First the good news: 16 aldermen voted against Mayor Daley’s proposal to stick the Chicago Children’s Museum in Grant Park. That’s 16 more than voted against his plan to put a CTA subway station in the bowels of Block 37, a $320 million white elephant that just may prove to be the single greatest waste of money this city has ever engineered—though the competition’s pretty fierce.
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Let’s put aside for a moment the pros and cons of moving the museum to Grant Park. The fight waged in the City Council last Wednesday was really about Mayor Daley flexing his political muscle to assure the IOC that his word is law in Chicago. If there was ever any hope for a check to keep the mayor from exercising unlimited power it was the council, which by law has the final say on just about every major project he proposes. But that hope died during the June 11 debate, as alderman after alderman rose to affirm his subservience.
I had no delusions that the aldermen were going to cast their votes based on a careful analysis of the pros and cons. But I did think political self-interest might carry the day. Forty-second Ward alderman Brendan Reilly was against the Children’s Museum coming to this corner of his ward, and given the City Council’s long tradition of aldermanic prerogative, I figured he had a shot at getting it defeated. It’s not like Reilly didn’t warn his colleagues. “He told them all—if they do this to me, they can do this to you,” says one aldermanic aide. But when push came to shove, Reilly’s colleagues hung him out to dry.
He said it’s just a coincidence that he wound up siding with the city’s most powerful politician as opposed to the residents who live just down the street from his ward. He said he didn’t talk to the mayor about the matter and that the Daley administration influenced his vote with neither threats nor promises.
Feigel says 27th Ward alderman Walter Burnett was another disappointment to her group. And like Fioretti, Burnett could be in hot water for his “yes” vote—his ward also borders the 42nd, and he also voted for the Rush Hospital deal. Clearly, he’s counting on the mayor and Secretary of State Jesse White, his mentor, to pull him through come 2011.
Care to comment? Find this column at chicagoreader.com. And for more on politics, see our blog Clout City.
