Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s first City Council meeting played out almost like a campaign event for her, as she scored points against Chicago’s old political guard and argued her progressive bona fides before she settles into the more difficult task of tackling the city’s financial problems.
After weeks of rumors that a group of aldermen would try to build support to block her City Council chairmanships plan, Lightfoot passed that early test of her authority easily, without so much as a roll-call vote. Perhaps three aldermen out of 50 yelled “no” in a voice vote on her ordinance naming members of the body to head 18 committees that will help install key parts of her agenda.
But before that vote, she sparred with Ald. Edward Burke, whose federal corruption charge made him her punching bag during her successful run for office.
The only drama of the day came from an unexpected, quixotic direction, as Burke — the council’s longest serving member and its foremost expert on the body’s bylaws — rose to complain Lightfoot’s proposed package of City Council rules repeatedly read “his” rather than using gender-neutral pronoun constructions.
“I think that … these rules should provide for ‘his or her’ in the various sections,” Burke said.
As he tried to further speak about his concerns, Lightfoot cut him off. “Sir, we’ll take your issue under advisement, we’re going to move forward,” she said, to applause from the gallery.
Returning to the question on the floor, Lightfoot asked Ald. Michelle Harris to start again since “we were interrupted by Ald. Burke’s soliloquy.”
Burke was a political foil of sorts for the former federal prosecutor during her mayoral campaign. She surged in the polls after federal authorities charged him in January with attempted extortion and Lightfoot began relentlessly attacking him and her opponents with ties to him as emblematic of Chicago’s broken status quo.
The embattled alderman has a reputation in the council as a master bureaucratic tactician. When he tried a few minutes later Wednesday to again raise a point, Lightfoot stopped him short: “Alderman, please. Alderman, I will call you when I’m ready to hear from you.” She never did.
After the meeting, Lightfoot told reporters she wasn’t surprised Burke tried to come after her.
“Ald. Burke is somebody who likes to test people. He likes to see if there are weaknesses and he has attempted to do this in the past with me and he’s failed spectacularly every time,” she said. “And every time he tries it, he will again fail spectacularly. I’m not going to start off my term as mayor with the City Council putting up with somebody who is playing games for the sport of it.”
Invoking the popular HBO show to dismiss Burke, Lightfoot added, “The people in this city expect us to do our jobs, they expect a government to actually work on behalf of the people and not have a ‘Game of Thrones’ gamesmanship on the floor of the City Council. I’m not having it.”
Though Lightfoot cleared an important hurdle in the council, Burke wasn’t alone in questioning her approach.
Ald. Raymond Lopez, 15th, joined Burke in opposing Lightfoot’s organization plan, and said afterward he didn’t appreciate how the new mayor spoke to them.
“There’s a manner in which we do business here. There’s a protocol in how you address people. To come off so angry, so negative, so bitter right out the gate, it’s going to make governing difficult for her,” Lopez said. “She obviously showed her cards today that she doesn’t care about dissension, she doesn’t even want to look up to recognize when people have something to say. That is not governing. That is exactly the worst of everything she ran against that she’s employing today.”
And Ald. Carrie Austin, 34th, who Lightfoot stripped of her Budget Committee chairmanship in the reorganization, declined to characterize the new mayor’s victory Wednesday as an overwhelming show of support. “Overwhelming in what? That was no roll call, it was a voice vote,” Austin said. “Two people could have said ‘yes,’ so it’s hard to say. So that wasn’t overwhelming, as far as I’m concerned.”
Still, Lightfoot’s floor leader, Ald. Gilbert Villegas, 36th, said the refusal of the vast majority of aldermen to engage in the kind of gamesmanship many had forecast since Lightfoot got elected shows they’re ready to join her in getting to work.
“Now that the inside baseball is done, now we can start focusing on the big issues that are looming over the city, which are pensions, the budget, a casino, infrastructure, all those other things that are going to be waiting for Springfield to take action on,” he said.
After the meeting, Lightfoot harked back to her hardscrabble Ohio upbringing to make the case she will be putting forth an agenda that helps working-class Chicagoans.
She was speaking about her support for the so-called “fair workweek” ordinance backed by unions and grassroots pro-worker groups, which would require many types of Chicago businesses to give low-wage employees at least 10 days’ notice about their schedules.
Asked whether her decision to make that ordinance an early priority indicates she will take her administration in a more progressive direction than many predicted, Lightfoot sounded like she was on the campaign stump as she argued nobody should be surprised to learn what she thinks is important.
“Listen, I am who I am, and my views on a range of different issues have been quite clear,” she said. “We were the only campaign that put out detailed policy statements on virtually every issue that I think is important for the city to take on. It’s not about me moving one way or the other. I’m 56 years old. Obviously new issues come up, you learn about different issues. But my North Star is very clear. And I’m still the kid that grew up in a low-income family that struggled every single day to make ends meet. And of course that animates and guides me in thinking about policy, particularly when I look across the city, and I see the number of challenges in communities, particularly on the South and the West Side.”
Also Wednesday at the City Council:
Downtown Ald. Brendan Reilly proposed an ordinance that would ban bicycles from the Chicago Riverwalk. No pedestrian of any age would be allowed to ride a bike on the popular walkway, or they risk fines of up to $200. The proposal calls on the city’s transportation commissioner to erect signs about the ban, and says no one can be penalized under the ordinance unless those notices are posted.
Reilly and 2nd Ward Ald. Brian Hopkins also teamed up to propose new restrictions on outdoor downtown street performances. Performers who use bullhorns, amplifiers or percussion could only work between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. — plus between 4 and 8 p.m. — on Mondays through Fridays. On Saturdays and Sundays, such performances would be limited to between 11 a.m. and 5 p.m. Repeat violators could have their street performer permits revoked.
