Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s plan to use millions of dollars in unspent property tax rebate money hit a roadblock Tuesday as several aldermen said he should be focusing the cash more directly on anti-violence efforts.
The City Council budget committee did not vote on Emanuel’s proposal for the nearly $15 million, and committee Chairman Ald. Carrie Austin said the mayor’s intention to earmark part of the money for tree planting was a problem.
Austin said aldermen would meet with the mayor’s representatives later Tuesday to try to come up with a compromise to vote on prior to the Wednesday City Council meeting.
Ald. Raymond Lopez, 15th, who rankled the mayor by introducing his own alternate plan for the money, said he would be willing to compromise on most of his own ideas. But Lopez said the package needs to address the crime besetting many West Side and South Side neighborhoods.
"Hopefully tomorrow we’ll have a more collaborative proposal introduced in (the budget committee) to discuss," Lopez said after huddling with Deputy Mayor Andrea Zopp in the room behind council chambers.
"This is very urgent for me, and I think for that reason I’m willing to sit down and hear what the mayor’s team has to say," Lopez said.
Ald. Ricardo Munoz, 22nd, said Emanuel’s plan would have failed to pass the budget committee "if he had tried to ram it through" on Tuesday. And Munoz said the mayoral version would have gotten at least 18 "no" votes in the full council. That wouldn’t have been enough opposition to defeat Emanuel’s plan, but it could have been an embarrassment for the mayor as he tries to show he is prioritizing anti-violence efforts.
The council dust-up focuses on how to spend money left over from Emanuel’s plan to give property tax rebates. Most eligible homeowners didn’t bother to take advantage of the program.
The mayor’s proposal calls for the bulk of the unused money to be used to upgrade city park infrastructure, equip all police officers with body cameras by the end of the year, rehab vacant homes and support after-school programs. Smaller amounts would be spent on a new cybersecurity training program at City Colleges, a test program to create crime-fighting intelligence centers, planting 1,000 trees, setting up a small-business incubator on the West Side and creating a call center on the South Side.
Lopez says the city’s violence epidemic necessitates that the extra money be spent strictly on programs that will more directly address the situation. His plan calls for all the money to be spent on youth jobs, street-level violence prevention programs like CeaseFire and mentoring for fifth- and sixth-graders.
Lopez said he removed a proposal from his list to use some of the money to connect private security cameras to the city’s emergency surveillance system, which he said some of his colleagues opposed. "I’m willing to discuss all of it," Lopez said.
Also Tuesday, the budget committee advanced the mayor’s nomination of Edward Siskel to be corporation counsel. Siskel replaces Stephen Patton, who stepped down Feb. 14.
After the meeting, Siskel refused to say whether the mayor’s office is negotiating with the Justice Department on a court-enforceable consent decree to govern Chicago Police Department reforms.
Siskel repeated that Emanuel was intent on following through on reforms recommended by federal investigators, and he said Chicagoans should have confidence that the mayor intends to make sure the reforms stick, unlike prior efforts to fix the relationship between the Police Department and residents.
Siskel, 44, is a former federal prosecutor and deputy White House counsel under President Barack Obama.
"My good fortune will continue if this body appoints me corporation counsel," Siskel said Tuesday.
He spent three years in the White House before leaving for the private sector. While with the Obama administration, Siskel handled internal investigations and ran point on congressional investigations into the solar technology company Solyndra and the attack on the U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya.
Aldermen hit Siskel at the committee meeting over how he will do a better job than his predecessors in providing data that aldermen seek. "Who is your client?" Munoz asked.
Siskel said he was committed to provide legal services to both the mayor’s office and the City Council, though aldermen said there have been problems in recent years with city lawyers failing to give aldermen information they seek on deals the mayor is working on.
The full council will consider his appointment Wednesday.
jebyrne@chicagotribune.com
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