Ald. Edward Burke is proposing a new policy for appointments to the boards and commissions that help run the city. He thinks they should be sprinkled evenly among the 50 wards, which would amount to about two for each. This may not be the goofiest Burke pronouncement in the last two years–he`s produced such a stunning array–but it certainly ranks high on the list.
His inspiration, as usual, was Mayor Washington. Several weeks ago the alderman asked his Finance Committee staff to look up the addresses of all 77 mayoral appointees who still had not been confirmed by the city council. Only a third of them, it turned out, live in the 29 wards whose aldermen side with Mr. Burke against the mayor.
He blamed this ”lack of fair representation” for the majority bloc`s refusal to vote on the mayor`s appointees.
Like most of the things he says when he goes on the attack, this isn`t worth more than a few chuckles. Obviously, he knows there`s a difference between selecting people to serve on the city Plan Commission, for example, and dispatching garbage-collection trucks.
If Mr. Burke wants to waste more of his staff`s time and assign it to check on the appointments of every mayor in the city`s history, he`d no doubt find that not one of them used a population ratio as a standard. And they should not. He`d probably also find that not one of them stuck purely with merit as a standard, which is much more important. But more of Mayor Washington`s appointees have distinguished backgrounds in their professions or in civic affairs than those of any other mayor in recent decades. It bothers Mr. Burke that so many of them are clustered along the lakefront, but it`s a fact of Chicago life that the lakefront communities have traditionally attracted big numbers of professional and civic leaders.
Mr. Burke didn`t mention it, but five virtually all-black wards that voted heavily for Harold Washington in the primary and general elections have none of the 77 pending appointees, and three others have only one each.
The Burke study is supposed to be an excuse for the council majority`s failure to fulfill its legislative responsibility in acting on mayoral appointees. Instead, it shows that Mr. Washington probably did a better job of selecting them than his recent predecessors.
Funny, but Mr. Burke never said a word when Mayor Daley and Mayor Byrne were handing out key commission jobs to suburbanites. He just quietly voted
”aye.”
