If you only read one story about Mayor Richard M. Daley this year, this one is a must. It describes how Daley and his money men have maintained an off-the-books secret
city budget, which will--among other things--shovel millions of dollars at private sector projects, such the millions that'll go to improving Willis Tower (the former Sears Tower) and for attracting United Airlines to more into the joint.
ChicagoNow blog Chicago Muckrakers introduces you to the story and provides the link to the full ChicagoReader investigative story. Mick Dumke and Ben Joravsky have done the kind of reporting here that deserves a Pulitzer Prize.
If this doesn't make your blood boil, then you are so bought-off by Daley and so dense, that nothing the mayor gets away with will ever upset you. There's more than $1 billion in the secret budget (compared with a $6 billion budget), but no one outside the administration, including aldermen, get to see the entire thing.
Why don't they just drop the facade and rename City Hall the Kremlin?
Filed under: Chicago politics
Tags: Ben Joravsky, budget, Chicago, Chicago Reader, Mick Dumke, Richard Daley, tax increment financing, TIF
The secret budget is daley's tool to keep the alderbums in line.
I think daley should choke on a maxwell St. Polish.
Being a city employee I see waste and mismanagement first hand.Besides having supervisors NOT qualified to be in the positions they are in,they make decisions we must live with and then fix after they don't work.....not to mention the time wasted waiting for someonr TO make a decision.