’s piece.

P.S. I saw Billy Ocasio with one of those cheat sheets during an appearance on Chicago Tonight about the Olympics; he tried to argue that Millennium Park came in on-time and on-budget. Our mayor can control time and space!

Ald. Sandi Jackson (7th) continues her campaign on behalf of coach passengers against American Airlines’s new baggage handling fee in a Sun-Times Op-Ed today, writing that “Singling out some people to pay more than others is just plain wrong.”

Um, maybe. But this is hardly the kind of issue Jackson was elected to the City Council to fight. In fact, it’s just plain weird. (On her website, she cites opposing the baggage fee as equivalent to opposing Mayor Daley’s tax increases.)

Is her husband, Jesse Jr., pulling the strings as part of his fight against foes of the Peotone airport? Mick Dumke points out at Clout City that the couple is running a coordinated campaign against the baggage fee.

I don’t like the fee any more than the next guy, but what’s next for our local power couple, boycotting American for a bigger bag of peanuts?

I don’t want to give anyone any ideas, but the former assistant commissioner of the city’s aviation department has filed a defamation lawsuit in Cook County Circuit Court based on comments posted on the Chicago Reader’s Clout City blog.

And the target of the suit isn’t just the Reader - or primarly the Reader, really – but local political thorn Frank Coconate, a critic of the Daley administration who recently won $75,000 from Shakman monitor Noelle Brennan.

James Sachay alleges in court papers that Coconate posted blog comments under Sachay’s name, including one that said: “I am voting for Frank Coconate. I am sorry I challenged his petitions under false pretenses. I am sorry I stole money from Roman Pucinski. I am sorry I got illegal contracts for my son and acted criminally at O’Hare.”

At the time, Coconate was running against Ralph Capparelli for 41st Ward committeeman; Sachay worked for Capparelli. (Both lost to caterer Mary O’Connor, president of the Edison Park Chamber of Commerce)

In his lawsuit, Sachay denies the post was his; so does Coconate, who told me this morning that he uses his real name on “99.9 percent of my posts.”

Coconate also has his own site where he is currently portraying Sachay and Capparelli as crybabies.

The suit asks for $200,000 from both Coconate and the Reader.

While the epic Wal-Mart battle is fading into oblivion, the epic Children’s Museum battle is about to get worse. After laying low for several months huddled with PR powerhouse Hill & Knowlton, museum officials are embarking on a new offensive - and that pretty much describes it - in its unpopular effort to move to Grant Park. Like the Wal-Mart fiasco, this fight also turned racial when the mayor (him again) accused foes of not wanting black kids in the neighborhood.

The controversy has already been a public relations disaster for the Children’s Museum, but for some reason it’s officials stubbornly blunder on like, well, children, even though downtown Ald. Brendan Reilly has suggested a couple dozen alternative sites he could get behind.

In the Tribune article, Reilly derided the museum’s new public relations effort as “an attempt to manufacture public support that isn’t there.” Maybe Hill & Knowlton will have better luck than Barack Obama media maven David Axelrod, who was previously running stealth PR operations for the museum, according to the April issue of Business Week Chicago.

The opposition remains galvanized. In an e-mail sent to supporters earlier this month, Reilly wrote: “This project is NOT on the March Plan Commission Agenda but very likely to be heard at the April 17, 2007 meeting. Thousands of community residents, Friends of the Parks, Preservation Chicago, Save Grant Park and Friends of Downtown all continue to reiterate their opposition to violating the special protections that have preserved Grant Park for 172 years.”

Preservation Chicago, in fact, has put Grant Park on its list of the city’s most endangered, um, buildings.

In an e-mail sent out on Tuesday, the organization asked those opposed to the museum move to attend the Plan Commission meeting in green shirts.

It’s an environmental message, to be sure, but it’s also the only color the Children’s Museum - which would be in line for park-related taxpayer subsidies - seems able to understand. Maybe in the confusion, the museum folk will change sides.

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Mick Dumke and Ben Joravksy at Clout City have some other ideas about how to fill up Grant Park.